Motion Picture Herald (Mar-Apr 1945)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD COLVIN BROWN, Publisher MARTIN President and QVIGLEY Editor-in-Chief TERRY RAMSAY E, Editor Vol. 158, No. 13 March 31, 1945 MR. HAYS SEES THE motion picture industry looks level-eyed at tomorrow and its world, in the statement which Mr. Will H. Hays has rendered this week as his annual report as president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. It is his most significant official utterance. So much as one man may be, in this art and this industry of assertive personalities, Mr. Hays has been these twentyand-odd years the spokesman of the motion picture. He is now. While speaking, he has been thinking — and doing. Mr. Hays was invited into this industry in days of trouble, in the face of the most spectacular and painful circumstances of problem and difficulty. He helped it out, with all the skill of a county chairman from Indiana and a statesman from Washington. Sometimes one could not be told from the other. The difficulties of the motion picture have at times come to a lull, but the problems never. Today, in a world where the intricacies of the peace-to-come are more poignant than the struggles of the war-to-be-won, the problems of the screen are greater than ever. There is cognizance of that in Mr. Hays' report. It is not accident or coincidence that he quotes Mr. Eric Johnston of the United States Chamber of Commerce, despite the suave and entirely sequential connotation in which the quotation comes in. There is nothing in this document, which is to be an archive of motion picture history, which is accidental. There is no word, and'no comma, which has not been considered. In this document Mr. Hays knows that he is speaking to the world, for an American industry which has on sheer attainment dominated a world market. Mr. Hays is speaking for the industry, which he has represented so many years, so long, in the face of a dynamically, catastrophically changing world. He has been, in the fashion of both county chairman, and statesman, preparing for that. He has come to that day called Now. And he says so. Tomorrow is not just another day. It is the day after Yesterday, and there is something to be done about it. He observes that. MORE ON OPERA AS some readers may have detected across the years, your editor most especially enjoys his disapproval of the aged and infirm art of the opera, conceived in arrogance, supported in snobbery and sycophancy and now come at the inevitable last to clutch at withered laurels and despair for subsidy. It goes the way of kings, empty pomp and ritual art. It is the antithesis of the motion picture, born of the people and nurtured in the service of human wishing, human living. As opera declines the screen rises. So it is inevitable you will be finding here from time to time recordings of that progress. No unkind word of opera will be intentionally overlooked. It is our current pleasure to regard utterances from Mr. Lauritz Melchior, a most unmelancholy Dane, of fame as a tenor of the Metropolitan Opera, now engaged in a singing role in "Thrill of Romance" under M-G-M production. "The role gives me a chance to prove opera singers are human," says Mr. Melchior to Mr. Thornton Delehanty in a Hollywood interview. The able tenor seems to suspect that to be necessary. "Opera is a luxury supported traditionally by the wealthy . . . with mounting taxes . . . opera may some day vanish. . . . "It is possible to preserve some of the famous arias by screen presentation, but opera itself is in my opinion too slow for the screen. Perhaps a new type of opera, written especially for the screen, may develop." One is to be reminded that the other day Mr. Deems Taylor remarked that opera was in such a state that Hollywood should have no timidity about doing anything to it. The fact is that entirely without announcement the motion picture has already done for opera what it has done for vaudeville. It is the superseding art. ■ P E] PRICE TALK WHILE Mr. Chester Bowles' notion for price ceilings on theatre admissions does not seem to be much of a direct menace to the free operation of exhibition, it has indeed become the inspiration of a considerable flow of adverse attention across the land. A typical expression comes from the skilled hand of the editorial writer for the Long Prairie Leader, up in Minnesota, who observes: "The industry has not only encouraged price increases but has, through producer-exhibition houses, taken the lead in such practices. There is no reason why movie entertainment should cost any more than at the war's outset." There is, certainly, as much reason for advance in admission prices as there has been for any of the other price increases — and possibly you have noticed some. ■ ■ n TUCKED away inconspicuously among the miscellany of the financial pages of the metropolitan press the other day appeared an item of illuminating commentary on some aspects of the state of the nation. Mr. Frank Phillips, chairman of the Phillips Petroleum Company, beginning February I, has reduced his salary from $50,000 a year in that post to $1 a year. After looking over some tax figures, he found that out of that salary after taxes there remained to him exactly $309.36. "I see no reason," observed Mr. Phillips, "why this company should pay out $50,000 to pay me $309.36." ■ ■Iff COUNTRY NOTES — Replying: Mr. Silas F. Seadler: yes, the Arctostaphylos Uva Ursa is showing tendrils. Mr. Earl Holden: the Cornus Florida, so abundant with you, will, alas, be a failure in the Silvermine valley. Mr. Robert B. Wilby: the Meconopsis still refuses to germinate. Mr. Ed Sparks: the Fontanalis are even so early rising to midge flies. Mr. James P. Cunningham: the Glad iolus outlook is excellent. Mr. H. E. Hancock: We also raise corn, admiring it in all its forms. To all and sundry: the Mentha, spearmint to you, an herbal specific for treatment of any attack of bucolic, flourishingly promises a bumper julep crop all summer. — Terry Ramsaye