Motion Picture Herald (Sep-Oct 1938)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD MARTIN QUIGLEY, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Vol. 132, No. 1 1 qp Mi September 10, 1938 EXHIBITION'S DAY COGNIZANT of its special responsibility to the exhibitor and the service of the retail machine of the screen, Motion Picture Herald, in this issue, devotes particular attention to the drive known as "The Greatest Year" campaign. In this endeavour the motion picture industry has gone to work for itself, in pleasant contrast with many of the somewhat recent manifestations of movement in which it was fighting itself in various internecine strifes. Most significant in these days of stress and change, and impending new regulative forces, is the accent now, in this drive, being placed on the functions of the retailer, the showman who stands at the end of the line where the product goes out and the revenues come in. For many years, too many years, Production has said to Distribution, "Here it is — you tell 'em to come and get it." Once that position was sound because it worked. But the rise of competitive amusements, the formation of new shopping habits among the customers, have conspired to bring about, to compel in fact, recognition of the truth that nowadays the motion picture has to be sold, not merely announced, that success can be had only through the box office, that, while the public may hear and read about Hollywood, the sales are as local as a hamburger sandwich. The answer and the results are to be had only at the theatre on Main Street, and selling the pictures has in the end to be a home-town job. THE contention that "Motion Pictures Are Your Best Entertainment" can be well supported, but the customers do not wait for analytical consideration of the subject. They go where the stimulus in front of them leads. That has to pertain precisely to a location on a street, a box office. IN the news pages of this issue will be found account of current reaction to and future aspects of the "Greatest Year" campaign. The activities of the field are reported, with special accent and detail in an assembly of promotional activities by Mr. A-Mike Vogel and his Roundtablers. Particular interest, too, attaches to a setting down of fact and promises and prospects on the Hollywood product from the hand of Mr. William R. Weaver, Hollywood editor. It appears that Mr. Weaver finds for this coming product a spectacular predominance of American themes and locales. This indicates acute address to the customers at home. AAA PRINCETON UNIVERSITY has been digging up the Agora, the marketplace of ancient Athens, for eight years. The most interesting discovery has just come to light. It seems that a potsherd of the fifth century B.C. bears a drawing of a cockeyed satyr, which a professor of archaeology considers probably "due to the fuddled imagination of an inebriated brain". In our opinion, after twenty-four centuries of morningsafter it is time to forgive and forget. Just suppose that some day some one digs up Princeton and finds a mess of undergraduate pocket flasks circa 1927. IT looks like we might be in for more trouble in film technique. The scientists have found that sound affects the visibility of colors. On the orange side of red, the more the noise the less you see, but the better you can see blue and green. The ability to see red, it is reported, is not affected. The report is not to be considered prejudiced with respect to red because it comes from Moscow. P. A. Yakolev of the Helmholtz Institute of Ophthalmology tells about it in the Journal of the Optical Society of America. AAA THE last Congress appears to have considered some 17,000 measures and to have enacted something more than 1,700 of them. Once upon a time a famous pundit said, "I care not who writes a nation's laws if I may write its songs." Just now we seem to need more and better song writers. AAA tj Reviewers are discovering that in "While New York Sleeps" Mr. Michael Whalen makes his role of "Barney Callaghan" gentlemanly, even though a newspaper reporter. And yet we read so much about demands for hairy-chested realism on the screen. AAA THE warden of Alcatraz, Mr. James A. Johnston, at a conference of prison officials in Springfield, Missouri, remarked the other day that important among the treatments of notorious convicts is the cutting off of their publicity. That method works elsewhere, too. AAA EDUCATIONAL Vvl fE formally present here a special item for the scrapbook of the Motion Picture Research Council, an item delivered to the daily papers by the Associated Press: DAYTON, Ohio, Aug. 22 (A. P.). —The crime movie Steve Martin saw stood him in good stead. On the way from the theatre a robber thrust a gun through the window of his car. Recalling the tactics of the film hero, Martin put up his hands, then brought one down sharply on the man's wrist. The gun fell to the floor of the car and the robber fled down an alley. This account will not appear in a new edition of "Our Movie Made Children". AAA OFFICIALLY summer has ended with the Labour Day twilight in which this is written. The swallows have gone south. The crows are assembling in the woodlands of our valley for their autumn caucuses. Your editor's garden is full of weeds and unfulfilled promises of the seedsmen's catalogues of spring. But the swing of the seasons has been a boon to one of the neighbors. With the migrations, Mr. Deems Taylor of high musical fame has been able to come home. He fled to Europe many weeks ago because an orange and black oriole, nesting outside his chamber door, flatted the last note of his mating song, and appeared to be planning to mate all summer. —TERRY RAMSAYE