Hollywood Spectator (1938)

Page Four June 1 1, 1938 publisher. Warners made a propaganda picture, one whose plea is for prison reform, Crime School, its name. Several times I have charged Quigley with not knowing what propaganda is, but in my review of Crime School I gave him credit for being consist¬ ent and stated my belief that the Herald would be scathing in its denunciation of the Warner preach¬ ment. But it looks as if I was justified in accusing him of not knowing what he was talking about. At all events, the Herald swallowed Crime School, hook, line and sinker, and without recognizing it as outright propaganda. I quote the opening paragraph of its review of the picture: “Grim, forceful, yet not forbidding because of the wealth of robust human humor it contains, the moral preached and the sane way in which the love interest has been included, Crime School promises to attract wide attention. It is instructive as a study in sociology, wherein incorrigi¬ ble boy criminals become bestial under cruel correc¬ tive treatment, yet, when given a chance, respond to humane considerate influences, nevertheless, in the last analysis Crime School is entertaining, stark at times but always delivered in straight from the shoulder style." Factual Film a Treat . . . NE evening recently I took a course in steel mak¬ ing. I saw every process from the scooping up of the iron deposits to the tempering of the steel until it is ready to be made into a needle or a battleship, a buttonhook or a bridge. It was an intensely interest¬ ing four-reel illustrated lecture, or rather a visual demonstration of how steel is made, the pictures ac¬ companied by an entertaining talk by Edwin C. Hill and a sympathetic musical score by Robert Armbruster. Technicolor photography not only makes the scenes more authentic — granting it catches the natural colors — but it is responsible for some of the most beautiful shots I have seen on any screen. To the person with a questing mind, Steel, Man’s Ser¬ vant, will come as an intellectual treat; to the aver¬ age picture patron it would be an outstanding feature on any film theatre program, beauty, thrills and in¬ struction being blended in a truly showmanship manner. There is no advertising; nothing is offered for sale and the film has no direct commercial sig¬ nificance. How Hollywood Will Regard It . . . UT the film industry will deny the people who support it the pleasure of seeing Steel because it was made by the subsidiaries of the U. S. Steel Cor¬ poration. Will Hays viewed it, said it was grand, but that his organization could not handle it because it was a commercial film. The makers offered it to various general releasing companies, but all of them spurned it as if it were something unclean. I do not know upon what terms it would be offered exhibi¬ tors, but I imagine they could get it for only the cost of handling, which would be a boon to them with box-office conditions as they are now. But no — it is a commercial film, made outside the industry — and imagine giving exhibitors entertainment for practic¬ ally nothing! The very thought is enough to make our film barons shudder. If the public wants instruc¬ tion with its screen entertainment, it can patronize the regular product of the Hollywood studios and be instructed in how to make love, how to dance the Big Apple, how to drink hard liquor and acquire other similar social airs and graces. Steel is propa¬ ganda, Hollywood will claim — propaganda for what, it would find difficult to state, unless it is for the use of steel in the building of steel bridges and steel sky¬ scrapers, and if the steel industry wants to impress that fact on the housewives of the Dakotas, let it go hire a hall, which is the advice Martin Quigley, on behalf of the film industry, told nationally promi¬ nent educators who had the effrontery to express an interest in the current trend of film entertainment. ♦ * * MENTAL MEANDERINGS . . . Y PUTTING was so bad on my last round of golf that on the eighteenth green my ball finally dropped into the cup through sheer ennui. . . . Be¬ fore we depart for a formal affair I have to pass Mrs. Spectator’s inspection; during the thirty years she has been doing it she never once has failed to take a final jab at my tie. . . . The office in which I do my writ¬ ing is one hundred and twenty-six feet long an8 forty-two feet wide; its ceiling has great holes in it and in its walls are wide-open spaces; it is floored with flowers and gravel walks, and roofed and walled with mulberry, locust, pepper, acacia and cypress trees, beneath which is garden perfume and from which come the songs of birds. . . . While Freddie, the spaniel, was galloping down a path just now, a mocking bird zoomed down head-on at him unex¬ pectedly and he stopped so suddenly he skidded on his behind; when I laughed he slunk under a hydrangea bush where he is now sulking. ... I told Sid Grauman I did not roller-skate; he said he didn't; I chal¬ lenged him to put on skates with me and race me: he accepted with so much alacrity that I am staying away from his roller skating place, even though everyone tells me it is an interesting place to visit. . . . Why ants — the red ones that eat flowers? I have to pour poison down the entrances to their dugouts, and around the entrances next morning are hun¬ dreds of their little dead bodies; I don’t like to kill things, but what is a fellow to do? ... He hoohooed at me through the fence which skirts our dirt road, a six-year-old friend of mine who lives some¬ where along it; in each hand he had an empty beer bottle; I told him to go along to the gate, which Mrs. Spectator opened for him, and when he reached me he asked me if I wanted to buy two bottles; said some¬ one told him someone bought bottles and he thought I might be the one; wanted a nickel for them; I had only a dime and I offered that; nothing doing, a nickel or nothing. Why? Because the Good Humor man soon would be down the road and you couldn’t buy what he wanted with a dime, as it cost a nickel, and he had to have a nickel, or perhaps five pennies would do. There apparently being no nickel any¬ where about the place, Mrs. Spectator and I, by pool