Motion Picture Herald (Jul-Aug 1943)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD COLVIN BROWN, Publisher MARTIN QUIGLEY President and Editor-in-Chief TERRY RAMSAYE, Editor Vol. 152, No. 5 July 31, 1943 AMERICA'S STORY AGAIN there is a percolating report that the Office of War Information is not entirely satisfied with the imi pression that the American motion picture has made abroad, specifically in Britain. Once there was a documentary film project under OWI auspices aimed at making message pictures to tell the folk overseas that they had been misled about the true nature of this people. Congressional action has curtailed all such production plans, so now, the intimations are, the job may be done by hand, which is to say by emmisaries. Just how that might be contrived, beyond soapbox speaking in Hyde Park, is not clear. Meanwhile let it be set down that the American motion picture gives so convincing and pleasing a cross-section of American life and living that the British picture makers are ever diligently engaged in an understandable effort to do as good a job for their homeland. Also the United States could have no more thoroughly American, or more thoroughly competent representatives than the London managers for the American producers and distributors. The OWI can not improve on the job, but it could muddle it. The Government does not have to attend to everything, and some things it can not. The citizenry and its institutions have a long term competency of their own. \ \I t HEN the Office of War Information was set up, we \ X / were to gather that it was to be just that. More and ▼ ▼ more it has become evident, what with its film activities and projects, its criticism of the press, and many another manifestation, that the word "information" in the title is colored, or at least tinted. There was, somewhat erroneously, an impression that the job was to be as objectively information on the war as possible, and of just such an objective order of reporting as made the name of Mr. Elmer Davis when he was in the service of the New York Times. Now it seems that Mr. Davis considers that the Government have a story to tell, a side and a position. That makes for an office of war propaganda, which would be all right, too, under that label. We can still use war information, without slant. ■ A A A THE AGILE TAXERS OUR industry will properly resent and vigorously resist that Los Angeles project to levy a special admission tax for sewer financing. That is not only discriminatory but also inelegant. For several thousand years taxes have been unpopular, but they have been growing apace all the while. When the tax assessors reach down into the voting majorities, there may rise a demand for a fifth freedom, "Freedom from Taxes". Localized special taxations of the motion picture could become a wide menace. It would be quite as reasonable for Los Angeles to seek to levy a sewer tax on newspaper circulations, what with the sheer entertainment aspect of the comic sections — but that would get a bad press. With the new withholding tax in operation and the arrival of a batch of shirts labelled by the makers "new government regulation" to explain two inches off the tail, your editor considers that Uncle Sam is getting extremely personal. Meanwhile, the skies of this peaceful valley in Connecticut are streaming with bombers bound for Over There. So it can all be charged to war overhead. A A* A ADJUSTING THAT special endeavour announced by Metro-GoldwynMayer to give commercial justice to the small town exhibitor affected by wartime conditions and population shifts is a constructive contribution to the enduring welfare of the motion picture. It is to be noted, too, that other distributors are giving these situations consideration. The fevered prosperity of exhibition in the big war-spending communities tends to distort the view. That will pass in time and the motion picture will again be dollar-dependent on the whole nation and the grand average of patronage. Meanwhile it is in those very communities where sons have gone to war and fathers to war factories, where the old folks, and the youngest, do their tasks of home and soil, that the motion picture can today be of a larger service than ever before. They who sit and wait, and get those messages to "next of kin," also serve. To them the great American industry of the motion picture has obligation, and with obligation also opportunity. AAA THE PROJECTIONIST THE composition of peace and the conclusion of intra-craft differences between Local 306 of the IATSE and the Empire State Motion Picture Operators Union is a happy eventuation after a long period of unconstructive stresses. The situation will be the better for both the projectionists and the theatres where they stand at that "Needle's Eye" of the film gate through which passes the whole of the motion picture. There stands high skill in command of intricately able machinery, entrusted with that last step of art and technology which delivers the product to the ultimate consumer. It is essential that this function be discharged by men of competence in a state of occupational composure. AAA BY modern wireless out of the ancient and fabled Vale of Kashmir, deep in India and celebrated by song and story for centuries, comes a dispatch to the New York Times from Mr. Herbert Matthews, laden with the color of that far land. Mr. Matthews reports from Sringar that he went home from a party on a shikara, a sort of gondola, on the bow of which appeared the boat's name thus: "The Mae West — with full spring seats". Alongside in the romantic moonlight he saw "The Love-Comes-to-You — with full spring seats". It's the long, loving arm of Hollywood, even upto fair Kashmir. — Terry Ramsaye