Motion Picture News (Oct-Dec 1930)

MgflS©m SteMu^JMi^s Vol. XLII NEW YORK CITY, OCTOBER 18, 1930 No. 16 PRODUCED BY WALL STREET; DIRECTED BY DOUGH THE industry is about to have its face lifted and the plastic surgeons — self-appointed — are to be some of the most powerful banking interests in this broad land. To the business, already pretty well entrenched financially, will come complete security as well as comfortable immunity from all dollar worries, but the price to be exacted for the assurance thus imparted will be the passing of control from film to banking hands. Long talked about and as often discounted, that day is at hand. Big Fish Gobble Little DOWN in America's money highway, far more is transpiring behind closed doors than the man in the street realizes. Last week three old, reputable and substantial banking institutions were saved from Stock Exchange suspension and probable ruin only because banks bigger and richer than those in jeopardy stepped in and pulled the hero act. One large picture company would have been seriously involved and considerably embarrassed if relief hadn't come. Only it did, some money was transferred and a new banking influence, usually dominant in its operations, brought into this field. * * * Penetration, Nice and Peaceful THE raids now fashionable along the Wall Street front may be expected to continue. With each new foray, the hooks which the financial giants are throwing out will sink deeper and deeper into filmdom's carcass until the time — no longer far distant now — when domination will be neatly tucked away in the hands of the nation's leading bankers. It's all premeditated and carefully planned. If you break down American industry into its maior banking sources, you will find the strings twined around a handful of fingers. Motion pictures shouldn't and won't be outside the pale. So the bankers think. Sharpening the Axe for Slaughter WHEN the set-up is perfected, many of the economic reforms so long aired and dropped will swing into line. You will find production jerked from complacent resting places in the financial heavens and trimmed to fit the niche it was always designed to fill. You will see bigger and, perhaps, better mergers; understandings between the major companies on theatre buildings and theatre operation and, if you live that long, a sifting of some of the water from stock passed on to a public once, but no longer, so gullible. Where Yardsticks Don't Work YOU will see some of the old, and many new faces, in high places, but all of them will dance to the tune whistled by the bankers. You may see attempts to operate the film business by a yardstick cut to measure for other businesses. And, reasonably, you may see the entire huge entertainment structure grow wobbly on its pins. For the bankers have yet to learn that there is something in the celluloid make-up that doesn't respond to too scientific methods, granting that mountains of waste literally beg for removal. Show business which is the film business is unlike any other. And unless the bankers remember to use their yardstick judiciously and carefully they may meet in this industry the Waterloo that has escaped them so far. K ANN Published weekly by Motion Picture News, Inc. Founded in September, 1913. Publication, Editorial and General Offices 729 Seventh Avenue, New York City. William A. Johnston, President and Publisher; E. J. Hudson, Vice-President ; Maurice Kami, Editor; Charles F. Hynes, Managing Editor; James P. Cunningham, News Editor; Raymond E. Gallagher, Advertising Manager; Los Angeles Office: Hotel Roosevelt, Hollywood; William Crouch, Western Rcpresentatiz'e. Chicago Office: 910 So. Michigan Avenue, Harry E. Hotquist, Central West Representative. Subscription Prices: $3.00 per year in United States, Mexico and all U. S. Possessions. Canada, $5.00. Foreign, $10.00. Copyright, 1930, bv Motion Picture News, Inc.. United States and Great Britain. Title reaistcred in United States Patent Office and foreign. Entered as second class matter at the Post Office. New York, April 22, 1926, under Act of March 3, 1879.