Hollywood Spectator (1938)

Hollywood Spectator Page Three "Y/Umt, the EDITORS EflSV CHAIR FINANCIAL ASPECT OF PICTURES . . . AKING motion pictures is a business whose units are owned by stockholders in all parts of the country, a serious business turning out product ex¬ pensive to make. A starving artist cannot take a roll of film into his garret and make a cinematic gem. A few hundred thousand dollars must be invested be¬ fore a start can be made with even a simple picture. In the Hollywood district $200,000,000 has been spent on the plants in which screen entertainment is manufactured. The film industry ranks with the greatest American industries, having a total invest¬ ment of $2,000,000,000 in studios, theatres and al¬ lied enterprises. A couple of years ago you probably thought the country had all the theatres it needed. In 1937, $29,500,000 was spent on new theatre con¬ struction and 2008 were added by reopening or new construction. In 1936 it cost $135,000,000 to make 1446 feature-length pictures and shorts; in 1937 it cost $170,000,000 to make 1311. You will notice it cost $35,000,000 more to make 136 less films. Box-Office and the Recession . . . NY expenditure is justified if it proves profitable. During the first nine months of 1937 some of the production companies showed a handsome excess in profits over the same period in the previous year. But the last quarter did not hold up so well even though the theatres of the country were showing the fewer pictures which cost more to make. Costing more to make, we surely can assume the additional expense was incurred in making the fewer pictures correspond¬ ingly more entertaining. But if they were more en¬ tertaining, why the abrupt falling off in box-office receipts when their showing in theatres was at its peak? The recession? History has established as a fact that the amusement business is the last to feel a financial depression. The motion picture was the last to feel the one which started with the explosion in 1929. In 1930 motion picture attendance in the United States reached an all-time weekly high of 110,000,000. Today it is 80,000,000. In 1935, when the depression was functioning to full capacity, it was 80,000,000, climbing that far back from a low of 60,000,000 in 1932-33. During the last seven years of the silent picture ending in 1928, at¬ tendance climbed progressively from 40,000,000 to 65,000,000. Pictures Responsible for Slump . . . HE stand-still attitude of picture attendance today is ascribed by Hollywood to Mr. Roosevelt’s Re¬ cession. The fact is, however, that while the picture depression started quite a long time after the general depression got under way — thus proving the rule that the amusement business is the last to feel a general decline in business — the picture depression which cut down receipts in the last quarter of last year, almost beat the Recession in getting away from the post. That rather would indicate that pictures were respon¬ sible for their own slump and that general conditions had little to do with it. And do not overlook the fact that in 1937 Hollywood spent $35,000,000 more on its pictures than it did the year before, made fewer pictures, thereby spending more per picture to make them better, and still in the last quarter of the year did not make as much money as it did in the last quarter of 1936. Now what I am getting at is this: If at the increased expenditure of $35,000,000 the talking picture cannot hold the audience cheaper pictures assembled — well, where is the film industry going to get off if it continues to make the kind of pictures it is making now? Not Healthy Progression . . . O SUPPLY the present audience with screen enter¬ tainment Hollywood is spending more than one hundred million dollars in excess of what it cost to entertain the audience in 1928, and today’s audience is only 15,000,000 greater than the 1928 audience. An increase of away over one hundred per cent in cost to increase the market by a little less than twenty-five per cent scarcely can be reckoned as healthy business progression. Certainly the extra $35,000,000 which the film business spent last year served only to keep intact the audience it previously had established. Spending the extra amount on a smaller number of pictures means that the average cost of pictures greatly exceeded the 1936 average. This suggests some interesting questions. What stu¬ pendous sum will Hollywood have to spend to work its way back into the peak talkie attendance which is 30,000,000 above the present figure? And on what kind of pictures can it spend the additional millions? Surely the gigantic, stupendous, colossal peak already has been attained. Can Metro give us anything more exquisite than its Romeo and Juliet or more thrilling HOLLYWOOD SPECTATOR, published weekly at Los Angeles, California, by Hollywood Spectator Co., Welford Beaton, Editor; Howard Hill, Business Manager. Office, 6513 Hollywood Boulevard; telephone GLadstone 5213. Subscription price, five dollars the yea r two years, eight dollars; foreign, six dollars. Single copies ten cents. Entered as Second Class Matter, September 7, 1937, the P« Office at Los Angeles, California, under the act of Congress of March 3, 1879.