Hollywood Spectator (Apr-May 1939)

~/7lu?n. the EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR PICTURES AND THEIR AUDIENCE DECOMMENDED for reading is the June-July num1 her of Cinema Progress, edited by Boris Morkovin, the capable head of the cinema department of LI niversity of Southern California. The typographically attractive 36-page publication is full of the kind of material which would make profitable reading for all those engaged in the creative branches of picturemaking. In the list of those whose opinions are expressed are such practical screen names as King Vidor, William Wellman, Mitchell Leisen, Leigh Jason, Henry King, S. Sylvan Simon, Milton Sperling, John Brahm. Thoughtful and valuable articles are contributed by other experts in various phases of film production. Of course, some of the opinions expressed are open to challenge. For instance, let me quote Leigh Jason: "Critics are unfair when they judge all pictures by the standards they set up for an artistic picture. There are at least three widely differing, but overlapping types of audiences; the intelligent audience which enjoys the best artistic pictures; the middle class audience which wants light entertainment; the less intelligent audience which enjoys only western and action pictures." Cause of Box-Office Worries Jason here classifies the kind of pictures the public is being offered now, and unconsciously puts his finger on the weak spot in Hollywood's production methods, the weakness responsible for box-office conditions which are causing producers so much concern. When pictures were silent there was but one audience, the public as a whole. Lack of knowledge of the fundamental appeal of their medium was not a serious matter then, as mechanical limitations made it necessary for screen stories to be told in pictorial language, the most primitive form of expression, one which left its interpretation to the imagination, not to the intellect, of its audience. Thus the story had the same appeal to all those who saw it on the screen in that it appealed to one hundred per cent of the imaginative power of each beholder. The scholar and the moron did not get the same story, but each got the one his imagination was capable of fashioning. Thus silent pictures had but one audience. Producers will tell you that prior to the advent of sound the public was getting tired of silent pictures, a fact established by dwindling box-office receipts. The public was not tiring of silents as such; it was tiring of the kind it v/as getting. Because you tire of eating corn beef and cabbage every day, you can not be accused of becoming tired of eating. Embarked On a New Business When the screen began to talk, the motion picture industry went into an entirely new business, a fact of which it still is unconscious. Instead of sticking to the business which created it, it changed the nature of its product as completely as would be the case if a dealer in women's hats switched to men's shoes, expecting still to hold his old customers. It had been offering entertainment which appealed to the imagination, and it switched to a line which appeals to the intellect. It divided its audience into the three parts set forth by Jason. For the soothing silence of its legitimate product it substituted dialogue which its players shout into the ears of the audience. For the quiet music of the old days it substituted scores which at times step to the front and stun us with the volume of their sound. And box-office receipts continue to shrink. And producers who regard themselves as supermen, incapable of being wrong, plead the difficulty of making pictures, each of which will appeal to three different kinds of audience. It is six or seven years ago since the Spectator first predicted the exact conditions which exist now. If the Spectator could see it that long ago, why, in heaven's name, can not the film moguls with the overstuffed salaries see it now? * * * TIME TO THINK ABOUT SHIRLEY THAT Shirley Temple's appeal is more to adults than * to children lonq has been the Spectator's contention. The trend of the New York criticisms of her latest picture is along the same lines. Yet her studio never has even hinted at its realization of that important fact. It persists in presenting her as a child to entertain children. Perhaps the lack of satisfactory box-office response to her current vehicle will prompt her studio to do some serious thinking. At least let us hope so. A suggestion of the kind of thinking responsible for the weakness of Shirley's box office standing is given in Louella Parson's newspaper column: "Darryl Zanuck certainly has a big problem in finding stories for the golden Temple child that appeal to the children and at the same time are adult entertainment." If Louella has Darryl right, he is SPECTATOR, published bi-weekly at Los Angeles. Calif., by Hollywood Spe tator Go.. 0013 Hollywood Blvd. ; phone GLadstone 5213. Subscription price. $5 the year; two years, $8: foreign, $6. Single copies 20 cents. Entered as Second Class matter. September 23. 1938. at the Post Office at Los Angeles. Calif., under the act of Congress of March 3. 1879. PAGE TWO HOLLYWOOD SPECTATOR