Motion Picture Herald (May-Jun 1947)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD MARTIN QUIGLEY, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Vol. 167, No. 10 TERRY RAMSAYE, Editor OP June 7, 1947 MILWAUKEE WEEKEND A DISPATCH from Washington announces that Mr. Eric Johnston, presfdent of the Motion Picture Association, is to make one of the principal addresses at the annual banquet of the convention of the Young Republican National Federation in Milwaukee this weekend. That is a political gathering and a political occasion. A report in Variety, New York, observes that the announcement has "revived talk ... of the Motion Picture Assn. prexy for either the No. I or No. 2 spot on the GOP national slate. The motion picture in the service of the whole people is distinctly a non-partisan institution. Privately and personally, the people of the motion picture have their right and obligation for the exercise of their franchise as citizens. When the executive head of the organized motion picture industry makes a platform appearance in politics, he inevitably tends to carry his office with him. The motion picture industry has no business in politics, as an industry. BIB MR. BYRNES' ASSIGNMENT THERE is a characteristic touch of showmanship in the engagement of the professional services of the celebrated Mr. James F. Byrnes, former Secretary of State, by the Association of Motion Picture Producers. Mr. Byrnes, it is disclosed, is to work with Mr. Eric Johnston as counsel in various industry matters, including the presentation of the industry's case before the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities. The Congressional committee will probably be grateful to the industry authorities. For one thing, Mr. Byrnes' presence in the matter is likely to insure a measure of public attention to the committee's efforts which will even exceed the results of the recent headline hunt of the committee's chairman in Hollywood. Mr. Byrnes' initial assignment, we are told, will be "to champion the screen's right of freedom of expression" before the House committee. That sounds like Hollywood in one of its more expansive moments. The question before the committee with respect to motion pictures is whether or not there has been Communistic infiltration and effect. The answer is whether there has or has not been such infiltration and effect. The freedom of the screen is another matter. No rightthinking person demands that the screen be free to promote purposes hostile to the national interest. The industry would do well simply to guide the committee to the truth and let the headlines fall where they may. B B B ART and CULTURE THERE'LL be a ripple of national satisfaction in the remarks on modern art attributed to a letter from President Truman to Mr. William Benton, Assistant Secretary of State, about the American Art Exhibit on a "cultural tour" abroad. "I am of the opinion," said Mr. Truman, "that so-called modern art is merely the vapouring of half-baked lazy people. . . . There is no art at aH in connection with the modernists, in my opinion." Concerning all the assorted cultural "tell the world about America" activity, one may wonder on whose authority it is decided what the State Department's radio broadcasts, and programs for exchanges of students, professors and the like, shall be based upon. It would appear that somebody is taking unto himself, or some committee, an amazingly presumptuous position as the voice of the nation. Also, who asked them? To sell what? Why? How are they doing? COST SPIRAL SAYS Mr. Seymour Nebenzal, independent producer, interviewed in Motion Picture Daily: "Costs are still spiralling upward but the unnatural rise will come to a natural end when expenses exceed returns and unemployment is the result." In his Tradewise column in the same paper, Mr. Sherwin Kane writes of the adventures of a producer who bought a a story which so appreciated in value while he was in preparation that he decided to recast it with top place stars. Meanwhile, he entered into releasing contract. The new stars, female and male, each demanded a deal for one-third of the profits, taking two-thirds out of the earnings before others might participate. Now there remains only a contract and a story. In this case, spiral goes up to nowhere. It reminds of that ancient debate among the philosophers about what would happen if an irresistible force hit an immovable post. The answer is, again, nothing. BIB THE EXPERTS A FEW weeks ago the press, radio and screen came in for an elaborate lacing at the hands of a flock of professors styled Commission on Freedom of the Press. They found everything wrong. Now comes another, less pretentious, but with determined attention to the institution of advertising, this time from a lone professor, Dr. Charles M. Edwards, Jr., of New York University. He spoke in Boston before the annual convention of the Advertising Federation of America. He was invited. By now they may be wondering why. Dr. Edwards said in effect that the advertisers were failing to counteract a threatened economic trend. He says: "We don't have the know-how to make fully effective use of advertising as a sales-building force." He intimates that N. Y. U., after ten years of research, has all the answers. All this would be of no importance, save that this expression and others like it get wide dissemination in the newspapers, doing neither business nor advertising any good. Perhaps American industry has heard from about enough professors for awhile.