Motion Picture Herald (Mar-Apr 1947)

tiiiiiimiiimmimii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii i ii in iiiuiiiiiiiiii i mil minimum iiiiiini iiiiiiiii inn miiimiimiiiimm iiiiiiimiiiiiiiiimiimiiiimiiiiimmiiiiiiiiimi i n miminii iimin nimuum iimiin uiiiiiiin n i miiimmiiiiimiiiiiimiiiimiiiiiiiinmiimii Keep Westerns Clean: Sherman by WILLIAM R. WEAVER Hollywood Editor If producers don't stop wrapping up sordid sex plots in the Western picture format, they're going to kill off not only the Western picture but also a great deal of the vital family-audience support on which all motion pictures and the industry itself depends, according to Harry Sherman. His film, "Ramrod," is currently in exhibition and his next is to be "This Way They Passed," under another title, for which the Enterprise researchers are now polling the populace, and whose 56 Hopalong Cassidy pictures established the standards which the trade today regards as par for the Western form. It was not the kindly Harry's intention to lambaste the film makers who have dramatized the exotic against a Western background— for Harry is not given to lambasting anybody — but a direct question slipped in between the soup and the salad got him going, roughly as follows : No Place in Western "Certainly they'll kill off the Western. When people want to see sex on the screen they hunt up a slick drama or something, never a Western, because they've been taught all their lives that Western pictures are clean pictures. And when people want to see a Western they don't expect the women in it to behave like trollops and to see the men chasing skirts. But killing the Western means a lot more than just dirtying up a nice kind of picture. It's what it means to the family trade that really counts. "People making pictures in Hollywood, and taking time off now and then to fly back to New York for a round of theatres and night clubs, forget that Hollywood and New York are not America. They forget that the country is full of plain towns, big and little, which are full of plain people — family people — who haven't got money or inclination to go in for night life and the phony standards that go with it. Family Sets Standards "It's those plain people that make or break the movies. It's the family that sets the pitch for American living, and the great majority of American families are units living on modest incomes, incomes that warrant about one trip a week to the picture show and not very much more. The father and mother know one thing about Westerns that they don't know about any other kind of picture. They know they can send the children to see any Western, any time, without worrying about them picking up ideas beyond their years or coming home asking questions nobody knows the answers to. "So what happens? What has been happening all these years ? The kids acquire the STAGECOACH TRAVEL had its hazards in the good old days: the holdup, shown above in Warners' "Cheyenne", was a normal one. The picture, which exhibitors will see in trade screenings April 21, stars Dennis Morgan and Jane Wyman, and was produced by Robert Buckner and directed by Raoul Walsh. SPRING SCENE, from Paramount's "Welcome, Stranger", starring Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald, above, and Joan Caulfield. The picture is from the hand of Sol C. Siegel, producer, and Elliott Nugent, director, and will be shown to exhibitors April 25. movie habit, on the right basis, and grow up and start their own families, and their kids do the same in turn. That won't happen very long after pictures reach a state of sophistication — if they do — where the fathers and mothers make up their minds they have to see every Western picture or check up on it before they give the kids permission to go to the movie. These sexy Westerns, with the widespread unfavorable publicity they attract, will force fathers and mothers around to that opinion in short order if the trend continues." Questioned on Market Ceiling At this point he was asked whether the decision to dramatize sex instead of sixguns might not have been prompted by a feeling that the Western, in standard form, had reached its market ceiling, and he declared : "There's no ceiling on the Western — no limit to the audience it can attract, or the money it can gross, if it's good enough. You can go back over the record and prove that. Go back to 'The Covered Wagon' or 'The Iron Horse', to mention two, or go all the way back, for that matter, to 'The Great Train Robbery', the Daddy of all entertainment pictures. On my own list, latterly, there's 'Buffalo Bill', that made a whale of a lot of money the first time around, so much so that Twentieth Century-Fox is getting ready to reissue it." Twentieth-Fox To Produce Russian Espionage Film A feature to be titled "The Iron Curtain," dealing with Russian espionage in the United States and Canada, will be produced by Twentieth Century-Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck, vice-president in charge of production, announced last week in Hollywood. While the idea was his own, Mr. Zanuck explained, it 'was inspired by J. Edgar Hoover's report on March 26 to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The feature will be filmed as a semi-documentary, it was announced, and will use material from the June 27, 1946, report of the Royal Canadian Commission on Russian espionage in that country. Sol C. Siegel is expected to produce. ■numm MOTION PICTURE HERALD, APRIL 19, 1947 27