Showmen's Trade Review (Oct-Dec 1941)

FOR all those who measure screen values in terms of personal preference, "artistic" standards, etc., there is unfailingly a surprise in store when Leaders of the Motion Picture Industry brings the story of the record as written by the box-offices of the country's theatres. It's all very well for "observers," and the critics and the professionally informed to set up "standards" and yardsticks. But the screen has been and still is a medium of entertainment for the masses, and as such the stories written for it and produced for presentation upon it succeed or fail upon the basis of mass opinion regarding them. The pictures which gain the widest audiences are (there's no surprise for this among those versed in the hard, down-to-earth realities of motion picture theatre operation) the pictures which have broad, human appeal; whose drama revolves about the problems and conflicts arising from circumstances the like of which conceivably could occur in the life of very ordinary people under the very ordinary conditions of normal life. Were this not so the records at the theatre boxoffices, and the accounting records of the producers as well, would not show, year after year, that it was some picture of a very fundamental type which reaped in the big financial rewards. Those outstanding productions which engage the intellect and arouse the enthusiasm of the comparatively few who patronize the more luxurious and more expensive theatres, most certainly are not to be sneered at. Such pictures in the detail of story treatment, directorial skill or technical ingenuity assuredly help in great measure to advance the art of the motion picture. However, these are the luxuries. For the bread and butter which keeps the motion picture body alive and so functioning that it can experiment with the new and different, however, the industry must have the pictures which often fail to arouse interest among the critical but which bring to the masses that kind of entertainment for which they are not only willing but eager to pay. The pictures which rank as Leaders in the report which follows are the pictures the exhibitors of America found, right at their theatres, to be the most successful in running up records at the box-office. Now, after several years of accurate polling of exhibitor opinion in the matter of picture values and star rating, this publication again offers with the utmost confidence in the accuracy of the record it shows, the true story of box-office performances of all of the pictures released during the period covered by the survey. The pictures eligible for rating among the Leaders are listed by titles under the names of the distributor companies releasing them. Reference to this listing will clarify matters for those who may be less wellinformed on the way the Leaders Poll functions than those familiar therewith through the several years of its existence as the most accurate reflection of boxoffice performance. Leaders, as will be seen in the listing of stars as ranked by exhibitors, is bound by no set rules of arbitrarily selected numbers — five, or ten or whatever convenient number of "bests." Upon the basis of reports, pictures which rank as Leaders and stars rated as Leaders are given that distinction. It so happens that there are more than five, or ten, or even fifteen, outstanding stars counted among the "marquee names" exhibitors found magnetic during the period of this poll. In consequence, the precise number of stars meeting the requirements of Leaders as set up upon the basis of a polling system which has proved over and over again its accuracy, are so classified in this record of Leaders of the Motion Picture Industry 1941. LEADERS of the MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY Page 13