Motion Picture Herald (Jan-Feb 1945)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD COLVIN BROWN, Publisher M ART I N QU I G LEY President and Editor-in-Chief TERRY RAMSAYE, Editor Vol. 158, No. 5 OP February 3, 1945 RAW STOCK ANSWER You will be remembering that melancholy line from the Broadway show of the prohibition years: "That's all there is; there isn't any more". That is the answer, too, about motion picture raw stock and the rising thirst of studio and screen. The production capacity of machines and men in film manufacture was long ago reached. War wants more for battle recordings, X-ray and a number of hush-hush devices. It is peak demand, and unless the war gets a lot longer there will be no practical value in building more machines and allocating more men. It takes too long. For the motion picture the news will be coming out of Washington — has started, in fact, as this issue of The Herald records. Regardless of the intricate and interesting details, with their very special applications to this industry, it may be observed in general that the effect may be expected to lay across motion picture production and distribution, which have previously enjoyed some elasticities, a frozen status. In that development the screen is only brought all the way under the blanket of wartime controls and inhibitions which extend across American industry in general. A closely kindred effect is observable, for instance, in the field of publication, which depends upon paper stock just as the screen depends on film stock. Today, no new magazine may be founded, no matter how much paper the publisher may have for other publications which he might want to sacrifice. Also, only very minor newspapers— the equivalent of a country weekly of about twelve pages and 5,000 circulation — may be started. The exhibitor is familiar enough, too, with this process of freezing, since for a long time now it has not been possible to build a new theatre, while there is very little that can be done for an old one. We positively are all "in the army now". ■ ■ ■ PARTICIPATIONS AN intricate tangle of patterns in the motion picture and related electronic arts to come is forecast from what brews in the contention of the Hollywood guilds and unions for salary increases and participation clauses pertaining to prospective television and reissue distributions. A remarkable sort of a law of entail might be anticipated for the field of creative arts if contentions are ultimately to be sustained. The basic assumption is that, if certain performances shall in the future develop a value beyond the primary address to the market, then the participants shall have a share. The specific presentation is in the contract controversy between the Screen Cartoonists Guild and Walt Disney. The guild has asked 20 per cent in theatre reissues or television rights. The Hollywood panel of the War Labor Board agrees, but the Tenth Regional Board in San Francisco has held it a matter of property rights for the courts. That is not the end. This will be an issue until there has been a reduction to practice in the television to come, and perhaps in the reissues to come. The potential complications are without end. They have a significance to the motion picture exhibitor in their relation to costs, real and alleged. The motion picture exhibitor is himself a creator of values in the product concerned. If he does a job of presentation which adds to the glamour and the glory of the product, he is a creator of those television and reissue values. Is he to share in their subsequent exploitation? But by whom and how is it to be decided how much anyone helped to put the picture over, or if the picture helped to put him over? Have the Screen Cartoonists made Disney, or did he make them? If so, in what proportion of each? And for what production? If they helped make "Snow White", why didn't they help more on "Pinocchio"? If they participate on the winners, do they rebate on the losers? Do they want a piece of the minus million of "Victory Through Airpower"? * * * * THERE is a touch of precedent pertaining to the arts. It was in the important but forgotten case of the action of the estate of General Lew Wallace, author, and Harper & Bi-others, publishers, against the Kalem Company in the matter of the unauthorized production of "Ben Hur". It was a one-reeler, of 1907, and when it was all over it cost Kalem $25,000 for the use of the story. It was a reissue, in a new medium, but the compositors, printers and bookbinders did not seek a share. ■ ■ H A T Stamford the trans-oceanic plane traffic expert came aboard and at Old Greenwich the efficiency engineer f \ joined up as is the custom, and the trio, including your editor, was ready for the morning discussion of the cosmos. "The whole difficulty, or most of it," he propounded, "is too much communication. Here we have in the morning papers disaster, debacle and trouble in general, around the world, and some of it hardly half a day old. We were better off when the bad news, and the good, came by sailing packet and it was too late to do anything about it. Communication is too swift and efficient." "It is not," respionded the Engineer. "It takes six people to say 'Let's go to lunch' these days." "How come?" "It goes like this: 1 tell my girl to get you on the 'phone. She calls our operator, who calls your operator, who calls your secretary. That's five. Then your secretary calls you, and that's six. But, if you are out, or say 'Tell him I'll call back', we start over again, and that makes twelve. Then, if at the last minute I can't make it, I leave word and when it gets to you again that makes eighteen — and that's communication." ■ ■ ■ PROGRESS NOTE: A while back, reflecting on Mr. William A. Brady's assertion in 1912 that "we have the movies on the run", we asked Mr. Brady if he now thought that the screen was "here to stay". He thought so. Something reminded us of that when Mr. Adolph Zukor, who started to fame in 1912 and, making his first trip in an airplane, flew back from the Famous Players Canadian party in Toronto, last week. Upon inquiry, Mr. Zukor confirms his impression that the airplane is here to stay. We are advising Mr. Brady. — Terry Ramsaye