Motion Picture Herald (Mar-Apr 1945)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD COLV1N BROWN, PuUisber S^-tcfJ/ TERRY RAMSAYE, Editor Vol. 159, No. I KSKSI APril 7 1945 WARTIME REPORT THE annual report of the War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry is a document for the archives, to tell the historians of tomorrow something of the service of the screen in the years of world ordeal. There is no equivalent of this story in all the annals of civilization— ancient or modern. That is true because, as Mr. Fritz Lang, director for New World Properties, said in a speech the other day: "The motion picture is the new art of this century, and the art of the people." He forecasts that it is to be doing new things in new ways. The motion picture and its organized industry has been doing new and important things through all the days of the war, and will be to the end. The War Activities Committee report being of words and figures on paper cannot record or convey the larger values and the greater contributions that the screen has been making because, far beyond all the bond drives and dollar figures, exhibition data on the "fox hole premieres" and the like, the greater achievement has been in such imponderables as morale and spirit. THE figure: "Participation in the three War Bond campaigns of 1944 cost the motion picture industry more than $15,000,000," opens the report. It is a total of costs of free shows, prints for troops overseas, film rentals waived, and kindred items. It cannot enumerate man-h'ours spent in the causes. It cannot measure what the screen has delivered to its audiences at home and in the far outposts and battle areas in information, inspiration and emotional relief. This report cannot tell either to our own industry or to the American public what it means to enlist sixteen thousand theatres and their showmen, and all the personnel of distribution and production, from Hollywood to Radio City, in unstinted devotion to the cause of the whole nation. There has never been quite such a giving, such a volunteering of service, involving so many men and women, in all the world. ■ ■ ■ REFLECTING on those twentieth anniversary attentions which Columbia Pictures Corporation is bestowing upon Mr. Abe Montague brings up the fact that he has held the office of general sales manager longer than any of his contemporaries in the industry. When he came down from Boston in 1925, he became eastern district manager and in 1933 came into his present post. That was an even dozen years ago. He had just turned 40 then, so there's a lot of longevity ahead. Sales managers are a hardy race. ■ ■ ■ THE ART of CINEMA THE Irish Film Society in Dublin essays a definition of the motion picture, in a foreword by Mr. Felix Hackett, for a recent programme, thus: "Though the making and showing of motion pictures has been described as a new art form, we are closer to reality by recognizing it as a great entertainment industry, as perhaps a new form of industrial art. It might also be classed as a tertiary art form: adapting, in however an elementary way, the fine arts of painting, music and literature, using the interpretive arts of acting, photography and lighting, and employing the most advanced technical aids of modern physics and chemistry." For endless years, scholarly persons have been trying to define art in general and separately all the arts. Let those definitions fall where they may; there is but one art: the art of expression, which is communication, crude or refined, high or low, dumb or sophisticated. The motion picture is the most complete tool of expression, the most complete communication. That is because it is the most detailed re-creation of the event — the best device for making the spectators see it all over again. It can be selective, conditioned, slanted, even as the other arts, but it is popular because the customers consider they are seeing the whole happening. ■ ■ ■ ADVERTISING MANNERS NOW that the National Broadcasting Company has eliminated "middle commercials" from its news programs, it would be a constructive improvement if newspapers would discontinue "break-overs", which scatter the story from page to page. There is a headlong endeavour to start every possible story on page one. The reader buys the whole paper. The radio continues to offend by putting "commercials" into the mouths of its entertainers and news broadcasters. There are plenty of voices with which to set advertising apart from editorial content. Consider the effect if the morning paper presented Mr. Arthur Krock or Mr. Walter Lippman with their editorial copy interlarded with urgings from them, personally, about pickles, laxatives and breakfast food. ■ ■ ■ ANEW paper, AM, a Philadelphia project, which describes itself as a "daily newsmag" devoted to news about trade papers, and telling of their service to "the economic life of America", has the temerity to address the editor with a circular saying: "We'll do our part. The publishers of AM are experienced. . . . They've edited and published Tap & Tavern ... for the past twelve years and are familiar with the problems facing the men behind this nation's business press." They may be familiar but they needn't get so freshly frank about it. ■ ■ ■ UP in SILVERMINE — When Mr. Charles Darwin set forth the observation that the earthworm's subsoiling activities were responsible for the fertility of the soil, he only said the half of it. We've revealed the other half. By carefully contrived propaganda, the small boys of the vicinity have been indoctrinated with the notion that worms from our garden have a special efficacy as fish bait. One lucky catch, they consider, has confirmed it. Now, with the spring urge upon them, the youngsters are competing for the privilege of spading the garden loam. When they begin to tire, we shall consider a plan to announce a medal for the biggest fish caught on our worms. That is exploitation. — Terry Ramsaye