Motion Picture Herald (Nov-Dec 1946)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD MARTIN QVIGLEY, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Vol. 165, No. 10 TERRY RAMSAYE, Editor OP December 7, 1946 TIME for VICILANCE WHILE the motion picture is becoming more enmeshed with international affairs, and so much the subject of attention by organizations, bureaus and statesmen planning for the new world of tomorrow, it is appropriate to consider the complex of implied commitments which can affect the screen. This gives a particular cogency to the observations on censorship from Mr. Byron Price, chairman of the board of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, speaking in Los Angeles before a conference of managing editors of Associated Press papers. "No one can afford to feel smug and safe," he remarked, "when he considers the long term lesson of history and the gradual curtailment of liberty as regimentation advances with every generation." Mr. Price before the war was general news editor of the Associated Press, and through the war years was in charge of our censorship for national security. He considers that a little censorship anywhere now is a lingering threat to freedom of the press. There remain large areas where neither press nor screen are free today. "New assaults will come," said Mr. Price, "and they will be of such character that press, radio, and screen inevitably will be drawn closer together in self-defense. "... Even the more subtle gestures toward government guidance and official prompting are your concern, whether they affect governmental guidance or come to you in the guise of restraints and interference in other fields of communication. ..." * * * * TUESDAY of this week Motion Picture Daily in a Washington dispatch announced: "During 1947 the industry will be approached by six Government agencies, two political national committees and four international organizations for cooperation in 'film message' programs to the American people. . . . "Federal agencies desiring films are: The Veterans Administration, Department of State, Department of Agriculture, Department of Justice, Department of Commerce and Office of Reconversion. ..." * * * * The Los Angeles meeting of the managing editors of the AP's member papers had been planned for 1942 and was postponed by the war. Mr. Price's address and other activities, without fanfare, made it considerably a public relations function for the motion picture. Last Friday the editors visited studios — and met executives rather than stars. They were interested in the business of the motion picture and its great production plant investments and operations. The Friday night party at the Biltmore Bowl was strictly social. For the first time a large conclave of the editors of the principal papers of the land heard and saw something of "the movies" besides what they see in the papers. THE prospects somewhere off in the new year may not be so bright, what with the alarms over the coal strike and some expert forecasts of recession in the spring, but just now the official contemporary statistics are right pleasant. Department stores, which can be considered indicative in a land where shopping is a major entertainment, are doing handsomely, according to reports out of the twelve Federal Reserve districts, showing business 29 per cent higher for the week ending November 23 than for the same period last year. Also, up from Washington come calculations that the theatres are having the biggest year in their history, with amusement tax returns reaching new highs. When November's figures are cast up, they will take the eleven-months total for '46 well past the $375,306,000 for 1945. MR. DAVID WARFIELD, so long a figure of the American stage and now two decades in retirement, passed his eightieth birthday last week in his New York apartment, quietly regarding the progress of the autumn over Central Park. "Why make a fuss about birthdays?" he remarked. "Just another day — but I like to have them, because you can't live without them." His last role was in "The Merchant of Venice"; his most famous, perhaps, was in "The Music Master". He was a friend and intimate of Mr. Marcus Loew. It may also be recorded that Mr. Warfield was an early investor in Loew's, Inc., an interest which he continues. He attends all the annual meetings. ■ a ■ OUT in those parts where farming is still a way of life, and not agricultural manufacturing, this is hog killin' time — occasion for stocking the cellars and pantries. Hams sweet-salted, rolled in coats of molasses and ashes, hang in the smokehouse, along with sides of bacon, in the thick perfume of slow smouldering hickory, steeping in patient acquisition of flavour that truely means "country cured". There is a certain something about hickory smoke that is Nature's own alchemy, in its fragrance beyond all skill of the swift synthetics of city provender. It is an earthy fragrance that never has been captured in vials. It is the time, too, when the farmhouse kitchen is redolent with the spicy, nourishing aromas of sausage, rich with sage, made to eat, not to sell. Now also come the spare ribs, not so spare, simmered long over slow fire on the big stove in a deepness of tender kraut. Or maybe it is boiled backbone, thick with tender morsels, alongside homemade hominy, still just so lightly touched with the scent of woodash leaching. It is something to stomp in out of the snow from barn and feed lot as darkness falls, come into the house to fall-to at the table with platters steaming and heaped high. The coffee comes from no trick glass alembic, just from an honest pot — no filter, mind you — but settled with an egg. After that a corncob pipe, packed with hand-rubbed Granger twist, is a man's smoke. There's America, as was. — Terry Ramsaye