Hollywood Spectator (Apr-May 1939)

of their own careers; no longer will their welfare be nourished by producers who must build up the names they have on contracts. Under the new order of things the player, writer or director who will get the most work and earn the most money will be the one who most readily comes to producer minds, just as the shaving cream you buy is the one which most readily comes to your mind when you want some. Fundamentally, the sale of talent differs in no way from the sale of shaving cream. Neither can get anywhere without advertising, without being kept in the minds of its prospective customers. We Give Fatherly Advice €| In asking for advertising patronage for its Fourteenth Birthday Number, which will be the issue following this one, the Spectator is told by many of its talented friends that if they advertised in it they would be hounded by a dozen other film publications. Of course, an obvious answer to that would be to tell each of the hounders to come around when it was celebrating its fourteenth birthday, that you always patronize Fourteenth Birthday Numbers. But the inspiration which prompted this discussion has more general application, was not intended as affecting only the Spectator. Picture people should advertise if they expect to continue to sell their wares. Each one of them knows that over the years others with as much talent as he or she possesses have faded into oblivion because they were not talked about, because they did nothing to keep their names in the minds of the people who could employ them. Each person earning good money now should set aside a sum of money to be expended during the year in advertising in papers he feels would give him value for the money spent; each paper on the list should be notified that at a specified time it would get its share of the advertising budget, no more, no less, provided it did not make a nuisance of itself by asking that the time be advanced or its share of the budget be increased. But of course this highly commendable system cannot be inaugurated in time to benefit the Spectator's Birthday Number. That should be a special dispensation to reward it for the fatherly advice it offers above. * * * ONE BOOK YOU REALLY MUST HAVE AfO LIBRARY in the office or home of anyone con' nected with the motion picture industry can be considered complete unless it contains the Film Daily Year Book. The twenty-second annual volume, I 125 pages in handsome white and gold binding, is now available. It is an extraordinary accomplishment in the way of compiling, presenting and indexing data on pictures and their people. Who wrote the story for th is or that picture? Who played in it? What other pictures have the players to their individual credits? What pictures were produced in 1923? I could go on and on, listing thousands of guestions the valuable volume answers. In compiling and publishing it, Jack Alicoate, whose Film Daily since 1919 has been a reliable record of all the newsworthy activities of the film industry, gives the industry a volume of inestimable value to it. As a completed work it reflects the highest credit on its staff of compilers who worked under the guidance of its able editor, Chester Bahn. In case I have persuaded you that you must complete your library by finding shelf room for this indispensible volume, you can write to this address: Film Daily, 1501 Broadway, New York. * * * MENTAL MEANDERINGS HEN I look into a drawer filled with socks knitted for me by Mrs. Spectator, I think how selfish it is for me to have so many when Mahatma Gandhi apparently hasn't any. . . . Along our dirt road we put out receptacles filled with exhausted cans which a truck comes along and scoops up. This is can day; our box is on the parking strip. Lassie, the fat old dog who brought me a pudding dish and a gopher trap, is busy taking cans from the box and spreading them around it. Probably looking for something worth presenting to someone. From where I am sitting I can see her around the end of the hedge, but she obvi: ously is having such a fine time I lack the heart to disturb her. ... I am not so contented. I envy Lassie. The sun is shining, birds are singing, flowers are blooming, and here I sit, rebelliously trying to reach the bottom of the column while three flats of young flower plants are awaiting transfer to beds, the newly seeded side-lawn needs sprinkling, the Morning Glories need thinning, the Dahlia bulbs should be sorted, and — but what's the use? Ho, hum! Let's get on with it. . . . Somewhere southwest of us a hen has just laid an egg; I can tell by the cackle. Sounds carry a long distance in our guiet Valley. Somewhere northeast of us lives a man with the loudest sneeze in the world, one he leads up to with a fusillade of minor hi-hi-hohoes, ending in a grand explosion which prompts me to study the sky in his direction in expectation of seeing the top of his head soaring upward. . . . Hollywood Boulevard marguee: "I Take This Woman — Dust Be My Destiny." . . . But perhaps someone will give her a duster as a wedding present. . . . Writing out of doors involves both mental and physical exertion. One has to think and also to shift his chair to keep in the shade as it creeps across the lawn. Just shifted into the shade of a pomegranate tree. The shade is nice, but pomegranates are annoyances, just globular masses of seeds coated with flavor you cannot taste unless you concentrate mentally on it Do you know what that longer than usual row of dots signifies? A nap. It is hot and the shade edged me near enough a garden swing to permit me to edge into it without exertion; my purpose was to think up what to write next. But I went to sleep and would have been asleep yet if my spaniel had not found me and jumped up beside me. You know how stupid a sound nap leaves you? Well PAGE FOUR HOLLYWOOD SPECTATOR