Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Hollywood Spectator Page Three gered under the weight of Hollywood’s ignorance of its true nature, but it has muddled through in spite of the brutal treatment accorded it by film producers. * * * ARNER BROTHERS seem to function better when a year is young. In the Spectator of January 18 last year I reviewed Petrified Forest and Captain Blood, two Warner pictures which were among the best released last year. In summing up the merits of the Hollywood product during the first six months of 1936, I awarded top honors to ten pictures. Half of them were made by Warners, the two mentioned above and Anthony Adverse, The Green Pastures and White Angel. Four of them were entrusted by Hal Wallis to Henry Blanke, associate producer, Harry Joe Brown having made Captain Blood. Now Henry Blanke starts off 1937 with The Green Light, reviewed in the last Spectator and which is among the best pictures ever made. Blanke it was, too, who gave us The Story of Louis Pasteur and Midsummer Night's Dream. For the first six months of this year he is to give us Danton, Zola, Dreyfuss, Beethoven, Robin Hood. The Wallis-Blanke team has an extraordinary record of achievement. No other such team in the world has to its credit, for the same period of time, such a list of outstanding successes as its last year’s product, and I know of no other associate producer who has such an ambitious program ahead of him as that which Wallis has assigned to Blanke. * * * VOLUME of inestimable value for aspirants to careers as writers of screen plays is Four-Star Scripts ( Doubleday, Doran, $2.50), Lorraine Noble, editor, which contains not only intelligent comments on screen writing, but, in addition, the complete shooting scripts of Lady for a Day, It Happened One Night, Little W omen and The Story of Louis Pasteur. I cannot express my own opinion of its value in better terms than I find on the book’s jacket, all of which I endorse: “Aside from its value to students of modern motion picture writing, this is a book which will be of great assistance to that growing legion of amateur movie makers who have tried, or contemplate trying, to write and produce their own screen plays. And the general reader will derive additional pleasure from his visits to the movies; he will know how the film has been made. Never before has anyone succeeded in obtaining the publishing rights to so imposing a list of film plays as are contained in Four-Star Scripts. Combined with these are the products of Miss Noble’s natural ability to write, and the necessary technical knowledge to present the subject of scripts for the talkies interestingly and comprehensively. Miss Noble’s experience was garnered in Hollywood, both as a film editor and a purchaser of material for the screen.” * * * N ALYSIS of the result of Film Daily's poll of the film critics of the United States and Canada to determine the best pictures of 1936, reveals some interesting side-lights on the relative merits of the various producing organizations. Over five hundred critics voted and the results are set forth in the ten-best and the forty-four others, in order of the number of votes for each, which constitute the “Honor Roll.” As was to be expected, Metro’s preponderance of star material gave it an edge on the other studios, as reflected in the appearance of four of its productions among the ten best and nine among the other forty-four. Warner Brothers, with but few outstanding stars to attract attention to their product, depending for votes, therefore, more largely on the intrinsic merit of their pictures, also has four among the first ten and five on the honor roll. The relative figures for United Artists are one and eight; Columbia, with comparatively few releases, one and two. With its many releases during the year, Twentieth Century managed to have only six productions mentioned among the fifty-four important ones; Paramount, with even more releases, has five; Universal, with comparatively few releases, three. In order of merit Century’s first contestant is nineteenth on the list. Metro has eight higher on the list, Warners have six deemed by the critics to be better than Century’s best; Universal two, and United Artists two. Five of those placed on the ballot I sent in are among the ten best, the other five coming in this order on the honor roll: 2nd, 7th, 12th, 20th, 32nd. * * * T RANGE, the threads of fate! Twenty some odd years ago, by the lottery of chance, a two-year old baby was rocketed into the heights of screen stardom. He was feted, petted, praised, and, in figures of that period, fabulously paid. Today his early Hollywood glory forgotten, he is still “in pictures” but how differently, you may judge for yourself. He was known in his stardom as “Little Billy”. Keystone organized the “Little Billy Studio” for his films. Today he is the associate editor of the Spectator. His friends call him Bill. He is known as Paul Jacobs. * * * ENTAL HITHERS-AND-YONS: In 1909 Watty Rothacker was managing editor of Billboard , New York amusement weekly ; the front cover of one issue was a photograph of me; I walked past all the Seattle news stands displaying it; thanked Watty for it at dinner at Beverly Brown Derby one evening last week. . . . When Mrs. Spectator’s dog gets on my lap and looks at me intently with her big, wise, expressive black eyes, I regret exceedingly my inability to speak Pekinese. ... A man I admire is the football player who can remain cool enough to kick straight when his team needs the extra point to win. . . . Only in retrospect should we enjoy a screen performance; while viewing a picture it should not come to us consciously that we are seeing an actor playing a part. . . . I nominate for a Nobel prize, Robert Kreis, chef at the Beverly Brown Derby, for his creation of what appears on the menu as “Stuffed veal cutlet Orloff, glace, peas.” A dish for the gods. . . . Four of us met in a doorway at El Capitan, A and his wife inbound, B and I, side by side, outbound. As all four of us paused, A introduced B to his wife, looked at me, then introduced me also without giving me a name. We had a pleasant chat. I had no idea who any of them were. I merely was trying to get outside for a smoke between acts. ... I would like to see John Eldredge more frequently in the sympa