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Hollywood — The ^Madness of Movietone
nine or ten reels of ribbon, throwing the surplus away, when they only wanted seven at the utmost. Technical experts were still brought from Europe at fabulous salaries to be held mute prisoners on the lots. Authors were still imported on trial from New York, although their published works showed no real aptitude for the films. Hollywood, in fact, continued to waste money in a way that no other industry in the world has ever wasted money, and to pay salaries that no other industry has ever paid.
Yet . . . everybody was agreed on the sickness of the movies. Why, if things continued thus Mr Irving Thalberg would be reduced to practical starvation, with not more than j£8 0,000, instead of ^150,000, a year. The movies were sick. What magician could discover the cure ?
The dire nature of the sickness was proved by a slowing of the pulse, the said pulse being the box-office receipts. Technique was improving all the time, photography was better every day, the stories were the same as last year — yet slowly the public interest was waning. What could be wrong with the movies ?
To Europeans one of the most striking features of the American outlook is its peculiar optimism. As long as the sun is shining all possibility of a rainy day must be banished from the mind, so that it becomes a positive indecency and an insult to carry an umbrella. No period of good fortune can possibly be followed by a slump.
This is illustrated by the automobile trade. Ever since the introduction of the Ford car, many years ago, the sale of cars in America has been leaping ahead by bounds. The tremendous popularity of one cheap car induced a normal crop of imitators. Cars became an essential factor in American life. Nevertheless a period of some twenty years was needed not only to spread a sense of the car's necessity, but to break down completely the conservatism of the poorer classes.
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