Motion Picture Classic (1923, 1924, 1926)

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The Powers Behind the Screen Who's Who in the Motion-Picture Business By STANTON LEEDS Editor's Note. — This is the fifth and last of the series of five articles on the business end of the motion picture and a discussion and a description of the truly great personalities that have put the movies on the map w<= AT O. about the boy politician, the pride of the P. — what about Will H. Hays? In ducking out of politics for a fat job in motion pictures did he sell his Indiana birthright for a mess of pottage? Should he have stuck to the Cabinet, strung along with President Harding, or was being boss of the screen worth more, as his friends declare? Meanwhile, is he boss of the screen ? Hardly. With men like Adolph Zukor, Qarl Laemmle, William Fox, to say nothing of William Randolph Hearst and Frank J. Godsol with their reorganized Goldwyn company, and entirely forgetting a dozen or so other fast steppers already in power or rapidly getting there — with these in the motion-picture game is it likely a Republican politician is bossing the works? It is not. The truth is that Mr. Hays is working with these men, his backers and employers, and using his keen political sense, his gift for maintaining harmony, to their advantage and the screen's. Outside of his original mistake, his calm acceptance of the weird belief that there was something the matter with pictures, that they were really naughty, his backers seem to feel that he has done very well. But the assumption, very generally taken for granted thruout the country, that so far as motion pictures are concerned Mr. Will H. Hays is it in the sense that Judge Landis is it in baseball — this assumption is mistaken. The power behind the screen lies elsewhere. It is vested in such as Zukor, whose history is the history of the growth of pictures from nickelodeon to a big-ten, threering circus ; in men like William Fox, who has fought it alone; in such as Carl Laemmle and his right-hand bower, R. H. Cochrane; in such an amazing and variously gifted person as William Randolph Hearst who, when asked if there were money in pictures, replied, "my money is in them." There are others, but for the moment consider these — consider Carl Laemmle in particular. During these ten years when Zukor has been large in the limelight, during this time when H. E. Aitken and many others disappeared altogether from the field, during this time that saw at least the temporary eclipse of such men as Samuel Goldwyn, P. A. Powers, R. A. Rowland, W. W. Hodkinson, Lewis Selznick, J. D. Williams, R. S. Cole, J. Stuart Blackton and so on — during this time Laemmle has persisted. Undeniably one of the "Powers," is Carl Laemmle, president of the Universal Pictures Corporation People got into the way of shouting at his pictures, Universal pictures, "cheap." But Universal went right on. Others made more expensive pictures. Others went under. Laemmle and Universal went on. Year in, year out, with the pace pulling this, that and the other runner, Laemmle kept them coming to see his pictures. The price seemed to please them, and the pictures, and when, all of a sudden, out of a clear sky, this same Carl Laemmle produced the most expensive picture ever made, it seemed time to seek information concerning this individual who kept his head above water where so many others had drowned. It seems that the man knows figures. Others may guess about art and have all sorts of notions, but he, Carl Laemmle, bases his ideas on bed-rock, facts, the food of the fattest bankrolls. Also he remembers actual pictures. Knowing what they paid, he has a fair notion of what other pictures will pay if they follow similar lines, for, after all, the number of possible plots is strictly limited. In short, the hot air that artists and dreamers are given to — this doesn't bother Laemmle. He has (and right in his head) the statistics. All morning he studies these same statistics. In the afternoon he sees anyone who calls. If the idea stands the acid test of the figures, it's a Universal idea. An entirely different type, William Fox is generally credited with being himself the best film editor in the business. Before the time of pictures, he had a small vaudeville circuit and he saw the possibility of using films in those same theaters. Rather than be dependent, he got into the habit of making his own pictures. In more ways than one, they are his very own. Either assertively masculine or correspondingly feminine, they have a quality that keeps audiences saying, "if that isn't the truth!" Their humanity, their story value, however, is only part of the story so far as William Fox is concerned. From political life, he picked as a partner a young Irishman, a former reporter and once secretary to the Police Commissioner of New York, Winfield R. Sheehan. A man whose abilities are so extraordinary, whose vision is so far-sighted that he has been given, to hold him, almost a controlling interest in the Fox enterprises, the boyish appearing Winnie Sheehan is one of the comers in pictures, one of that industry's assets. His future is problematical, {Continued on page 85) * (Twenty-four)