Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1941)

Arizona turns out for "Arizona," premiere of Columbia's classic CLO SE UPS AVERY happy thing is taking place in Hollywood's increasing discovery of America . . . and in America's increasing acquaintanceship with Hollywood and its people . . . In September, 1939, when France and England declared war on Germany . . that act was practically a declaration of failure for Hollywood . . . the previous years' steady influx of English, German, French, Italian personalities in our films, not only as stars but a.s producers, writers, directors and the like . . . had not alone been because th< malities were talented and could bring great gifts to the screen . . . their advent in Hollywood was also for the purpose of holding the so-called "foreign market" and many a film was given a definite English or Continental slant under the assumption that it would go in America, anyhow, and that its sale would bring in the velvet . . . the war declaration knocked out that prop to the profits. . . . It made the end of \'X)'.) and the beginning of 1940 the hardest season Hollywood has ever endured . . . months in which some of Hollywood's shrewdest thinkers prophesied that pictures could never survivi With the Wind," the most expensive film ever produced was reed during thai period ... it was generally conceded in movieland that Selznick might have got his money hack if it hadn't been for the loss of BY RUTH WATERBURY the European market but that now it was obviously impossible. . . . You know, of course, what did happen to "Gone With the Wind" . . . how today, before it has even once played at popular prices, it has made well over $25,000,000 . . . or, in other words, how it is even today, when the end of its earnings are still nowhere in sight, the most successful picture financially that has ever been created ... it is not at all impossible that it may eventually make $50,000,000. . . . THE money that "Wind" made, however, is not what I'm thinking about here . . . there is another side to the story of that film's success . . . theni.s the visible benefit that its premiere at Allan* I • ia with its miles of attendant publicity had m stimulating that success . . . a premiere which was much benefited, I believe, by the fact that the Metro press boys had learned greatly from watching a similar debut that the Warner praise factory had created for "Dodge City" m 6 SHOTS the Kansas city of that name. . . . Since that time Warners have had "Virginia City" in the ghost village up in the old gold rush land . . . they have had, too, "Knute Rockne. All American," at South Bend, Indiana . . . Twentieth Century-Fox has had "Brigham Young, Frontiersman" at Salt Lake City . . . and now even little Columbia has had "Arizona" at Tucson, Arizona, where the film was made . . . and as a result of all these, every chamber of commerce in the United States is crying for some film to preview . . . and stars and directors are finding out about the customers who are being quickened into a new interest in movie players by seeing them face to face and by talking to them, man to man. . . . I went, for instance, on the "Arizona" trek . . . went along with the stars and the win. rs Columbia transported some six hundred miles away from Hollywood for that dazzling occasion . . . and never. I assure' you. did I feel that I got more benefit or knowledge or excitement or zest out of two days than I did out of those crowded, noisy, hilarious, exhilarating days m this glowing city of our great West. . . . 1 was among those who went out by chartered plane from the Burbank airport late one Thursdaj aftel > . . . (we had our choice between a three-hour plane trip or a twelvehour railroad {Continued on pnge 85) photoplay combined infii movii mihror