Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Page Four May 21, T938 and blinked at one another in complete ignorance of the reason for what was happening to the film industry, the sound device came along and with its advent they ceased thinking entirely, and since then have not thought in terms of the business they are in. What Hollywood needs now is what it needed but did not get when talking pictures first were made possible — the application of the new element in a manner to strengthen a form of entertainment which already had proven its power to build a gigantic industry. Instead of proceeding in that manner, Hollywood chucked its old business overboard and went into a new one. It now is paying the price of its ignorance and will continue to pay it until intelligence supplants the ignorance. There are available some Hollywood brains which retain knowledge gained in making silent pictures. It is not too late yet to relegate the microphone to its proper place as a medium of expression, to tell stories more with the camera than with sound machinery. If a producer with long experience in the silent era — Ben Schulberg, for instance — were to be called back into service, he could make the kind of pictures exhibitors need to restore prosperity to their business. Events have proven that straight talking pictures will not hold the audience the industry needs for its support. Silent pictures did. Then what we want are producers who know how to make silent pictures and are sufficiently familiar with the microphone to use it to make their talkies even better box-office than the silent pictures used to be. Ben Schulberg comes to mind because of his long service before sound came and his subsequent experience with it. The sound device came as a great boon to the screen. It has been used as a weapon which has been battering the life out of it. Ignorance has had its day! It is time to call out the Old Guard! * * * DOUGS. SENIOR AND JUNIOR . . . ONE of the wisest screen stars I know is Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. When I met him first about twenty years ago, he assured me he was not an actor, that all he knew was how to leap over things and climb ivy-clad walls, and that when he grew too old to do that he was going to quit. And that is what Doug has done. Not for him was the des perate hanging on to fading glory. As his screen performances so largely engaged only his body, he occupied his head with thoughts of business with the result that when he withdrew from public gaze, his pockets were well stuffed with money and to Doug, Jr., he left the perpetuation of the name. Only one complete Fairbanks has a place in screen history, the father figuring from the neck down and the son from the neck up. It will not be long until young Doug is recognized as one of the really brilliant screen actors. * * * WE REPLY TO A CORRESPONDENT . . . A CORRESPONDENT takes me to task for referring in the last Spectator to Shirley Temple as still “at the head of the box-office list,” while the figures compiled by National Box-Office Digest and published in its annual number showed Shirley’s place to be in the twenties. I have no quarrel with the Digest’s figures or its way of figuring, but before we can accept its box-office ratings as reflecting the true standing of players, we must take into consideration the manner in which they are arrived at. The range of Digest’s compilations necessarily must be limited to the box-office figures available to it, and those available, while considerable, are by no means sufficiently comprehensive to reflect the true standing of players throughout the world. The great majority of picture houses do not report their box-office earnings, the smaller houses, which outnumber the big ones perhaps one hundred to one, not making box-office reports which can be used in establishing ratings. Digest gets what figures it can and rates the players accordingly. Those who during the period it covers happened to be lucky enough to appear in pictures which did big business in key city houses which make public their box-office takes, of necessity must get top rating in Digest’s list. Rating Star Popularity . . . JHE price of admission also is a factor in rating the popularity of players. If one person pays sixty cents to see Player A on the screen of a city house, and three people pay fifteen cents each to see Player B in a village theatre, the gross intake would place A’s popularity over B’s in the ratio of sixty to forty-five; but is not a player whom three people pay to see, more popular than another whom only one person pays to see? In any event, the sixty cents return is made public and the forty-five cents return is not, which places B in the position of getting no credit for drawing three customers while A was drawing one. And another factor we must take into account is that a thousand-dollar-week in the majority of houses is much greater than a sixty-thousand-dollar-week in the Radio City Music Hall. Only by an answer from the majority of big and little exhibitors to one question can the true box-office rating of players be established: “Which star do your patrons like most?” That removes the hazard of figures. If box-office earnings be the only guide, Joe Doakes, in a supporting role in a picture which turns out to be a tre