Radio annual and television yearbook (1938)

each of us tries to produce. We have found, as you have found, that an interchange of talent is mutually beneficial. We want to continue to use Hollywood "big names," Hollywood stories, and Hollywood music. On our part, we are glad to see radio talent given its "chance at the movies." And we are particularly anxious that, through intelligent cooperation, we may improve the quality of the work that both industries are striving to do. A few years ago — and how many of us have already forgotten it — serious music, symphonic and operatic, was scornfully dismissed as "highbrow," a word that is strangely synonymous with "untouchable" in the field of popular entertainment. For that reason, Hollywood — naturally enough — didn't attempt any films requiring that kind of music. Let me cite you a short list of names. Lily Pons, Grace Moore, Gladys Swarthout, Leopold Stokowski, Lawrence Tibbett, Nelson Eddy, Andre Kostelanetz. None of these names would have had a Chinaman's chance of "breaking into the movies" a few years back. Yet all of them have been invited out there and given contracts. Radio, of course, explains it. Eight years ago, Columbia began to carry in full the Sunday afternoon concerts of the New York Philharmonic. "A nice gesture," people said, "but who will listen?" Truth to tell, there was no way of knowing the answer to that one — in advance. But today we know. The Philharmonic concerts are still on Columbia, for the eighth consecutive year, and 30,000,000 people — at a conservative estimate — will have 'listened to one or more of them before the season is over. This is an audience that we have checked and watched grow over a period of years. Its growth gives us a graphic record of the growth in popularity of serious music. Ford, with his Sunday Evening Hour, and Chesterfield, with Andre Kostelanetz, have contributed materially in developing a large enough audience for serious music to warrant the attention of Hollywood producers. And there, in my opinion, we touch upon the most important point in the relationship of the radio and moving picture industries. We in radio are in a much more advantageous position than you to test the appeal of new talent and new ideas in entertainment. We in Columbia devote a great deal of our time and money to this end. The Columbia Workshop is a case in point. Last summer, Columbia offered over 98 stations, a series of eight Shakespearian plays in weekly one-hour adaptations. The plays were prepared for radio and directed in their production by Brewster Morgan of my department. Mr. Morgan attracted so much attention through the originality and quality of his work that we lost him — to MGM as an associate producer. I am working at this time on a new radio program that will feature a comedian in whom Hollywood has yet to see possibilities. Fifty-two weeks from today, that man will have a movie contract. Why? Because in those fifty-two weeks radio will have enlarged his audience from a few hundred to millions; will have created for him a popular demand large enough to remove all risks — as far as Hollywood is concerned — in signing him to the contract. Which is as it should be. Hollywood can't afford to take chances on unknown talent or untried forms of entertainment. Radio can. Hollywood must have some tangible evidence of what the public wants before it takes on the expense of a film production. Radio still has the facilities for experimentation. Time, network, and — most important of all— a large audience are available to us for the development of new ideas, new material, new players. Whatever survives our testing — whether it is writing, production, or talent — automatically becomes eligible for West Coast acceptance. Without the slightest exaggeration— or rancor — I think we may fairly paraphrase the slogan of the city of Trenton, N. J., to read: "What radio makes, Hollywood takes." But we also are faced with conditions under which we cannot afford to take chances in what we offer to our audience. We have commercial sponsors, spending thousands of dollars weekly to attract large nation-wide audiences; men who cannot afford to experiment with the unknown and untried. How these sponsors have utilized Hollywood talent on their programs is too well known to mention here. Why they have done so, I have just tried to explain. When it comes to airing a big program at big cost for a sponsor we are in the same position as picture producers. We must use established names. That is where cooperation is most needed in the relationship of radio and movies, insofar as it concerns both. 924