Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1930)

Art's liquor must have been pretty bad. Think of a man having two bottles of good liquor and having no friends. EVER hear of Ivan Abramson? Well, anyhow, years ago when the motion picture business was in its infancy, as we used to say, Abramson was one of the most interesting characters in the business. He was a Russian immigrant and had been a producer of melodramas in the old country. He made motion pictures in New York on a shoe string capital and often carried them around under his arm to sell to distributors. Ivan couldn't speak English very well and he was never mentioned in the society columns of the newspapers, but his formula was society, sex, and plenty of hot titles. SOME of the classic stories of the old days of picture production are told about him. At one time he was making one of his sex thrillers in which he had gone to the expense of several thousand dollars in building a ball room "set." As an assistant he had a nephew of about eighteen who had been to high school and was his uncle's mentor in the ways of the American haute monde. Ivan had engaged thirty or forty extras in hired dress suits and gowns for one day, and was putting on the big hall room scene in what was supposed to be a millionaire's home. He worked for about an hour, finished up all the scenes and business in his scenario, and found to his disgust that his story did not call for enough action to keep the ball room set and the society dressed actors on the screen long enough to get the full value of the money expended. He puzzled over his problem, and called his nephew assistant. "Max," he said, "we need more footage on this fine set. Tell me, what do the society people do when they are not acting in the scenario?" "Oh," replied the nephew, "they just monkey around." "All right," yelled Ivan to his workers. "Lights, camera, action. Everybody monkey around like society people for fifty feet." WE hadn't heard of Mr. Abramson for years until recently, when he started suit against the entire motion picture business, Will Hays and all, claiming that the monopoly had deprived him of the means of making an honorable living. A few other companies have come into the business in the meantime and prospered, but Ivan seems to think the entire business has been picking on him. The titles of some of his pictures were "Sex Lure," "Forbidden Fruit," "Lying Wives," and "Enlighten Thy Daughter." And one dignified New York newspaper took the lawsuit so seriously it gave the story about it over a column of space. WE have as yet no conception of what the motion picture and the talking picture has done and is doing in influencing the world in manners, style of clothes, architecture, interior decoration, development of beauty, health and speech. 30 We know that a motion picture created a demand for sewing machines in Java and Sumatra. We know that one Wally Reid picture increased the sale of one type of car tenfold in Rio de Janeiro. We know that one Gloria Swanson picture sold millions of bottles of a popular perfume which was recognized by its peculiarly shaped black bottle. The plumbing manufacturers admit Cecil De Mille influenced tremendous changes in bathroom design and fixtures, and department stores in Detroit and other cities traced a sudden demand for doll telephone covers to his pictures. We know that the effort of the feminine stars for slenderness started a national reducing craze. But we do not yet know the half of it. Leaving the Paramount Theater in New York recently after seeing — and, pardon me, hearing — Ruth Chatterton and Clive Brook in "The Laughing Lady," I heard a girl say to her companion: "That finished it. Tomorrow I am going to buy a new dress. This short evening dress is out. When I watched Ruth Chatterton move about in those beautiful flowing dresses I felt old-fashioned and THE most efficient production manager in California has been discovered. It's his job to keep expenses down and see that everybody who is drawing a pay check works for it. The other day he heard some carpenters working on a set outside his office and rushed out in great excitement. "What's the matter?" asked his assistant as he went by. "There are eighty-one carpenters charged to that set, and I only hear eighty hammers," was the production manager's answer. TO the colored actors in the picture colony all producers are multi-millionaires. Stepin Fetchit, the somewhat erratic and quite selfimportant featured player, was discussing Douglas Fairbanks with one of his negro friends who works as a general utility man in the Fairbanks studio. "Yes," opined Stepin, "I suppose Douglas is a millionaire." "Millionaire, . . . millionaire?" replied his colored friend, looking at him in disgust. "Ah is surprised at yo igoranee. Mr. Fairbanks is not only a millionaire, boy, he is a malted millionaire." ANOTHER proof that New Yorkers are easy marks is the way some of us give up two dollars to see a picture that runs an hour and a quarter. "Disraeli" is a splendid picture and one everybody should see. BUT— I not only object to a two-dollar charge for it, but I object to the way they wasted a good hour and a half of my time making me sit through a tiresome lot of second rate preliminary junk before they got to the picture. I heard many murmurs throughout the house, and more than one member of the audience got up and walked out.