Motion Picture Herald (Jul-Aug 1943)

July 3 , 1943 MOTION PICTURE HERALD 31 STUDIOS HEADED FOR CYCLE ON JUVENILE VANDALS While Hollywood Weighs Allied Plan on Shorts, Features Are Started by WILLIAM R. WEAVER Hollywood Bureau The suggestion by the Allied States Association of Motion Picture Exhibitors that studios produce some shorts designed to discourage juvenile vandalism appears to have overshot its mark. Although a number of producing companies have signified a disposition to implement the Allied suggestion, there are indications that feature pictures to the same end are to be making their appearance while the proposed shorts remain in conversational status. The first studio to announce a feature in this category is RKO Radio, which promises "Are These Our Children?" and describes it as an "exploitation feature . . . which will deal with the teen-aged of the country, their misguided, undirected activities, the threat they constitute to the nation's moral fiber . . . based on the problems that face parents and their children caught in the backwash of war." It's to be produced by Val Lewton and directed by Edward Dmytryk. New Picture Cycle Looms On Hollywood Scene The second studio to adopt the theme is Monogram, which promises "Where Are My Children ?" and describes it as "a dramatic story dealing with the subject of juvenile delinquency and the present trend toward criminal activities by the younger generation." The announcement says, "The company has already been in touch with J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, for the purpose of assembling authentic data on the subject." The film is to be made as a highbudget picture for the 1943-44 season, and Jeffrey Bernerd, who made that James Roosevelt import, "Pastor Hall," and "The Stars Look Down" in England, joins Monogram to produce the subject. It is not inevitable that these announcements signalize the inception of a cycle, but their immediacy and proximity suggest that they do. It does not follow, however, that the gentlemen who preside over studio production conferences are embarking upon this course of action simply to give pause to youngsters who've been carving their initials in theatre seats, nor even to dedicate the screen to a studied campaign of education in behalf of inspiring the junior generation to a proper observance of law, order and the common principles of becoming behavior. Producers Provided With New "Heavy" On the contrary, it is plain as the street signs designating the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that the Allied suggestion, coupled with a number of published comments by Mr. Hoover and some headlines about zoot suiters, has sup PLAN SHORTS TO CURB VANDALS MGM and RKO Radio have replied in the affirmative to the suggestion of Allied States Association that producers make short subjects designed to curb juvenile delinquency, which has resulted in vandalism in theatres. MGM plans a subject, "Juvenile Delinquency," which will cover the Allied suggestion. The Allied committee is headed by Jack Kirsch of Chicago. National Screen Service in Philadelphia, at the request of exhibitors, has prepared special trailers which appeal to the patriotism of children. plied Hollywood producers with a thing they've been looking high and low for — a new "heavy." The shortage of heroic leading men has been headlined aplenty, for reasons which declare themselves, but there's been, and needed to be, no outcrying about the fact that producers have been forced, by considerations not widely known, to improvise any and all sorts of substitutes for what it professionally called "the menace" in the stories filmed. Early in the war the O WI, the CIAA, plus commonsense, made it known to Hollywood that American soldiers, sailors, marines, policemen, Congressmen, dignitaries of all ranks, mayors, sheriffs, holders of Federal, state, county, town and village offices even heads of reputable businesses, unions, clubs, American organizations of any and all characters, may not be depicted as villains or otherwise unfavorably if the screen is not to implement the Axis propaganda program. A little later in the war the Office of Censorship was established to prevent the export of any picture transgressing this principle, even if any producer made one, which few did after things were explained to them. Nature Is Utilized as A Screen Menace As Production Code Administrator Joseph I. Breen once phrased the matter, and this some while before the situation developed fully, "The only character whom a producer may cast as a villain, without giving offense to an important sector of the population or inviting censure if not censorship, is a native born American without visible employment or indicated relationship to any other human being, native or foreign, anywhere." In their continuing need for a "menace," without which virtually no picture of dramatic consequence can be made, producers have utilized Nature (cyclones, blizzards, earthquakes, etc.), the war -enemy (to an extent generally reported excessive), and latterly (as in "Alaska Highway") members of a family (brothers in that case) in conflict with each other but upright and honorable in every detail save on the point (usually romantic, under the license of traditional allowance for error by Cupid) at issue. Under these conditions, the discovery of the American youth as suddenly become available for presentation as a menace to society stacks up as a find. And so the calendar, if not the cost of living, is rolled back to the early Twenties and to "Wild Boys of the Road" (remember?), to "Flaming Youth" (remember those grosses, not to mention complaints?) and to "Our Daily Bread" (the one about the unemployed) and to "Fury" (which made all that money and, of course, all that trouble). Treatments Designed to Cure Condition The techniques and standards of production have progressed in the interim. The industry has acquired an addiction to "technical experts," which it did not have in those days of brave endeavor and sometimes grave consequences. The gentlemen who produce today's treatments of juvenile delinquency are under some obligations, external as well as internally, to devise treatments which will tend to cure instead of to aggravate. Presumably they will be gentlemen who know a couple of young people personally and wish to do something for as well as about the other young people who, according to Mr. Hoover and numerous other individuals presumably qualified by experience to utter such observations, are ripping theatre seat cushions, wearing ' haywire haberdishery and in sundry other ways imperiling the American way of life. Anyway, and however, that band of young villains who are slated to become, within the next 12 or 24 months, "the cream of young American manhood shedding its blood on a dozen fighting fronts so that government of the people, by the people, for the people may not perish from the earth," is in for a shellacking as soon as the typewriters and the cameras can grind it out. Order Curfews to Stop Street Loitering Police are enforcing curfews in Yonkers, N. Y., and Akron, O., prohibiting children under 16 from remaining on the streets after 10 P.M. in the former community and after 11 P.M. in the latter. Legislation in other Ohio communities is being pushed to curb juvenile delinquency. In many cases, the penalties for violation are fines ranging from $1 to $50, payable by parents or guardians of the children. The ordinance by the Akron city council calls for fines of from $5 to $25 for the first offense and from $10 to $49 for second offense. Held on Mischief Charge Four youths in the Mayfair theatre in Philadelphia caused disturbances by running through the audience emitting wild shrieks while a mystery bill was playing last Thursday evening. The youths were arrested by police, charged with malicious mischief.