Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Hollywood Spectator Page Three tinues to happen in it. That is what the picture I suggest should emphasize as an argument in favor of economic isolation. Film Industry Is On Trial . . . HEN we mentally survey the pictures which have been made we find that most of the historical crises, national crimes and major catastrophes have been used as screen material. DeMille went a long way back and gave us the late Theodore Roberts, in the role of Moses, leading the Jews out of Egypt in The Ten Commandments. Since then the film industry has ventured up through the ages to deal with controversial topics as modern as the World War, the Klu Klux Klan, lynchings, rackets, and other manifestations of the viciousness of the present social order. Now, faced with the greatest crime of history, the film industry, controlled by Jews, is in a position to come to the aid of members of their race who are the victims of the crime, and at the same time to express in a picture the feelings of Gentiles whom the crime has shocked and whose indignation it has aroused. The action of President Roosevelt in virtually severing diplomatic relations with Germany, should encourage the screen to raise its powerful voice on behalf of respectable humanity. The situation is one which puts the industry on trial. Unless the Jews who control it uses it to make a plea for justice for the Jews of Germany, they are going to lose the respect of all right thinking people. * * * FOR A WORTHY CAUSE . . . OPPORTUNITY to help a worthy cause will be presented to Hollywood people on Sunday evening, December 11, by the Motion Picture Artists’ Committee: Harpo Marx, George Burns, Gracie Allen, and a score of other film luminaries will express their sympathy with the embattled Chinese people by appearing as entertainers at a monster rally. Sponsors of the affair include Luise Rainer, Anna May Wong, Lewis Milestone, Gale Sondergaard, Sylvia Sidney, Johnny Green, Frances Farmer, Dudley Nichols, Dashiell Hammett and Dorothy Parker. T. K. Chang, Los Angelus consul for the Chinese Republic, is cooperating with the sponsors. Besides entertainment by individual stars, the program will include ensemble dancing and a “living newspaper” stage production dramatizing China’s fight for democratic government and national independence. Proceeds of the affair will go to China civilian relief. * * * ENGLISH PICTURE DRAWS WELL . . . HE success of The Citadel in this country shows once more that the public will go for a good picture even though it lacks outstanding box-office names. Charles Boyer has given the screen some superlative performances, but it has not been demonstrated that he is a box-office asset on his own account. Rosalind Russell is coming up rapidly, but marquees have not yet exploited her name extensively. However, this Metro picture made in England and, with the exception of Rosalind, having an all British cast, has been performing quite nicely at American box-offices. Weekly Variety reports reveal that at a Pittsburg house, Citadel garnered $22,000 in one week, while at the same house a week earlier Paramount’s ambitious Men With Wings had a take of $10,700. At the Capitol, New York, the English picture did $45,000 on its first week, $32,000 the second. In a Cleveland house Citadel drew $15,500 in a house in which The Great Waltz the previous week drew $14,000. If you have not seen The Citadel, you will find it at the Four Star Theatre. * * * PUBLIC IS WILLING TO THINK . . . N QUESTION ABLY one of the factors chiefly responsible for the unsatisfactory box-office conditions which the film industry is experiencing, is the narrow mental range of its story material. Seldom is the public given a picture with a thought in it, one which gets any distance from the boy-meetsgirl formula or the thrill of physical action. Notable exceptions have been You Can’t Take It With You and The Citadel. Each of them had a definite social theme, each in essence was a preachment. The former was a box-office sensation and the latter, in spite of its being made abroad, was a pronounced boxoffice success in this country. The two of them have demonstrated that the public has no objection to entertainment which makes it think. The general avoidance of such themes by the industry as a whole, however, has constituted an invitation to people outside the industry to adopt them, an invitation which an organization has been formed to accept. Listed among the sponsors of the project are United States Senator Arthur Capper, Rexford G. Tugwell, Thomas Mann, Dr. Mary E. Woolley, Henry Pratt Fairchild, Abraham Flexner, Dr. A. A. Brill, Heywood Broun, Irene Lewisohn, Robert K. Straus, Philip Merivale, Sherwood Anderson, Herman Shumlin, Clyde R. Miller, Walter Prichard Eaton, Marc Connelly, Rex Ingram, George Seldes, Will Rogers, Jr., and Fredric March. As outlined, the viewpoints of the organization are: “Progressive Americans in every field now recognize the urgent necessity for a new kind of motion picture which will dramatize from the progressive viewpoint the timely and vital issues of today. To safeguard and extend American democracy is the paramount issue of the post-Munich period. The motion picture screen, with its daily audience of many millions, must now be used to reaffirm and popularize in dramatic form the principles of democratic government and thereby to combat the sinister spread of intolerance and reaction.” Entertainment Not Ignored . . . HILE the main purpose of these pictures will be to carry a message to the public, their sponsors realize that the message must be sugar-coated with entertainment if it is to prove acceptable to the audiences which view them. “Films for Democracy” is the name of the new organization, the executive secretary of which is Samuel J. Rodman, who makes