Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Hollywood Spectator Page Five While general business has been going up, the film business has been going down during the period in which it has been making the greatest exploitation splurge in its history. What the Spectator said would happen, has happened. When Hollywood gets back into the business of making motion pictures, the public will get back into the theatres. The film industry would have an out now if it had stuck to its original initials; it would be in a position to shrug its shoulders and claim that, after all, the whole quizz contest splurge was merely a MAYBE proposition. * * * RUNS TRUE TO FORM . . . EEMS to me there is no reason why the press should get excited over Sam Goldwyn’s acquisition of Jimmy Roosevelt as a new vice-president for Goldwyn Productions. It conforms to an old Hollywood custom. Novels and plays are purchased for the box-office value of their names and even though their plots are of no earthly good as story material. The Roosevelt name is box-office; Jimmy is willing to sell it; Sam is willing to buy it, and if Jimmy keeps out of the way so those who makes Sam’s pictures will not continually be tripping over him, the investment may prove a good one. A favorable economic aspect of the deal is that by the time Sam has got the full exploitation value for the money spent in paying Jimmy what is laughingly referred to as his salary, the same exploitation will enable the young man to sell his name to someone else at a still higher price. About that time, if not sooner, Sam probably will be so fed up with his vice-president he will be glad to see him go, and the additional money will make Jimmy glad to go; so, all in all, to me it looks like a pretty sweet deal. * * * DAUBER BECOMES PICTURE NEWS . . . 1TH the Santa Anita opening only a few days away, Hollywood picture minds are veering towards their main winter occupation. An illuminating illustration of how deeply screen people are interested in the running of the horses at the famous track, was given in Louella Parson’s Examiner column recently. Mixed in with her picture news items was the announcement that Dauber, one of the better race horses, had arrived at Santa Anita and looked promising. When my eye first caught the name I thought I was going to read that the horse was to play in a picture, but the paragraph merely recorded his arrival, leaving us to infer that he was going to confine himself to playing with picture money. When the coming of a race horse is motion picture news, it makes us wonder what is going to happen to motion pictures when all the horses get here and begin their annual romping around the Santa Anita track. If They Must Have Horses . . . HEN I was a boy the speed with which a horse could trot was greater news than the speed with which a horse could run. My own conception of the greatest speed any horse ever attained, is that developed by Long Tom, who, attached to a butcher’s cart in which I awaited the return of my chum, the butcher’s son, from the back door of a house at which he was delivering meat, got it into his head to beat it down the street for some reason he did not share with me. My pulling on the reins produced only increased speed; but I discovered that I could steer him, and I steered him right into the rear side of the railway station which marked the end of the street. All of which has nothing to do with the fact that I was going to say that the owner of a trotting horse can get more pleasure out of it than he could get out of a whole stableful of running horses. If Louis Mayer and Harry Warner invested in trotters, they could take the reins themselves and race against one another, which would be more fun than leaning on the rail at the Santa Anita club house and inwardly praying for greater speed on the part of their race horses which they could not recognize if all jockeys were attired alike. There is something in the feel of the reins which make you one with your trotting horse, a something you never can thrill to by virtue of owning a runner. Trotting races for women drivers are no novelty. It will not be long until a halfmile, privately owned race course for trotters will be available to picture people, and I miss my guess if they do not go for it in a big way. I cannot see what fun there is in owning a running horse which A friend will be pleased with A Christmas present in the form of a Subscription to the Hollywood Spectator Two Years' Subscription $8.00 One Year's Subscription $5.00 Additional One Year's Subscription (each) $4.00