Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Page Two January 30, 1937 From the itor’s Easy Chair SINCE I wrote a review of A Doctor s Diary, (page 9), in course of which I predicted the picture would cause controversy, I read in the Examiner that already doctors are beginning to protest and medical societies propose to take action to prevent its release. As the picture shows both ethical and racketeer doctors, it follows that only the racketeers in the profession have any grounds for complaint. The ethical, honest doctor should hail it with satisfaction as it exposes those who demean their profession by holding their earnings to be of greater importance than their curing. A doctor who is unaware the practice of medicine has been reduced to a racket level by many of those under oath to respect and preserve its ethics, is extraordinarily stupid. Ben Schulberg is doing both the medical profession and the public a valuable service in throwing a strong light on the dark places in medical circles. Some doctors take cruel advantage of the reliance and faith their patients are compelled to put in them. I have personal knowledge of instances of grossly unethical practices by doctors whose names stand high in their profession and who treat their patients only for the money there is in it. One instance : The doctor made a cursory examination of a woman patient; told her to have all her teeth extracted at once; gave her the card of the dentist he selected and told her what the dental bill would be. The doctor urged her to go to the dentist’s office at once as her condition was grave. 1 HAT was thirteen years ago. I happened to be with the woman’s husband when she telephoned him that she was in the dentist’s office and was going to have all her teeth extracted. The husband told her to come home at once. To-day, the wife, all her teeth intact, is in perpect health. All that ever was the matter with her was a slight disposition to nervous headaches. No one with ordinary common sense would fail to grasp the fact of collusion between the doctor and the dentist for purposes of revenue only. Both of them are respected members of their profession, still practising in Hollywood. If either of them emits even a small squawk against Ben Schulberg’s picture, I will supply Ben with his name and the name of the patient. At the same time, however, I would like to state that some of the finest, upright, honorable and honest citizens we have are to be found in the medical profession. My own doctor is one of the grandest men alive, a person it is a privilege to know, and there are others like him. They will not object to A Doctor s Diary. It is not about them. It is about those who will object. The only distressing feature of the case is that the slightest suggestion of a protest will scare Will Hays so badly that he probably will line up with the protestants. Will has an extraordinary capacity for becoming frightened when anyone says “Boo!” to pictures. In this instance I hope he will have nerve enough to stand up for the industry he is paid so handsomely to serve. If he brought any courage to his movie job it should be in prime condition for use now. It has enjoyed a long, undisturbed sleep. * * * rHE Era, London, in commenting on the difficulty English audiences have in understanding the idiomatic jargon of the gangsters appearing in American pictures, says: “Personally, we never can understand the lousy bums.” * * * TREADING over again Gilbert Seldes’s An Hour with ll the Movies and the Talkies, I came across a paragraph which supports my view of the screen’s independence of the stage. Here it is: “For many years stage people used stage material for the movies; and not one single essential of the movies has ever been favorably affected by the stage ; the stage has contributed nothing lasting to the movies. There isn’t a single item of cinema technique which requires the experience of the stage; and every good thing in the movies has been accomplished either in profound indifference to the stage or against the experience of the stage.” I do not quote Seldes to show what a bright fellow he is or what a bright fellow I am by virtue of sharing his views. No other conclusions could be arrived at by anyone with ordinary intelligence and an inclination to put the screen and stage side by side and regard their dissimilarity. Before the talkies were old enough to have a book written about them, in large letters on the front cover of a Spectator I announced, “The Stage Has Nothing to Offer the Screen,” and inside the issue I set forth my views at length. I believe it was the first time such views were put in print anywhere, and they were expressed when Hollywood was in the first flurry of its rush to Broadway for plays to photograph and stage players to appear in them. Only the inherent strength of the screen as the world’s foremost entertainment medium has enabled it to survive its contamination by the stage. Occasionally it has stag HOLLYWOOD SPECTATOR, published every second Saturday in Hollywood, California, by Hollywood Spectator, Inc., Welford Beaton, president; Howard Hill, secretary-treasurer. Office, 6513 Hollywood Boulevard; telephone GLadstone 5213. Subscription price, five dollars the year; two years, eight dollars; foreign, six dollars. Single copies 20 cents. Advertising rates on application.