The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

Shirley Collier Agency (FOR WRITERS EXCLUSIVELY) 204 South Beverly Drive ■ BEVERLY HILLS • CRestview 6-3115 New York Representative: SIDNEY SATENSTEIN, 75 Varick Street WAIker 5-7600 Report From Europe (Continued from Page 6) OTHER governments don't call out the troops, but they do build battlements of other kinds to balk the flow of our pictures. They fire away at us with special taxes, quotas, trade barriers and other restrictive devices. Many of these restrictions spring from dollar shortages, some from ambition to build up home industries. These are understandable reasons. We fully recognize the dollar stringencies facing governments today, and no one can object to legitimate efforts to help domestic industries. But we do very seriously object when funds realized from the showing of our pictures are used to underwrite our competitors to put us out of business, especially when this is done behind the excuse of a dollar shortage. Look what's happened to us in Great Britain. Britain last year slapped a 75 per cent tax on the earnings of imported motion pictures. That tax forced us out of the British market. It made it impossible for us to do business in Great Britain. It did more than that. It demoralized the British motion picture business from top to bottom. It threatened mass closings of British theatres. It sent British production into a skid and brought British producers close to bankruptcy. When the full force of the tax was felt, it was finally admitted on all sides that it was a great mistake. And then, after months of needless impasse, our industry negotiated a film agreement with the British government. This accord eliminated the 75 per cent tax and stipulated that American companies could remit annually only $17 million as against remittances of $50 million last year. Under the agreement, the British Government promised to assist our companies in utilizing their unremittable earnings. These funds could be usedin ways which would not constitute a dollar drain on the British Treasury and which would not create unfair competition for British industry. ON our part we were always ready to help Britain save dollars, and during the long impasse we made repeated offers to reach an agreement accomplishing this purpose. The accord was negotiated in March and became effective in June. We thought the agreement had removed obstacles which were aggravating Anglo-American film relations and had opened a new and brighter period of harmony. But the effective date of the agreement had barely been reached when Britain, without warning, cracked down with another blow. Britain adopted a quota — two times higher than an existing one — requiring British theaters to devote 45 per cent of their first-feature playing time to British pictures. This doubled screen qouta, sponsored by British producers, is a legislative device denying the British people freedom of choice in selecting motion picture entertainment. Under this quota, British moviegoers, almost half the time, will have to see British films, whether they are good or bad, or see none at all. The only freedom of choice they have is to stay away from the theaters. In trying to legislate the British public into theaters to see British pictures, I think the British producers will find that they are, instead, legislating the people out of the theaters and legislating themselves into a depression which will drag British exhibitors down with them. The British quota is a throwback to the old system of restrictions and trade barriers which so long was responsible for international economic confusion and chaos. WE'VE had a lot of suggestions and advice from critics outside the industry. I'd like to return the compliment by giving them suggestions and advice. My suggestion is this: If our critics want a new and The Screen Writer, October, 194 17