Hollywood Spectator (1931)

August 1, 1931 7 of something when viewing such a picture, which of itself is no mental stimulus, I gave thought to the laughter and decided that it was reaction by the audience to an hour or so of boredom. The fainting scene belonged in the story. Mary fainted nicely, and Mel Brown directed it in a purely conventional manner, yet the audience laughed. If this had occurred at a preview, no doubt the scene would have been eliminated from the release print, yet it was the whole picture, and not that particular scene, that was responsible for the laughter. Unrelated to the above was an anachronism that will cause a smile to those who know their Monte Carlo. In a scene in a room in a European hotel, Mary asks Jack how long they are going to stay at Monaco, and Jack reads a telegram which states that a friend is going to arrive at the Monaco station at a certain hour. He exits hastily to meet his friend. There is no Monaco station. Monaco is a principality containing only the Condamine on the level land and Monte Carlo on the rock. People of wealth as depicted in the picture would have been in Monte Carlo as it is the only place in the principality that has such hotels. It would be just as sensible in a scene with an American locale for one character to ask another how long he was going to stay “at” the United States, and for a character to rush off to meet a friend “at the United States station.” The only difference is that the United States is larger. It is just another example of a motion picture definitely fixing a locale when it is not necessary, and then revealing ignorance of the locale designated. Wall Street Stupidity THAT Wall Street knows nothing about the motion picture business is an assertion that I have made several times. We may assume that careful reviews of the picture situation published in the Wall Street Journal present an accurate guage of the degree of intelligence that New York bankers bring to bear upon film finances. Recently the Journal analysed the financial statement of the five leading companies. The only bit of optimism in the review was the hope expressed that by next fall box-office conditions would improve. The more immediate prospect that the Journal seems to derive comfort from was the possibility of greater economy in production. If Hollywood were turning out the kind of pictures that the public wants, it could continue to squander money as recklessly as it has in the past and still be highly prosperous. The companies are not going broke because they are spending too much money. They always have spent too much money. Their present alarming financial condition is due to the fact that they are not taking in enough money. And that in turn is due to the fact that the public does not want the kind of pictures Hollywood is making. ▼ v That THERE will be no improvement in box-office conditions in the fall becomes apparent when we realize that Hollywood is continuing to turn out the kind of pictures that the public does not want. Because conditions last October were such and such Wall Street presumes that next October they will be the same. That might be true of any business dealing in a staple article of commerce. No matter how hard times are, the public must continue to consume food, wear clothes and ride in automobiles. I might not be satisfied with the kind of clothes limited finances make it necessary that I should purchase because I can’t run around like Gandhi. And though I like porterhouse steak I may have to be satisfied with beef stew. But nothing can force me to patronize entertainment that I do not enjoy. It is not necessary that I should. As an alternative I can stay at home and do my best to enjoy the beef stew, which assures my butcher a steady if meagre revenue. Picture houses, however, will suffer. And they will continue to suffer until they provide entertainment that I will patronize. The picture business is bad, not because the pictures are bad, but because the public doesn’t want them. Fox Finances DURING the first thirteen weeks of this year the net earnings of the Fox organization were $3,231,514 less than during the same period in 1930, and in 1930 the earnings were such that a number of prominent bankers crowded themselves onto the Fox directorate in the hope that their wise counsels would improve the company’s business. If the ratio of shrinkage — over one million dollars a month — is maintained throughout this year, the bankers will have to do some scratching to get together the $23,500,000, which the company needs to meet its carried-over obligations, and the many additional millions required to take care of the current year’s operations. The year is more than half over and during the remaining months it is impossible for Fox to earn the money it must have to keep its head above water. At the end of the year there probably will be more of the juggling that carried the company into this year, but a grand smash is inevitable, a prophecy I made some months ago and which is given strength by the statement which shows the condition of the company at the end of the first three months. The seed that grew into the Fox financial distress was sown during the period of the company’s greatest prosperity, during the first year of talking pictures when they were high in public favor. At that time Fox went over, body, soul and breeches to the stage, and ever since it has tried to earn dividends by selling to the public photographs of stage productions. It put on the market a substitute for the motion picture which had given it its important place among film companies, and in spite of the failure of its new product, it still is persisting in turning it out. The only picture that has been an outstanding success for Fox this year is Daddy Long Legs. It has been a . success because it is crowded with the good, old-fashioned and honest emotional hokum that the public used to love in the days when motion pictures were made. ^ ▼ A FILM COMPANY’S prosperity is not maintained by an occasional hit. It depends for its dividends on the run-of-mill product, the ordinary program pictures, leaving the few outstanding hits to provide the extra dividends. To check up the Fox program pictures I went to a neighborhood house a few weeks ago to view Six-Cylinder Love. I think it is perhaps the most characterless film I ever saw. It is not bad enough