The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

Jean Harlow Mae West Margaret Sullavan NEW MOVIE FORECAST ,'. OR 935 With the New Year the spotlight picks out here an old face, there a new one, and then — moves on ! Which will you make your prime favorites this year? Here is Ramon Romero's annual guide to keep and check against during the months that follow THE year nineteen hundred and thirty-five is definitely marked to see more important and significant changes in the motion picture industry than in any other previous year since the advent of talking pictures. In the near-decade just ending, during which time the screen passed from silence to sound, and from written titles to spoken dialogue, a new constellation of stars has practically replaced the older order, together with new directors and outside writing talent from every branch of literature. The infusion of new blood into the staid and tried ideas of Hollywood brought into the production of motion pictures a super-sophistication which found its birth in everything from the gutters of Paris to Mae West's playhouse emporium in the Roaring Forties of New York, and through the years gained impetus in a certain public demand to its inhibitions expressed in terms of cinema. Encouraged by boxoffice receipts, and blinded by bad taste, the producers lost all perspective of the difference between entertainment and sensationalism, resulting in the censorship upheaval of 1934. The result of this puritanical tumult will make itself felt in every branch of photoplay production during the coming year. Automatically a new moral code has been created, and by its standards old stars will fall and new ones rise; stories and plays bought for fabulous figures will either be discarded or completely rewritten; motion picture advertisements will take on a new dignity, the same being true of everything pertaining to the fifth industry and the personalities it involves. HOLLYWOOD has definitely recognized censorship. Instead of putting up a battle against the churches and other religious organiza tions in the "Decency Drive" campaign, the producers have accepted the ultimatum at a loss of millions of dollars in prepared scripts; having abolished gangster themes, horror pictures, underwear parades and all risque sex angles from their 1935 schedules. The tail-end of 1934 found such naive fare as "Girl of the Limberlost," "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," "Anne of Green Gables" and "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," competing for boxoffice records with Mae West's "Belle of the Nineties," (which was refilmed three times in the grand clean-up), and the denatured Jean Harlow films. The chief danger of this self-accepted censorship lies in going to the other extreme by flooding the market with a series of "Pollyanna productions." Such homespun relics of a Victorian past as "The Little Minister," "Way Down East" and "Little Men" are about to descend like an avalanche of angels upon a sexsaturated movie audience. Eventually censorship may mean the salvation of the movies, bringing about a progressive regeneration of Hollywood ideals; resulting in the creation of a great literature of the screen that will place it in one of the highest places Ramon Romero, the Author 1934 TEN MOST POPULAR MEN STARS, IN ORDER 1. Clark Gable. 2. Will Rogers. 3. Wallace Beery. 4. Bing Crosby. 5. George Arliss. 6. Dick Powell. 7. Eddie Cantor. 8. Joe E. Brown. 9. James Cagney. 10. Fredric March. (See photographs below.) TEN MOST POPULAR WOMEN STARS, IN ORDER 1. Mae West. 2. Joan Crawford. 3. Norma Shearer. 4. Kay Francis. 5. Janet Gaynor. 6. Jean Harlow. 7. Claudette Colbert. 8. Shirley Temple. 9. Ann Harding. 10. Margaret Sullavan. (See photographs at top of page.) ALL THE BIG HITS OF 1934 WERE CLEAN 1. It Happened One Night 2. The Thin Man 3. One Night of Love 4. David Harum 5. House of Rothschild 6. Footlight Parade 7. Little Women 8. Little Miss Marker 9. Twenty Million Sweethearts 10. Roman Scandals Fredric March Bing Crosby Dick Powell Wallace Beery Eddie Cantor 26 The New Movie Magazine, February, 1935