Motion Picture Herald (Apr-Jun 1933)

June 3, 1933 MOTION PICTURE HERALD 19 BROADWAY AND/OR UNITED STATES Sidney Kent and ^^Jaysee" Present Ttvo Varying Views on W hat the Public Wants in Pictures How far is Broadway from the United States? How far are the big towns from "the sticks"? Have we one public or many publics? Do people want one kind of show in the hometown small neighborhood and "something snappier" when they go outside that intimate community life? These questions arise as one considers two equally sincere, equally authoritative and carefully considered statements that the editorial tide has tossed up on the desk of the editor of Motion Picture Herald this week. We present, first, a frank, forward and vigorous line of observation from Sidney Kent, president of Fox Films, on what is box office, good pictures that are not box office, and, most poignantly, of temptations. Mr. Kent, as most of the motion picture world knows. Is a big, husky, upstanding executive, who used to be an engineer and became in the motion picture business first a salesman, then a super-salesman and then that Imposing institution known as a "major executive". On the other hand — very much on the other hand — -we have In hand a letter from our own J. C. Jenkins, exhibitor of Neligh, Nebraska, and most of the year out on the highways and byways in behalf of Motion Picture Herald. Mr. Jenkins has been In the business quite a spell, too. He Is as itinerant and persistently smiling as Old Johnny Appleseed, and out where the West begins on a line that runs from Moose Jaw clear down into Sonora, "Jaysee" is the friend and confidant of most every exhibitor. They tell him and he tells the Herald. iVow for Mr. Kent's story. It seems that he sat down with Eric M. Knight, industriously keen observer of the screen for the Philadelphia Public Ledger, as ivas reported thus : "You fellows," said Mr. Kent (meaning the critical fraternity), "believe that good films of mature ideas and box-office successes are the same thing. I just wish they were. You have a sort of idea that we movie moguls don't give a darn about making films. Y'ou picture us as amiable fools who can sec nothing but cash. That isn't entirely fair. "I won't go into my own record — ^but yon can look it up for yourself. I've worried and worked to get before the public such films as 'Chang,' 'Grass' and 'Tabu.' I merely wish that the general public liked those films as much as we did. "Our big problem today is to weather financial storms and to get the people to watch the best pictures. And it isn't easy. We produce a film like 'Cavalcade.' You newspaper chaps see the big business on 'Cavalcade' in the cities. Do you think 'Cavalcade' is burning up the rest of America ? Outside of the big centers you haven't got any one who knows what a cavalcade is nor gives a hoot." Anxious To Make Good Films "But," Mr. Knight asked, "how is 'Cavalcade' going in Britain?" "Oh, breaking all records!" "How about Canada?" "Big Business in Canada!" "What about Australia?" "Oh, we'll do immense business there!" "What about New Zealand, South Africa, the Orient?" "Big— they'll do big business." "Then you'll make money from 'Cavalcade,' so what do you care who pays the money as long as some one does ?" "True," said Mr. Kent. "Let's admit then that 'Cavalcade' will make us money. It will. But that is an exceptional film in that it has great appeal abroad. Ordinarily we can't depend upon such a terrific foreign income. My point is that we're anxious to make good films — we try to make ones of importance — after they're finished we worry about taking in the expense. And the fact of this matter can't be attacked by any critic : if we make them too good we just watch them die in the smaller towns. It would make a stone man weep to see the way people won't watch some of the best films we turn out. "Yet, we've got to put out the best films we know how and trust in the future. And so long as I'm with Fox we're going to go after quality. You consider such a film as 'Zoo in Budapest.' Have you seen it?" "Yes— and I " "I know what you're going to say. You're ready to tell me that Lee Garmes did camera work there as beautiful as you've seen on the screen in years. You're going to tell me that it was, visually, almost the perfect type of screen romance of the light type. And what do you think people care about our camera work and our visual beauty? I care, you care, Jesse Lasky cares, Lee Garmes cares, maybe several thousand people in the large cities value it and react to it. But what does the man in the small-town theatre care ? You know darn well he doesn't give two cents. Calls Block Booking Best "And, unfortunately, that's the bird we're selling to — the thousands of men that run small-town theatres. "You hear groans and sighs against the block booking system — by which a producer signs a movie theatre man up to take product in a mass. Why, it's the finest system we have. "Look here," said Mr. Kent, warming up to his subject, "there's a couple of theatre men sitting with us now and they'll tell you if I exaggerate. We make certain films that are of highest appeal. You critics go into ecstasies about them. The people in the cities praise them. And when we get to the small towns the theatre managers yell blue murder because they have to play them. They don't want to show the 'Cavalcades' and 'Grasses' and 'Tabus.' And if we didn't have block booking we'd never get our best films into above 5 per cent of the theatres in the country. I know what they'd do without block booking. They'd run sex fifty-two weeks in the year. "Don't tell me about selling decent films Why man, we make a decent film like 'Cavalcade' or 'State Fair.' And then we sit down and watch a cheap piece of tripe about a woman of the streets like ' ' come and pack 'em in to standing room all over the country. "Mind you, I am not excusing the horrible and blatant stuff that does come out. I am merely pointing out the enormous temptation there is for a motion picture company (especially in these times) to step out and make a bad film that will pack box offices." Meanwhile out in Ashland, Wisconsin, — where one may suppose the fishing is rather good this time of year — our last letter overtook Mr. Jenkins, with an inquiry about what he seemed to find most on the minds of his exhibitor friends of this spring's travel. Mr. Jenkins took his pen in hand, evidently with a certain reluctance, but with a vast sincerity. So he wrote: "To write you the conditions as I find them with reference to exhibitor reaction toward the production and distribution of pictures, I would have to speak rather frankly, and to speak frankly I might be taking a position that to you would seem radical. "I doubt if there is a single exception to the universal complaint against dirty, salacious, suggestive pictures that the exhibitors are compellled to play under the block booking system. Wherever I go I meet up with the complaint that nasty pictures are driving people away from the theatres. On the other hand I find that good, clean, wholesome pictures are universally drawing good business. Exhibitors Without Hope "I also find that there is a unanimous belief among exhibitors that the 'Code of Ethics' is a camouflage intended only to deceive the public and with no serious intentions to clean up the screen. This is proven by the passing of such pictures as 'The Million Dollars Legs,' 'Follow Through,' 'So 'I his Is Africa,' and others of like nature. "It would seem that the constant agitation of exhibitors for clean pictures would eventually fall on some ears that would give some thought to the matter, but exhibitors have about given up hope. "It is quite evident that pictures are being made with an eye singly to city patronage, and from this viewpoint perhaps the producers are correct, but from the small community viewpoint they are all wrong. "Smutty dialogue and nasty suggestions, illicit love scenes and the like may get a 'kick' from city audiences but they are kickbacks from rural communities." Jersey Circuit Totals 10 The Haring and Blumenthal circuit, with houses in New Jersey and metropolitan New York, has acquired four Bratter and Pollack theatres in New Jersey, giving the circuit a total of 10 houses.