Motion Picture Herald (Jul-Aug 1944)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD COLY1N BROWN, Publisher MARTIN QUIGLEY President and Editor-in-Chief TERRY RAMSAYE, Editor Vol. 156, No. 1 OP July 1, 1944 w FREE MOVIE DAY" THE "Fighting Fifth" War Loan campaign reaches its patriotic peak appropriately in the week of the Fourth of July with its dynamically promoted "Free Movie Day", July 6, with admissions for premiums on bond sales. Interesting adventure in a saturation barrage of radio promotion in cooperation with the theatres, starting the night of July 5, promises a new test of the medium. The hope and prospect is for the biggest war loan day in the experience of this, the biggest of wars. This war is consuming money at the same mad rate that powder burns in a rocket. While we spend Over There we must buy over here. The guns of victory are hungry. THE BENJAMIN WARNER WITH pride and reverence the sons of the House of Warner view the honor to their father, and the founder, in the launching of the S.S. Bwijamin Warner, christened in his name, to take the water Saturday at the Kaiser yards at Richmond, California. The occasion is an event of the industry of the motion picture, too. It was in the natal year of "the story picture", 1905, that the late Mr. Sam Warner discovered the screen and opportunity. A traveling projection equipment and one print of "The Great Train Robbery" were for sale, for $150. The father took fifty dollars out of his till, and pawned his gold watch and chain for a hundred. Thereupon the Four Warner Brothers, Sam and Harry and Albert and Jack, were in the movies. Now there is a third generation, represented by Captain Jack L. Warner, Jr., who is probably somewhere in Normandy, fighting for the land of liberty to which his grandfather came from Poland so long ago. The ties of family and the qualities of filial devotion so characteristic of the Warners are reflected in the arrangement by which Mrs. Annie Robbins, eldest daughter of Benjamin, is to be the matron of honor at the launching, where Miss Lita B. Warner, daughter of Sam Warner, will sponsor the brave ship, which is, incidentally, the last of the Liberties. The invocation is to be by the Reverend Dr. Rudolph I. Coffee, who many a year ago officiated at the weddings of Mr. Harry M. and Major Albert Warner. It is a proud day for Benjamin and all the members of the House of Warner. They have written a chapter in the American saga. Appropriately, on this patriotic occasion, a large scale model of the Statue of Liberty is to be unveiled at the shipyards in sequel to the launching of the ship. AN expression of the responsibly patriotic Americanism of this motion picture family came last week in a message from Mr. Harry Warner to an exhibitor gathering in which he discussed the obligation of the screen, saying: "Whether a producer makes a picture for pleasure or for profit, for pure entertainment or for pure education — or just for art's sake — he is up against the incontrovertible fact that it will produce some effect, for good or for bad, on its audiences." A lot of the customers know that, too. Responsibility runs from studio stage to theatre screen. * * * THE screen's performance across the years has been marked by a growing awareness of the debt of conscience which Mr. Warner so succinctly states. There have been, and will ever continue to be, shortcomings and erring enterprises, but in the main the course of the motion picture has been in the service of the commonwealth. That has been an important element in the success of the screen and its rise to dominance as entertainment. It has offered the best for the most people for the least money. The stage has lost ground continuously since the motion picture became competent, and the whole answer is not to be had in the economic advantages of picture production and distribution. A large part of it is in the greater responsiveness of the films to the wishes, ideals and ambitions of the Common Man. The stage, losing to the films, sought to win by addressing itself to minorities with acutely socially conscious and messageladen drama. The result has been ever shrinking audiences. Now the stage is a fading art because it does not deliver to the people. It costs too much in saying too little to too few. So it comes that Mr. John Golden has made a gift of $100,000 to a fund and movement for "the cultural advancement of the legitimate theatre", as announced by the Dramatists Guild in New York. Mr. Golden says: "The theatre needs more playwrights and more good actors. For years a subsidized — national or civic — theatre, free to produce the finer things and at low prices for the people, has been devoutly wished." Half of Mr. Golden's gift is for that, and the rest for "encouragement and relief for dramatists, actors and others in the legitimate theatre". That rather tells the story. The truly popular arts, competent in the service of the multitudes, need no subsidies. They pay their way with profitable service. In a larger sense there is only one art — the art of expression, the telling of stories and the conveyance of emotions. The older mediums, like stage and opera, wane into ineffective age, supported by the generosity of sentiment. The motion picture has prospered into its dominance as the new better way of saying and telling. It will stay dominant so long as it is the better way and continues its policy for serving the whole people. WAR and NEWSREELS AS was to be expected, last week's observation on this page about newsreels and the war has brought reverberations. It was stated flatly that the substitution of a pre-canned two-reeler from the War Department on the subject of the Invasion-to-come for what the newsreel editors had prepared on the same subject, and in the same [Continued on following page]