Hollywood Spectator (1931)

August 1, 193 1 li but I am getting nothing out of it. I asked Louis to put me wise. But, unfortunately, nothing came of it. However, if any producer thinks I am blackmailing him, I would be glad to receive his check. ▼ ▼ Rob Wagner can’t work up a quarrel with me by writing in his breezy Script that I harp too much on one thing — that I keep repeating myself too much. I know I do. I’d like to talk it over with Rob. Am I to write to entertain Spectator readers, or am I to take up a cause and keep pounding away at it until results are accomplished or until I desist through sheer ennui? I want the motion picture industry to get back into the business of making pictures that the public will patronize. I think I know how it should be done. To get anywhere I have to keep pounding away, for I am trying to get impressions into brains protected by exceedingly thick skulls. Nothing can be driven home by one blow. What would Rob have me do — desert the cause after one blow, or keep on hammering? Lest Spectator readers who do not see the Script might get the impression that Rob was attacking me viciously and that we are ready always to fly at one another’s throat, I wish to point out that the reference to my sin of repetition came in course of Sonne exceedingly kind and flattering references to the new Spectator, to Bob Sherwood, to Dalton Trumbo and to myself. ▼ ▼ If WE MAY judge from the number being turned out, principally by independent producers, the market for westerns is brisk. They are being made to satisfy the cravings of audiences for action on the screen, but if one I saw in preview the other night reflects the treatment all of them are getting, I am afraid they will talk themselves to death as all other forms of screen entertainment are doing. It was Branded, a Columbia picture starring Buck Jones and directed by Ross Lederman. The usual western story was used again, but I couldn’t get interested in it because it was talked instead of being acted as it used to be in the silent days. It is appalling to contemplate the manner in which independents are overlooking the greatest chance they ever had. There are ten words spoken in Branded to every one that need be spoken. But by way of compensation it has some glorious scenery, beautifully photographed by Benjamin Kline. And I like Buck Jones. He is a he-man sort of guy who belongs in a saddle. ▼ ▼ In HIS two-weeks-ago contribution to these dignified pages Bob Sherwood praised the food that one can get hereabouts, and picked out for commendation these restaurants which he mentioned by name: the Victor Hugo, Stark’s, Brown Derby, Ambassador, George’s and Armstrong & Schroder’s. Bob wasn’t here very long before he found out how chatter writers eat. The thing that makes me sore is that I never thought of it. I don’t suppose that even repeating all the names here will get me anything. ^ ▼ M. H. AYLESWORTH, president of the National Broadcasting Company, stated publicly that he wouldn’t know the difference between a vacuum tube and an inner tube. The papers seemed to think that this was a remarkable statement to come from the executive head of a company in whose operations the vacuum tube figured so largely. There is nothing remarkable about it. Aylesworth is an executive. He hires people who know what vacuum tubes are. There is no reason why he should know. He puts his mind on things that he can’t hire people to attend to. In pictures we find just the reverse. A film executive is a man who fusses all day over little things and who never gets around to the big ones. He hires people for specific jobs and then won’t let them perform them. They fuss so much about a vacuum tube that the whole radio set gets away from them. ▼ v When I READ Queer People I found here and there in its pages some excellent writing, consequently I derived some satisfaction from the reading even though the book dealt with a Hollywood that was utterly foreign to me and about which I knew nothing. I picked up Whitey expecting to find some more good writing. I spent two hours and a half reading it without discovering anything to justify anyone’s spending five minutes on it. Queer People at least pretended to be portraying a phase of life in the world’s most interesting community. The central character was merely one of the instruments used to make the recital graphic. We become interested in him only as an instrument. In Whitney he is presented for his own sake, the authors being under the mistaken impression that it was his character that attracted attention to the first book. Whitey is trashy, vulgar and disgusting. And I might add, brainless. Apparently the Graham brothers are one-book authors. ▼ ▼ RECENTLY I got the lowdown on the government’s persistency in persecuting screen people in connection with their income tax returns. Of course we know in Hollywood that people with big names are picked out on account of the publicity that will ensue, but it is something to have it confirmed by one of the internal revenue department men. I backed this bird into a corner and for a long time held him spell-bound by the eloquence I put into my denunciation of him and his kind for their hounding of the personnel of the film industry when no doubt there were more irregularities to be found among the pork packers of Chicago. The internal revenue man acknowledged that such might be the case, but claimed that there was more advertising value in a motion picture name. ▼ ▼ Metro’s retake system still is hard at work. Out on the Culver City lot they’re doing something to a picture that was completed and previewed. In the revision all the original is being retained except the title and story, and a different director is on the job. The cast remains more or less intact. By the time the rehash is released Metro will have made two pictures, and the price exhibitors will have to pay for the second will be based on the total cost of both. By this method of accounting there will be nothing on the Metro books to show that a lot of money was wasted when the studio shot the first version without knowing what it was doing. Great thing, bookkeeping. ▼ ▼ The STUDIOS are turning out pictures that are counted upon to attract children to picture houses because the casts are composed chiefly of children. Children on the screen will draw children only when the stories are the kind that will entertain both children and adults. Skippy was that kind of picture, and