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®i rector
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Custom
versus
Costume
By Bertram A. Holiday
WHILE everyone with whom I have talked seems thoroughly satisfied that the Metro-Goldwyn-Maver production of Ben Hur is destined to prove the biggest cinematic sensation since Ouo Vadis and The Birth of a Nation, its actual reception by the theatre-going public is likely to prove exceedingly interesting, and to the best of my knowledge no surefire method of predetermining what the reaction of that public to any production is likely to be has yet been evolved.
However there is every reason to believe that Ben Hur will measure up to all expectations and possibly even more. Certainly it ought to if the amount of time, effort and money involved mean anything, not to mention the fact that it has taken two sets of directors, scenarists and principals.
I doubt if there ever has been a production possessing greater box office angles, as those angles are commonly interpreted. It has a marvelous story as its foundation plus a play which ran successfully for more than a score of years, all of which means a wealth of ready-made publicity and exploitation.
While these are of value and play a part the importance of which hardly can be questioned, there is one other factor that appeals to me as being of equal importance, dove-tailing with the others to certain extent, yet of importance even without them. I refer to the psychological appeal in the story of Ben Hur.
It is this appeal which discounts in advance the fact that Ben Hur is and must of necessity be a costume play and costume plays are things which the American pro
ucer has learned to leave severely alone and which the American exhibitor has learned to his cost too frequently fail to bring results at the box office.
The American public shies instinctively from the costume play. Ordinarily it doesn’t appeal to them, and if there is one thing that the American producer strives to do, it is to give the theatre-going public what the producer believes that public wants.
All of which bears more or less directly on the opening paragraph of a letter I received recently from Budapest, Hungary, in which the writer, one Anthony Ehler says,
“1 am the author of a film scenario. I am one who has sent in a scenario to several producers and whose scenario has been returned with regrets, saying that although