Hollywood Spectator (1931)

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14 Hollywood Spectator Enna Jettick Shoes, I have to think hard about other matters in order to ward off nausea. Nor do I feel any too well about that brand of milk which is recommended for Adohr-able Babies. On Santa Monica Boulevard is the little champion of them all. It is a woman’s dress emporium, and it is called Ye Smack’y Shoppe. Now really, Mr. Beaton, just what does this mean? Why the apostrophe? Some day, I’m going to borrow Neely Vanderbilt’s gat, and after I have duly loaded it, I shall enter Ye Smack’ y Shoppe and demand an explanation. And if they can’t tell me how they ever happened on such a name, or even if they can tell me, I shall see red and start shooting. It is just this sort of thing that arouses the killer instinct in the timidest men. Grim Warning ▼ ▼ In the Last Issue of the Hollywood Spectator was quoted a statement by David Sarnoff, the radio tycoon (cf. Time, any issue). Everyone in the motion picture industry, and by that I mean everyone, should pay the strictest heed to what Mr. Sarnoff has had to say on the subject of television. It is the handwriting on the wall — the grim warning that another mighty empire is about to arise from the ashes. Astonishingly few people have the faintest notion of what television will mean. It is generally regarded with apathy as another gadget on the radio which will enable us to see the droll muggings of Amos and Andy, the simpering smiles of Uncle Wiggly (who tells the bed-time stories) and the sour visage of Simeon Fess as he sounds the key-note at the next Republican convention. Beyond that unalluring conception the average imagination declines to go. The main facts about television, which are generally ignored, are these: It will convert millions of sitting rooms into motion picture theatres, and all the broadcasting studios into projection booths. It will bring the latest feature pictures to the public by courtesy of the same benevolent advertisers who now clutter up the free air with selling talk. As Bugs Baer has said, we will have covered wagons in the dining room, big parades in the bedroom and strangers may kiss on the back porch. Television will cause the closing of a staggering number of motion picture theatres, and thus necessitate the demobilization of thousands upon thousands of exquisitely trained ushers. It will complete the process that was started when the Radio Corporation of America first invaded Hollywood: the reduction of the once-potent film industry to the humble estate of a subsidiary. So I earnestly advise one and all in Hollywood to grab while the grabbing is good. In a year or so from now, the gravy is going to be a whole lot thinner. ▼ ▼ While Discussing Television, I have heard picture people say: “They won’t be able to get pictures for broadcasting over the air on their advertising programs, because wre won’t sell.” Such optimists are due to learn that they’ll have to sell or starve. The magnates behind the Radio Corporation didn’t buy F.B.O., Pathe and Keith Orpheum for the purpose of adding their capital and power to an entertainment medium which was ostensibly in competition with their own. They embarked upon the manufacture of motion pictures because they knew that eventually they’d need them in their business. ▼ ▼ The Phrase, “The urge to congregate,” is frequently used by those who underestimate the menace of television. They say that no matter how luscious the entertainment provided in homes, people will still want to escape from the hearth-side and join the mobs in theatres. Perhaps this “urge to congregate” is still strong in the rural districts, where loneliness prevails. But it is a thing of the past in the congested cities, where people are so oppressed by mobs during the working hours that, when evening comes, they seek relief for their bruised shoulders. They like company, to be sure, but they don’t want it at the expense of breathing space. Certainly, the famous “urge to congregate” is not now powerful enough to drive crowds into film theatres where poor pictures are being shown, nor into churches where dull sermons are being given. If a new production like Cimarron were being broadcast, and paid for by the manufacturers of Lucky Strikes or Listerine, so that the fans could see it without trouble or expense, do you suppose that the “urge to congregate” would compel them to ignore it and spend their evening by preference at a theatre where The Vice Squad might be on view? ▼ ▼ Of Course, no one who is outside the innermost shrines of radio can tell just how soon television will become an accomplished commercial fact. But my guess is that it won’t be long. For years, the big electrical barons have been soft-pedalling this subject, for they believed that the sale of radio sets would fall off terrifically if the public got the idea that television is imminent; shrewd citizens would not care to buy devices which were bound to become obsolete within a short time. That condition, however, has changed — due to the fact that the sale of radio sets has fallen off anyway. The broadcasters have to produce a startling novelty to revive their depleted trade — and television is it. Now that gentlemen of the importance of Mr. Sarnoff are beginning to admit it, you can watch for the appearance of huge displays in the back pages of the Saturday Evening Post. ▼ ▼ When Millions of television sets are in operation in homes throughout the land, the movie industry will undergo a reorganization as complete as Russia’s. Those producers who are smart enough will make fat sums of money out of the new order, for national advertisers will pay heavily for good films just as they now pay heavily for such attractions as Will Rogers, Maurice Chevalier and Floyd Gibbons. The theatre owners, however, are going to find themselves with tons of useless concrete, marble and red brocade on their hands. The day of the gaudy film palace is about to end. On the other hand, theatres which present flesh and blood entertainment will begin to fill up again. The public will be glutted with talking shadows on screens in the home, and whenever the urge to congregate does exert itself, they will want to go someplace where they can see and hear the real thing, rather than mechanical counterfeits of the real thing. ▼ ▼ I Made the Same Remarks about television in an article in Scribner’s Magazine over two years ago. They were then greeted with jeers, and there will probably be a few more hoots even now. The big boys of the movie business never have been able to look beyond their own noses; and although (in most cases) that does permit them a fairly long range, it causes them to develop an astigmatism which is liable to prove fatal. (Continued on Page 21)