Hollywood Spectator (1931)

zz Hollywood Spectator By the way, I once also missed in my calculations about a picture I wanted to see, and learned later that there was much retaking, remaking and re-everything at M-G-M after that picture had been previewed. 1 didn’t know that until after I had commented, upon seeing the picture, that “something seems out of joint in it, but I can’t say what.” So even we who don’t know anything of the making of pictures can recognize trouble that a picture has had in production. ▼ V Frank E. Hatch, who lives in Boston and who from the quality of his stationery, must be a very busy and a very successful man, pauses long enough to send the following note: In renewing my subscription I want to say that while the talkers hold little interest for me, I am still intensely interested in the Spectator, and its campaign for the application of brains in the making of pictures. I still think that Hell's Heroes was a poor interpretation of The Three Godfathers and that the stage has contributed something to the screen in the way of directors and some damn fine actors. Someone who writes anonymously, in order, he says, “that he be not responsible for starting a hundred year war of controversy,” has something to say about the segregation of responsibility for the success or failure of a picture: The problem is very simple. Merely to allocate in percentage the amount of responsibility due each of the individuals in the case of a bad picture, and if the figures vary, the percentage accredited each in the event of an excellent picture. I refer to what is termed organization pictures, not specials. In other words, the average bread and butter program pictures from which we make our living, — if any. And when the Spectator editor had his say about the dictation of the sales office to production forces, he struck a sympathetic note in the heart of Jesse J. Goldburg of Perfection Pictures, who writes: Coming to the heading Salesmen, you should sit in on some of these sales conferences held in New York and Gustav von Seyffertitz in production The Shang 4 bai Express directed by Josef von Sternberg your righteous indignation would mount to the point where your reason might be threatened. Within the past thirty days I have been advised by sales executives in New York that “Now is the time to make Gigolo pictures,” “Now is the time to make kid pictures,” “Now is the time to make gangster pictures,” “Now is the time to make musical comedies”; in fact they covered the entire field with but one exception, they forgot, or rather failed to state that “Now is the time to make intelligent pictures.” Keep up your “hammering,” sooner or later the results you seek must find their realization to some degree and producers and the public alike will profit by your efforts. ▼ V It will be remembered that several issues back Robert E. Nash disputed with Mr. Beaton the financial condition of the various motion picture companies. His response to the editor’s reply is worthy of reprint: We are at present emerging from probably the worst business depression this country has witnessed, a depression that is world-wide, a depression that has necessitated immediate drastic action on the part of our chief executive to alleviate worse conditions in countries of Europe. Taking this depression into consideration, motion picture companies producing talkies have not done so hadly. This fact can readily be appreciated when a leading railroad such as New York Central reports net earnings so far this year equivalent to approximately half of what they were a year ago, and when you consider the drastic decline in earnings of the United States Steel Corporation, a company which is looked upon as the barometer of all industry in this country. You are no doubt, partly correct in your assumption that I know little of motion pictures, but I have been agreeably entertained by such pictures as The Smiling Lieutenant, A Free Soul and The Front Page. However, even though my knowledge of pictures is small, it does seem to me, to be an impossible task to produce nothing but successes. The stage and every other form of entertainment has found that to be impossible. The question of musical pictures and their return — a decision which invariably gives producers blind jitters — is mentioned by Jerry Stewart, who writes from Pasadena: I’m beginning to wonder if the time isn’t ripe for one of our producers to crash through with a good ripsnorting musical, not one of those all-singing, all-talking, all-dancing, all-stage monstrocities, but something along the lines of Monte Carlo or The Love Parade, with plenty of action, and a lot of catchy music (sung, incidentally, by people who can really sing). Lately I have found myself hungering for music in pictures — like a man, denied smokes for a week, hungering after a cigarette. And I have no objection whatever to the socalled “off-stage” orchestra ( vide The Broadway Melody and Let’s Go Native) — provided the actors can sing and the music is good. ▼ ▼ And somebody who writes from “The Sidelines” but who neglects to mention on which sideline he is standing, takes rather sharp issue with those who are demanding silence in their pictures: Your inference that sound is ruinous to the art of motion pictures is as foolish as the cry so often heard when new developments come along. The Creator made us with ears as well as eyes to use in conjunction with our brains, but the brain must act intelligently. Sound is a perfectly natural part of us and of our surroundings. Your idea of “a perfect motion picture” as one containing “no audible dialogue or sound effects” is so artificially imaginary that it conveys no intelligent concept. Even in most forms of imagination there is reality. A perfect motion picture? Well, “there ain’t no sech animal,” nor will there ever be one, so why bring that up? No, Mr. Editor, the trouble with you fellows is not so much lack of understanding, as lack of proper coordination of the developments which men’s brains evolve from year to year. Progress is inevitable, so that leaves out perfection. When a thing is perfect progress stops. The man who wrote as above should read Mr. Beaton’s