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. 6 QP August 7, 1943 ON FILM FRONT THAT maladroit broadcast about "the moronic little king" of Italy thrown on the international air by the Office of War Information, while conspicuous, is but a well flowered specimen of the continuous efforts of a special clique of self-authorized policy makers. They would run the nation, and the world, their peculiar and militantly divergent way. This particular expression, so invasive of the national interest in the crisis of war, by reason of its embarrassment of the President to the point where he found it necessary to administer sharp public rebuke, merely tells the public what the motion picture world has known for a long time. These gentry of the same OWI clique have been trying to tell the motion picture what to do and how to do it — with equal competency, grace and skill. Months ago that was discussed on this page by Mr. Martin Quigley in an editorial. What with its fictional Mr. Durfees on the air and its inept partisanships and ideological pressures under the guise of public service, the OWI has contributed more inflamation than information. There can be no reasonable doubt that it stands in need of management by persons of experience and judgment. A DJUSTMENTS and rearrangements between the Govern/ \ ment and the motion picture represented in the / \ developments of the day are to be viewed with satisfaction. The program of "War Bulletins," of quarter-reel length, announced by Mr. Francis S. Harmon of the War Activities Committee, to replace the shorts that the Office of War Information was to make, is considerably more suited to the job to be done than the original schedule of hurried, inept and amateurish one-reelers laden with politics, which initiated the endeavour. The appointment of Mr. L. C. Griffith, of the Oklahoma Griffiths, to head the industry's participation in the Third War Loan Campaign, as announced by Mr. S. H. Fabian, of WAC, accents the place of the big mid-west in our world of the screen, and recognizes a showman of national status. Again, the appointment of Mr. Oscar Doob of Loew's theatre organization, and efficient member of numerous war effort committees, by Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury, to the post of assistant national director of the War Finance Committee in charge of advertising, is a picking of theman-for-the-job — a motion picture man. The showmanship of the screen and the war effort are getting along. It all seems to go better when the Government asks instead of orders. A DDITIONALLY, and importantly, the authorities directly X \ concerned with the conduct of the war appear to have / \ arrived at a more effective state of mind with reference to the newsreels. The screen report to America is getting better, more responsive to the acute public interest, and considerably more immediate. The motion picture audience waited for a year and an anniversary to get a report on Pearl Harbor. But it has already seen the story of the valiant landings and advance through Sicily. Incidentally there is a touch of more than hit-and-run camera reporting, too, in the newsreel film from Sicily, with its touches of poignant human interest, recorded in the reactions of the civilians as the tide of battle swept past. World War I was over before the military learned what to do about the motion picture. Progress is being made now. It might be well to suggest that the lessons be embedded in manuals and the practice of a future, which it seems will have to have considerable military attention. AAA SMEAR to ORDER OUT in that great middle empire and its capital, The Chicago Tribune under its dictatorial publisher, Col. Robert R. McCormick, is making a Roman holiday by throwing the motion picture and its people to the beasts in the arena of scandal. According to The Tribune "Marcia Winn went to Hollywood to see what was happening there." Obviously Miss Winn went to Hollywood to make a preconceived story. There are about two hundred and fifty newspaper correspondents in Hollywood, including the representatives of all the press associations and syndicates. They somewhat completely tell "what is happening" there. The Tribune was sending for something else. Miss Winn covered her assignment. Some of the headlines: "City of Magic, Fantasy, Filth — It's Hollywood"; "Corruption Blended with Intrigue"; "Hollywood Vice Swallows 300 Girls a Month"; "White Slavers Prey on Fame Chasers." The articles under those display lines seem to depend considerably on anonymous observers and unnamed sources of accusation. That is the process familiar to practitioners of the art of yellow journalism under the craft law of "never let the story fall down." The industry of the motion picture and its Hollywood have no occasion for special concern in this matter. None would contend that this world of the motion picture is super-humanly perfect. Its people are very like other people in conduct and foibles. There is no more misconduct and assorted sin per capita in the motion picture community of Hollywood than among the figures in other industry, let one say for instance, the business of publication in the great city of Chicago. There is such an obvious quality of belligerent purposefulness in The Tribune 's anti-Hollywood campaign that it can make little impress. The public, especially The Tribune's public, has heard the like before. It is all highly reminiscent of those stories damning the same community some twenty years ago because one William Dean Tanner, alias Taylor, had been murdered. Today's stories are substantially rewrites. It is the ancient practise of picking on the pictures. It is all a little bit too bad, too. Col. McCormick has been the inheritor of a great journalistic institution with tradition. Also it was the Chicago Tribune, in the days of the late and able Mr. James Keeley which was first among American newspapers to give heed to the screen and review pictures. — Terry Ramsay e