Motion Picture News (Jul - Sep 1927)

S c p t c !i! b c r 9 . 19 2 K^Z Inside Slants on the Industry PICTURES AND PEOPLE The fs^irrors of Filmdom _ COMES now "Underworld" to furnish additional proof that fine pictures are still being made — and what is more, are pulling crowds all by themselves. After running at the Paramount Theatre, New York, for a week, and coming within $30 of the house record, this picture has moved up the street to the Rivoli where it is in for a run. It is blood-and-thunder melodrama, but real motion picture all the way. The story is perfectly simple, but how it has been handled! Corking stuff — put on the screen the way pictures ought to be put there. After seeing "Underworld," one is impatient with the great mass of studio drivel turned out under the name of pictures. But — if this film is a sample of what the new season will bring, Hollywood will be forgiven many of its production sins of the past. * * * "\/0U never can tell. " Undei-^vorld' ' was directed by Josef von Sternberg, whose "Salvation Hunters" was one of tlie prize box-office bloomers. Sternberg has done a wonderful job with ' ' Underworld. ' ' All credit to liim ! He has left the "arty" critics high and dry, and in " Undei-world " has shown the real art that has made the motion picture great. * * * 'T' HE "What Price Glory" engagement at the Roxy has hung up a record which seems likely to staml for some time to come. The picture is completing its third week, and the total number of dollars grossed, by the time the week ends, will be approximately 412,000. In the first two weeks, a gross of $282,161.60 was recorded. The pace this week indicated that this figure would be swelled by about $130,000. When a picture — and it was the picture chiefly without iloubt — does better than $400,000 at one theatre in three weeks, who can say what the ultimate possibilities of this industry are? * * # t 'T ES MISERABLES" continues to be the surprise picture of Broadway. As we pointed out last week, it has production defects, but these very evidently do not count when balanced against the immortal story of Victor Hugo, with which the public is very familiar. Also, the great humanness of the novel has been put on the screen in a sincere and appealing way. Capacity business is being recorded, and Universal is considering roadshowing the film. * * * A S for "The Patent Leather Kid," First National an"^ nounced this week that the lease of the Globe Theatre, where it is playing, has been extended to January 1, after which it is planned to release the picture as a special for first-run theatres. The total gross, as we went to press, was announced as $48,263.50, indicating clearly enough that an extended run is justified. This picture is a corking good special, not quite in the roadshow class, as we pointed out after its opening, an opinion which has now been ratified by First National's decision to release it as a special to the first-runs. ^TILL another capacity picture on Broadway is "Wings," ^ for which a phenomenal advance sale is claimed by the Paramount roacLshow department. During the period August 12-25, advance sales were recorded as follows: August 12, $8,531; August 13, $8,677; Aur-:.st 14, $7,359; August 15, $8.268 ; August 16, $12,060 ; August 17, $13,169 ; August 18, $15,491 ; August 20, $21,612; August 21, $19,784; August 22, $21,239 ; August 23, $20,146 ; August 24, $18,783 ; August 25, $19,462. These figures, announced by A. Griffith Grey, represent what is believed to be a record for advance sales for picture specials — and by a large margin. * * # A LL of which proves that fine pictures will get, and are ■^ getting, big money at the box-office. Not a single one of these Broadway runs depends upon anything but the picture — properly presented. * # * T T pays to read. A member of the advertising department of ■^ a film company, which is releasing a picture with a foreign story, suggested the other daj^ to his company's space-buyer that it would be a good idea to advertise the picture in a certain foreign language newspaper of big circulation. "That's a fine idea," the space-buyer replied, "In fact, I thought so well of it that I placed advertising in that paper on the picture six weeks ago." * * * t^ ROM time to time, reports drift in from Hollywood about "The Wedding March," upon which Eric von Stroheim has been engaged for fifteen months. The cost, to date, is said to be around $2,000,000, and the footage "shot" by Stroheim totaled 200 reels. After many months, the director succeeded in getting the footage down to 27 reels, but, of course, that is much too long to be shown in one night. So P. A. Powers, who is the financial backer of the picture, is said to have broken with von Stroheim, and employed Josef von Sternberg to cut the picture to the required twelve reels. •jr ■)(■ TV" t) A.Y HALL, editor of Pathe News, has some interesting ideas on the bigger meaning of news reels to the public. ' ' Movies teach quicker than books, ' ' he points out. ' ' I took my daughter to see a moving picture of the life of Lincoln, and, in two hours, she absorbed a more correct idea of his personality than I had obtained from reading twenty volumes of biography about him. The news reel deserves even more credit, because it is the one agency which has forgotten the necessity for fiction and invention, which does not depend on pretty faces and which never falsifies life." The news reel, he continues, has also been a great factor in giving us a common national feeling, and has aided tremendously in welding these United States into one gi-eat sympathetic nation. "It has revealed facts through the length and breadth of the land that were never disclosed before. During the Civil War, mothers sat home, reading well-censored dispatches from the front. During the late war, they saw with their own eyes, through the reels, what a battle really is. "President Harding, the first candidate to be publicized after news reels became a factor, gained tremendous popularity through his genial screen personality. He made millions of friends in this way, and, when he died, the most touching sentiment was shown by the waiting crowds as his train came East.