Hollywood Spectator (1938)

Page Two June 1 1, 1938 ~~77um. ~the EDITORS EflSV CHAIR FROM EUROPE, ABOUT GARBO . . . ROM Andre Forchett, a Paris, France, Spectator subscriber, comes an interesting letter relating im¬ pressions be received on a recent and somewhat com¬ prehensive tour of Europe which included various spots touched by Greta Garbo and Stokowski while they were flitting about Italy and France doing their best to keep one jump ahead of press reporters and cameramen. Forchett tells me that if they had kept it up much longer, Greta’s box-office rating in Europe would have suffered a decline, Parisian papers, in particular, resenting her aloofness. Garbo for years has been the outstanding film favorite in Europe. According to Forchett, Clarence Brown, on his re¬ cent trip abroad, received marked attention from the press because of his having directed Garbo in so many of her pictures. Only scant mention was made of anything else he has done on the screen. When Garbo visited Continental Europe, the press and pub¬ lic were ready to do her marked homage, and the manner in which she treated both did much to im¬ pair her popularity. “If her producers,’’ writes my Paris correspondent, “do not keep her at her home in Sweden or in America, she is going to lose her rating as their greatest money-maker over here.’’ Victim of Unwise Selling . . . VER here Garbo already has lost her top boxoffice rating. What following she has consists chiefly of those who early became her admirers, and since have been loyal to her. Every year a great new audience enters film theatres, and Garbo does not at¬ tract it. The new public cares little for her, and that can be attributed to the manner in which the press, finally tiring of her elusive attitude, has soured on her and turned thumbs down on favorable exploita¬ tion. Unwise selling by both Metro and exhibitors has been another factor in reducing her box-office potency. Metro has tried to capitalize her aloofness, and exhibitors think they have done everything pos¬ sible when they put her name on their marquees. No concerted effort has been made to sell Garbo pictures, but much effort has been made to sell Garbo herself, to force her on an unfavorable market under circum¬ stances which she herself makes difficult. I will ad¬ mit that exploiting Greta is a tough proposition. The only thing more unwise than not permitting her to talk to the press would be to permit it. There are few things she can talk about in a manner to im¬ press an audience of reporters. She does not read in¬ tellectual writing or seek contact with intellectual groups. It is difficult to analyze her. She is a superb actress, but knows nothing about acting, cannot dis¬ cuss it or explain her own reactions when going through even a scene which is great when it reaches the screen. All that, of course, is no concern of the public, which pays its money only to see the scene in the picture and has no interest in her thought pro¬ cess while it was being shot. But a star’s personal popularity influences consideration of the artistic merit she displays on the screen. Garbo is not per¬ sonally popular in this country. The box-office re¬ flects that. If acting alone attracted audiences, she would be near the top of the box-office list. The present general box-office depression can be attributed to the film industry’s policy of selling people instead of pictures. I have advanced that argument so many times that I will content myself now merely by in¬ troducing Greta Garbo as Exhibit A in proving its soundness. * * * CLARENCE SCORES A BULL'S EYE . . . N THE cover of the Spectator of February 26, the leading article in the issue was exploited as fol¬ lows: “Cutting Down Dialogue: By Simple Device Spectator Has Urged on Picture Producers for Years, Clarence Brown Shows How It Can Be Done.” The article inside dealt with a sequence in Of Human Hearts in which the camera told the story without the help of dialogue. The other day a technician who worked on the set when the picture was being shot, told me he heard Clarence say, after a scene had been completed, “We are now going to make a scene for Welford Beaton.” The scene was the one I analyzed after seeing the picture in preview. Clarence hit the mark he aimed at. * * * ANTI-BLOCK BOOKING MENACE . . . HAT there is reasonable expectancy of the Neeley anti-block booking bill passing both Houses of Congress and becoming a law of the land is ex¬ pressed by Variety (N. Y.), which concludes an ex¬ tensive review of the case with this paragraph: “Un¬ less something is done to appease the reform element or to both really excite and convince a substantial 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 year; two years, eight dollars; foreign, six dollars. Single copies ten cents. Entered as Second Class Matter, September 7, 1937, at the Post Office at Los Angeles, California, under the act of Congress of March 3, 1879.