Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1933)

The parade of film flops is a panorama of the motion picture business, just as significant as a list of the successes. For instance, the first great screen failure followed the first great success. One man — D. W. Griffith — was responsible for both productions. After "The Birth of a Nation" made history, Griffith launched "Intolerance." It cost $350,000— big money in those days and big money in these days, too. It was an adventure in technique, since it had three different periods of the world's history interwoven into its loose story. In spite of the spectacle, in spite of its tremendous scenes, the public mind refused to jump from Babylon to Huguenot France to present day America. In baseball language, "Intolerance" lost out on a triple play. The strange part of the history of flops is that these pictures are nearly always made by people who ought to know better. Apparently it takes brains and money and experience to turn out a first class bloomer. Amateurs and beginners cannot go wrong on a big scale. So, one is tempted to jump to the conclusion, that personal vanity, too much ambition and financial recklessness are the reasons back of the failures. Of course, the producer of a failure always has the alibi that the film is too artistic and "over the heads of the public." Sometimes, as in the case of "Broken Blossoms," or Cecil De Mille's "The Whispering Chorus," the alibi holds good. In other instances, the public, not the producer or the star, is right. Let us consider a film called " The Courtship of Miles Standish." This picture, by dying the Sometimes a beautiful, lavish and well cast production is a dead loss. Among these strange failures is Von Stroheim's romantic picture, "The Wedding March," featuring Fay Wray "Joan the Woman" was a flop for DeMille. But it rang the bell for Geraldine Farrar and Wally Reid "Intolerance" with Mae Marsh, was a nciorious flop. It failed for a reason which is simple to any layman. Yet Griffith, pioneer genius of the screen, thought — was sure — it would succeed death of a dog, made screen history. It just about blighted the career of Charles Ray, until then one of the most popular of stars. What was still harder for Ray, the picture took all his savings — about $600,000. The money had been earned by Ray when he was the wage slave of the late Thomas H. Ince. Ray put his all into "The Courtship of Miles Standish." And he lost. The film was tepid, prosy and had no appeal whatever for the public — a public that until that moment had loved Ray's pretty brown eyes. Alia Nazimova also wrote her own one-way ticket out of pictures with an expensive and exotic filming of Oscar Wilde's "Salome." Nazimova wanted to prove to the commercial producers that the screen was capable of absorbing Art and plenty of it. But the picture absorbed the star's money and plenty of it, and the public, as the saying goes, stayed away in droves. IF you want to be mean — and not strictly just — you can blame all such endeavors on personal vanity, a desire for a star to shine in his or her own way. But this charge is not exactly true. For one thing, do not forget, a great many persons are concerned in the making of a movie. While the stars and players and directors are directly blamed for a flop and made to suffer for it, too, a failure, like a success, really belongs at the door of an entire organization. Most of the persons engaged in making a picture are confident of its success with the public. If there weren't this spirit in a studio, movies would be pretty dull affairs. Now when the film is a success, everyone is entitled to say, " I told you so." This state of mass hypnotism also permeates the studio where a failure is being concocted. There may be moments of doubt and hesitation, but most [ PLEAS] ri I "•• ro PAGE 120] 73