We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
COMMUNICATI ONS
MUST make life miserable for the good, wholesome all-American people in “our town.” (I don’t mean to be facetious about the latter but under the circum¬ stances I can’t think of a better way to describe it.) And you don’t get DIS¬ GUSTED and GIVE UP either, if you’re a Communist or fellow traveler — you don’t because you have LOTS OF COM¬ PANY TO BACK YOU UP!
It should also be obvious WHY, as an individual with a REAL STAKE in my guild and its power over my very eco¬ nomic existence and my reputation, I am FRIGHTENED and ANGERED and NAU¬ SEATED by these attacks that are putting me and the majority of my fellow writers under a disreputable blanket of ACCU¬ SATIONS AND SUSPICIONS which are CONTRARY to everything WE BELIEVE IN and WANT — and which we must recognize is a DISGRACE to the industry we represent!
We either have a guild and principles that we ARE LOYAL TO or we HAVEN’T! We either have self-respect and enjoy the pride of being good, wholesome allAmerican people in our town — indeed in our whole wonderful, free country or we haven’t ANYTHING and might as well roll over and GO BACK TO SLEEP!
IF the MAJORITY of SWG members are CONVINCED their guild is NOT controlled by Communistic influences as is being charged so widely and disasterously, they they should DEMAND of their Executive Board that some CON¬ CERTED and COLLECTIVE ACTION be taken to DISSPROVE these charges!!!
Certainly, I nor anyone else needs to tell them that you CAN’T WASH A DIRTY SHIRT BY IGNORING IT — or by SNEERING at it!!!
ON DOCUMENTARY FILMS Jean H. Lenauer
Frankly I am a little shocked. Having read The Screen Writer for the last few
JEAN H. LENAUER, newspaperman, exhibitor and producer, over the past 20 years, is now working as a producer tor the Signal Corps.
months, I was pleased to see that the magazine treated questions that interest filmmakers in a serious and realistic sense. But in the July issue, I find a most supine and pious article about the potential future of documentary films.
I am referring to the article entitled THE DOCUMENTARY FILM ERA. In it the author expresses convictions that private interests will, with the possible gain of thousands of dollars in view, see to it that the documentary film, which received an enormous helping hand dur¬ ing the war, continues.
Not that there is basically anything wrong with people hoping and wishing, but this is 1 946.
There is no discussion or program of how this would be achieved. Nor is there the slightest indication that the author has bothered to look around or examined the very noticeable trend of the last few months. Had he done that, he would un¬ doubtedly have come to a quite different and highly disappointing conclusion.
What has transpired in this year since the Japs threw down the towel?
The WAC, which used to be the co¬ ordinating committee between war agen¬ cies and the exhibitors and distributors, is out of existence. The newly formed ATA, an independent exhibitors’ associa¬ tion of recent vintage, has made it fairly clear that it does not intend to help bring before the public any documentary films made by the War agencies or other gov¬ ernment departments. The recent argu¬ ment about SEEDS OF DESTINY seems to indicate clearly how the wind blows there.
The State Department is restricted to make films for overseas only. Though the OWI was in the same predicament dur¬ ing the emergency, it was able to get some of the Capra films and other out¬ standing documentaries before the Amer¬ ican public. Obviously the State Depart¬ ment can’t duplicate that situation.
The patriotic fervor is gone and the exhibitors once again presume to tell you what the public wants to see or not.
The major companies have embarked on a rather vast program of 1 6mm ex¬ ploitation and within the needs of such
41