Motion Picture Herald (Sep-Oct 1938)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD MARTIN QUIGLEY, Editor-in Chief and Publisher Vol. 132, No. 13 QP September 24, 1938 PURSUING the CUSTOMER PERHAPS it is just as well that the screen's "Greatest Year" drive got started when it did. Now comes the National Retail Demonstration, sponsored by the National Retail Dry Goods Association, with some six thousand member stores, engaged in seeking to tell the consuming public the "significance of retailing." The retailers' drive started this week with considerable hoopla, with "open house" night hours at stores and with radio fanfare. If the drive chances to put more people into circulation in the evening show hours it is possible that the retailers of motion pictures may share in the benefits by capturing some of the window shoppers. Meanwhile one may wonder about the condition of the ultimate consumer, John R. Public and family, with drives to the right and left, in front and behind. And where do the savings banks and their National Thrift Week get off? The retailers' drive gets the impetus and publicity attention of the United States government through a radio address by Secretary Roper of the Department of Commerce, while the motion picture enjoyed the attentions of the Department of Justice just ahead of the screen drive. ^ ^ S-r^ SPEAKING of the strictures of government in and on business, the most forthright expression for the defense of the chain retail system is now coming from the Brothers Hartford of the Great Atlantic and Pacific stores, in large but dispassionate paid space. One of the entertaining aspects of the initial discussion was the remark, with figures, that the Hartfords were personally not nearly as much concerned financially as their workers and their customers. It seems that they get for their own pockets only about six dollars out of every hundred they make. Their suggestion that they did not need even that was, maybe, a delicate inference that capital could strike. These drives urging the consumer to consume come in curious contrast with the news from Germany. In Monday's New York Times, Mr. Junius Wood recorded the diary of a housewife's week of adventures in the market trying to buy eggs, onions and pork chops — or anything else to eat. Over there you may have each week a half a pound of lard and a half a pound of butter, which is largely whale oil. Over there they are enjoying a fully "planned economy." It is probably better to live where the stores stay open nights to convince the man in the street that the retailer is his friend — and where the marquee lights insist "Motion Pictures are Your Best Entertainment." A A A N an outgiving about "Grand Illusion" and "Edge of the World," Mr. Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune opens with the defensive gesture of "One of the surest ways for a film reviewer to call down +he wrath of Holly wood spokesmen is to praise a foreign photoplay. . . . The fact remains that commendation of a French, English or Russian screen drama is construed as a direct slap at our national film industry. . . ." The case would be better if some specimens of the aforesaid "wrath of Hollywood spokesmen" had been attached. It might be mentioned that commonly, or at least frequently, praise of a certain stripe of imported production has been accompanied by derisive reference to Hollywood's production and its entertainment purpose. Also commonly the Russian offerings winning the special approbation of the radically minded reviewers have been ill-made propaganda ending with a fanfare and a title "The Red Revolution Marches On." There is a school of screen criticism which considers origin in Hollywood as a guaranty of inferiority to any backyard whimsy with an imported label. AAA •fl After many patient years your editor has come upon, in the pages of Motion Picture Daily, the substantially perfect news story, reading: Morton and Herbert Minsky have reopened the old National Winter Garden, original home of Minsky shows, with Soviet films exclusively, for the avowed purpose of raising funds for Loyalist Spain. Like a well cut gem, anyway you turn it, it glints with the same glow. AAA NOTES ON A COCKEYED WORLD— While a-gardening in Silvermine the other day, your editor was alarmed to observe a large load of hay thundering past, on a motor truck. Not long after, a tremendous motor van roared by, loaded with horses. Later passed a touring car, filled with polo players. So motoring is not a sport any more. From a conclave of scientists in Cambridge, Mass., come tidings which the New York Times headlines as "Chaos Is Defined by' New Calculus; Norbert Weiner Reports Mathematical Control of Utter Confusion". "Looks like he'd be the auditor for the New Deal," we remarked, on the New Canaan Express, to which Mr. Jack Pegler replied, "That fellow Einstein got famous talking to himself." — Publicity item: New York State is printing new bank checks with pictures of Niagara, Saratoga and Jones Beach. Let's ask the Mint to give us two-bit pieces embossed with "The Motion Picture is Your Best Entertainment".— Twice this summer a press agent has soberly informed the Herald that crowds seeking his pictures have broken the doors of a Broadway theatre. We have suppressed the story for the good of the industry. Paramount went to Pineville, Mo., for authentic locale for "Jesse James" and had to import mud to make it real. The Carrier Corporation is buiiding a manufactured weather demonstration at the New York World's Fair in an igloo to be 70 feet high. What a thrill that would be to Mr. Robert Flaherty's "Nanook". That by some expeditionary context reminds one that in the eyes of "Sabu", once the humble elephant boy from deepest India, now acclaimed and feted in the "Drums" promotion in New York, this must indeed be a world of miracle. And that in turn makes one wonder what ever became of that pretty Polynesian girl from "Tabu" who came to New York for her hour of glory some years ago? "Reri" was her name.