Motion Picture Herald (Mar-Apr 1947)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD MARTIN QUIGLEY, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Vol. 167, No. I FREEDOM of PRESS THAT Luce Commission on the Freedom of the Press and its general report, including screen and radio, recorded in our news pages last week, has excitingly "put the cat among the pigeons" — at least so far as the newspapers are concerned. Radio and the motion picture are yet to be heard from. The newspapers resent being lumped with screen and radio as part of "the press" by the poetic license of the Commission. They also are more than annoyed by the over-all finding that the freedom of the press is alleged to be menaced only, or chiefly, from the inside by the alleged shortcomings of the press. Tedious examination by any number of journalists confirms your editor's finding last week that the strongest objection seemed to be that all the media were so effectively diligent in the service of the majorities. The Commission's position is that the papers, the screen and the radio ought to eschew the popular and devote time and space to the important. They have not explained who would pay for that, or just who would decide what might be the most important. The newspaper attentions as they appeared early this week were marked by curious manifestations. Among the New York dailies the eccentric PM gave first news attention on the release date, but the editorial pages of the orthodox papers moved into the matter with strange variances. The HeraldTribune held the report could not be shrugged off "as mere professorial whimsy". Meanwhile, Mr. Wilbur S. Forrest, assistant editor of the Herald-Tribune, and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, writing "as an independent editor", however, in Editor & Publisher, sees the report as a left wing attack. "Certain left wing individuals and groups have long sought to weaken the American press, possibly with a view to eventual government regulation and control." NCIDENTALLY, the publicity handling of the Commission's outgivings have also their special aspects. The story comes out piecemeal. Now it is reported that the first draft of the report signed by the Commission, headed by Dr. Robert M. Hutchins, chancellor of Chicago University, was written by Mr. Archibald MacLeish. Also, it is from an advertisement for the report as published in book form that one discovers that the top name on a list of "Foreign Advisors" is Mr. John Grierson, that same who was having visa difficulties with the U. S. for a while. Considerable attention is paid to the amateur standing of these pundits of the Commission, preponderantly professors and none of the thirteen of them practitioners in the media concerned. Also in Editor & Publisher, Mr. Frank Tripp of the Gannett Newspapers has at the Commission, including a casual taunt about their admission that they did not engage in "elaborate research". Surely enough they did not. Their report limits Gannett papers to upstate New York, while in TERRY RAMSAY E, Editor April 5, 1947 fact the chain extends into Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut. A minor slip but not permissible to such exacting scholarship. "The professors should have researched, just a little. . . . If the professors would rub elbows where the real 'press' wears out its sleeves, they would learn that the people know what they want; that run-of-mine folks who sustain the press don't want what the professors prescribe for them. But the report says that they should be given it regardless, 'the press' to pay the shot. . . . "Why not a commission to report on a Free University — or how do they get that way? ... I'd also recommend a bit of research — $215,000 worth." That is Mr. Tripp's reference to the "grant" of $200,000 from Mr. Henry R. Luce's Time, Inc., and $15,000 from the University of Chicago's subsidiary or affiliate, the Encyclopedia Britannica, which financed the Commission. Touching on the same note sounded by Mr. Forrest, Mr. Tripp remarks: "They (the public) will wonder why the professors ignore the fact that it is not the 'really dangerous' who most threaten America — that it is their dupes and coddlers of them in classroom and pink parlour assembled, shouting freedom for seditionists in the name of a broad new concept of 'one world'. One world — but whose?" HI! OVERSEAS REPORT LARGE significances in the world of the motion picture and the fortunes of the American industry are involved in the financial perplexities of the international situation. A poignant discussion of some aspects of the situation was presented the other day by Mr. Kenneth Collins, who has newly come to a vice-presidency of Donahue & Coe, Inc., in New York, in a Rotary Club speech. "The rest of the world has few or no dollars to buy our goods. Unless other countries can buy from us . . . they cannot become economically stable enough to warrant the investment of American capital abroad. But — and here is the nexus of the whole matter — unless we can export huge quantities of goods and capital, we will shortly be faced with a domestic crisis that will make 1929 and 1930 look like a period of unparalleled prosperity." Of Britain Mr. Collins said: "The British Empire is in grave danger. ... If the British Commonwealth should be liquidated, we would lose our best customer. ..." About Russia: "Russia, while incapable of waging another war in the foreseeable future, is bluffing us into thinking she can and is threatening our economic interests, everywhere." Mr. Collins has just returned from nearly five years of living in Europe. E ■ THIS and THAT — In a mess of corporation quarterly statements, representing a calculated cross-section of American industry, there is one important reiteration: Where inventory [Continued on following page, column 1]