Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

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Hollywood Spectator Page Three 'y/Lum. x/ie. EDITOR'S EflSV CHAIR Cali Out the Old Guard . . . RECENTLY Daily Variety had this to say: "Rapidly declining picture grosses, in some instances reaching forty to fifty per cent below all-time depression day lows, have exhibitors here and elsewhere jittery and frantically trying to devise ways and means to combat the serious situation which has developed." Everything which has happened to pictures in the last decade was predicted by the Spectator long in advance of its happening. That is a matter of record. The predictions were not mere guesses. They were based on reasoning from the standpoint of film facts. Anyone with even elemental knowledge of people, pictures, and sound business principles, could see that the film industry was riding to a fall. The Spectator saw it and warned of it so repeatedly that it grew tired of the repetition. In several issues of recent dates it analysed the business situation of the industry and suggested methods by which it could be made more stable. Only the inherent strength of the screen as a medium of entertainment has enabled it to survive the grossly ignorant management it has received, but, as Variety indicates, its resistance is waning, its situation becoming desperate. Jittery exhibitors can do nothing about it. The remedy must be applied at the source of the trouble — the picture producing plants in Hollywood. j MPROVMENT in general business conditions will have but a temporary revivifying effect on box-office grosses. When the depression of the early thirties was at its heighth, the Spectator made the same statement and later events have proven its soundness. We repeat what we have said scores of times — that there is not a controlling producer in a Hollywood studio who has the remotest concep tion of what a real motion picture is — that if the automobile industry were in such ignorant hands no car would keep running for a thousand miles. Yet to make a good box-office picture is a simple process, but not a process so simple that simpletons can apply it. Knowledge of the fundamentals of the medium is essential. PICTURE ignorance has had its day. Knowledge must supplant it if conditions are to be improved. In schools and colleges all over the country there are students who know more about the fundamentals of screen entertainment than is known by the producers who control the output of Hollywood studios. The Spectator, which is used as a textbook for hundreds of these Motion Picture Appreciation classes, is playing its part in spreading picture knowledge, but exhibitors can not wait for the students to grow up and take command. present producers must apply the remedy, must give the business financial stability. That means they must acquire knowledge of the business they are in. As a starting point I would suggest their reading of the Spectators of April twenty-three, April thirty, May seven. That at least should start them thinking. If studio executives would think less of horse races and more of their jobs, less of sporting events and more of the nature of their business, a few among them might devise ways to cope with the present crisis. The intelligent ones might profit by remembering that in the silent days the picture business was a rather steady one, that its very steadiness led to its downfall before the microphone came along to revive it. Turning out box-office successes in the silent days became such a routine matter that executives grew careless and gave little thought to their product. Box-offices reflected the carelessness, and while the executives sat around