Motion Picture Daily (Oct-Dec 1958)

Motion Picture Daily With top billing going to The Movies as '■'still the first stop on America's Midway/' Life Magazine will pay vast, exuberant attention to the Show W orld in its year-end double issue of December 22nd. How, from the first issue in 1936 (above) to the big Entertainment, number of 1958 (below), the motion picture has consistently shared in Life's major interests, is told in the text at right. Volume I, Number 1 of Life, dated November 23, 1936, when leafed through now reflects, nostalgically, the manners, modes, fashions and mores of a strangely distant pre-war era, the face of an America naive and unsophisticated by today's standards. Prominent among the features of that first issue of a new picture magazine was a four-page story on Robert Taylor, then about to make his first top starring appearance with Greta Garbo in "Camille." Twenty-two years later, Life places on the newstands, and in the homes of America, well over 6,000,000 copies of its giant, 204 page, year-end special issue devoted entirely to Entertainment and featuring motion pictures as the Main Stop on America's Midway. In the intervening years — and 1144 issues — Life's editors, in terms of space and reportorial effort, have given constant and earnest attention and treatment to motion pictures as a news department certain of reader interest along with science and medicine, art, fashion and sports. That is no accident. Life was born, in that distant 1936, out of an increasing awareness of photography as a medium of communication, an awareness to which the burgeoning motion picture industry had contributed enormously. The work of various Time, Inc., personnel on the old March of Time did much to crystallize theories and techniques in dealing with photography. In addition to this ancestry and approach, the sheer variety of subject matter dealt with by the motion picture industry, and its natural appeal to the public made the movies a natural resource for a magazine proposing to "see life, to see the world, to eyewitness great events, to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud." Since those early years, the editors of Life have watched and recorded momentous changes in the technological and political life of the nation, and the greatest cultural and leisure time "explosion" in the country's history. Now with public taste and sophistication matured to a significant degree, they see a greater awareness of ideas and events, a growing demand for high performance. Approaching the newer and better motion pictures of today, they take the stand that the Life audience has come to look to their magazine for something more than a straight pictorial review, or a typical fan magazine story on a star. "Movie informational channels," they say, "have flourished to the extent that our role appears to have graduated to an angled critique-in-depth, as opposed to a straight forward news treatment. "Of course the timing and the film distribution pattern have a major bearing on our approach. But we are essentially most interested in presenting to Life's readers some information, both visual and textual, which they cannot obtain elsewhere, and which Life can uniquely portray with its camera techniques. We will always make known our critical attitude toward a film, but that is no longer the essential point of reference to our treatment." In the prospectus for the 1958 year-end issue on Entertainment, the editors said, "The point of view ... is that entertainment today is a definite force for good. It unites and humanizes people. It relieves tension and restores equilibrium. It reaches the heart and needles the mind." Applying that point of view to the motion picture of today, they say, "It is certainly the motion picture which is the main hope for leading the way toward setting those higher standards which can help keep the United States the world leader in entertainment, and keep it a force for good." For the fabulous effort that produced the pages on Entertainment in Life's December 22nd issue, turn to page 8.