Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

The Changing Movie Audience sentimental ballads of moon and June to a tin-pan piano. Now, 1930: Strauss.Tschaikovsky, the most difficult scores played by an immense symphony orchestra to rapt picture audiences! Testing Tastes TE have to-day the same audience W that we always had," says B. P. Schulberg, Famous Players producer, "and a ;:ew audience besides. What this new audience is, we are finding out by experiment. Perhaps this will tell you something. We are making pictures to-day that we would never have dreamed of making two years ago, pictures that wouldn't have been box office successes then. Now there seems to be an audience for them. The appeal of dialogue is not so direct as that of action alone. It takes a rather more highly trained type of mind to receive impressions from the spoken word than from visual scenes of action. We made The \ irginian' for our old familiar movie friends whose tastes we have learned from years of picture making, and we made The Lady Lies' and 'The Laughing Lady' for our new friends, our new audiences, trained to delight in the subtler shades of human motives by books and stage plays." Among the fifteen million new patrons of motion pictures, then, there are sophisticates, highbrows even, attracted by the cleverness of a Ruth Chatterton, the delicate irony of a Claudette Colbert, the savoir faire and slightly risqiii finesse of a Maurice Chevalier. Hornrimmed spectacles are now prominent in movie loges. Movies for Children FOR many years it was the sneering accusation of critics, admitted by the more honest picture producers, that movies were made to appeal to audiences mentally about twelve years old. "And now," says E. B. Derr, who with Joseph Kennedy directs the destinies of Pathe, "the exchanges are begging us to make pictures that will draw the children into the theaters! Instead of planning all our program to the understanding of the adolescent mind, as in the past, we must deliberately give thought to ways and means for keeping our child fans. Pathe is making four hundred short-reel subjects this year just for the children. "There are several reasons for this situation. Many of the smaller neighborhood houses have found the cost of wiring for sound prohibitive, and have closed. When the center of amusement is downtown, at some distance from the residence districts, the audiences naturally become more adult. Children do not travel far to see pictures alone. We are keeping the younger portion of our audience by deliberate effort through special pictures, and a system of children's {Continued from page 25) matinees, and we are reaching an older, more critical audience than ever before with our regular program pictures. More Than Talk THE addition of talk to the movies was not in itself instantly and miraculously successful, as the general impression seems to be. Exhibitors complained bitterly, as late as six months ago, that their audiences did not like talking pictures. That was because they were seeing the same old movies they had grown tired of, with talk added. Then the producers woke up to the fact Children used executive, left to fill the theaters — now adults do, says E. B ; and Erno Rapee, right, has found audiences fine music that dialogue admits of more subtle plots, more intricate play of human motives than silent pictures. We hired dramatists from the speaking stage, we hired the most finished actors and actresses we could find. Our pictures have grown up, and so have our audiences." Now we are beginning to get a picture of the new movie audience which has swelled the ranks of picture patrons from the ten million a week attendance of a few years ago to the astonishing number of one hundred and fifteen million a week today. The former fans are with us still, the youngsters who flock to see their idols — Doug Fairbanks, Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard, Gary Cooper, Mickey Mouse; the flappers and their male prototypes in their teens, followers of Alice White, Buddy Rogers, Loretta Young, Clara Bow, Robert Montgomery; the family fans who always go when there is a Lon Chaney picture, a Harold Lloyd, or a Ronald Colnian, a Janet Gaynor, or a Novarro film. And in addition, we have the newcomers, drawn to the movies by the new aspects of the films, by the voice of a Lawrence Tibbett, by the subtlety of Ann Harding or Walter Huston, by the whimsical dialogue of a Barrie, by the new magic of color and song and spectacle of screen musical comedies, more elaborately costumed and expensively cast than any legitimate show could afford. These new movie fans are theater-trained, music lovers, sophisticated, critical, adult. They deliberately choose the movies as entertainment, as they . formerly chose the J concert or theater or opera. The most sub'il stantial audience in the world has been won |l over to the most democratic amusement in i| the world. Among them are business men, college professors, millionaires and highbrow 1 critics. They have money enough to gratify expensive tastes, but they have found that the movies, once and still the poor man's entertainment, have something for them also. That this new movie audience is well to do — an audience of spenders — is demonstrated by the testimony of the United States Chamber of Commerce, which • considers the "animated catalogue" of products shown in motion pictures the biggest selling agency American trade has today. For every foot of American film exported, according to the Department of Commerce records, a dollar's worth of American goods is sold abroad. In this country the movies continually increase the "spiral of demand" for American manufactured products, says Will Hays, speaking under the auspices of the Department of Commerce over a nationwide broadcast recently. They carry to American homes and purchasers the visual perception of American goods, and arouse a desire for them. They show attractive homes, charmingly furnished, fine automobiles, modern conveniences of living, they set the styles in dress. Proof A PRACTICAL proof of the fact that movie audiences are buyers was shown in a recent picture where Gloria Swanson used a certain bottle of perfume on her dressing table in a luxurious bedroom setting. This perfume was a delightful one, which, however, for some reason or other had failed to catch the fancy of the public, and its manufacturers were on the verge of failure. Its bottle was of characteristic shape and color, and within a month of its appearance on the screen the demand for the perfume was greater than the manufacturers could fulfil. It is one of the most successful brands on the market to-day. The new talkie audience, then, is a wellto-do audience with money to spend and appreciation of fine standards of living. The new talkie audience is a more selective audience. It is composed of intelligent people who have an infinite choice of amusements— motoring, radio, outdoor sports, good books — and find mental and sensory stimulation in the movies. The term "movie fan" has now become as dignified as the terms, "devotee of ths opera," "art patron," "theater-goer" and "music lover." The remark which has come to be an axiom in the industry is no longer true. The movies are not in their infancy to-day. They have grown up. Derr, Pathe to appreciate 115,000,000 Go To The Movies Every Week 78