Variety (Jan 1942)

Januaiy 7, 1942 Thirty-sixth P^RIEfr Ann rveraary PICTURES LET'S GIVE DEMOCRACY A BREAK! John Hay Whitney Compares Censor Despots of Colonial Days to U.S. Senate's Film Probers DEFENDS HOLLYWOOD'S REALISM Getting Hep On Latins By Walt Disney ■ Since we've come back from our survey trip through South America, most of the questions we've been asked by our Hollywood friends have been but slight variations of •Did you find much material? How many shorts are you going to make? Do you think you'll make a feature? Are these pictures going to be for the North or South American market? And lastly—How did you find the South Americans?' Well, flrst" oft,'we found so much material that we came back with-our heads swimming, and it wasn't until just re- cently that we were able to sort it out and devise some sort of a production plan on our proposed South American shorts. At present, we're setting the number at 12, but any day we're liable to up the ante, because right now it looks as if some of our new little South American characters are shap- ing up to be so Interesting that we can see further series with them. But that remains to be seen. And although at present we haven't the slightest idea of making a feature- length job on a South American theme.' I've been in the business too long not to say: 'You never can telL' Many people have the idea that we're making these pic- tures primarily for the South American market However, ' those in the industry realize that, as things now stand, our primary market must be in North -America if we are to realize our. investment We'll show them in th-; South Ameri- can countries, yes, and we'll nervously wait for their ap- proval like an author on opening night Because, frankly, if they shouldn't like them—well, let's not even think about that However, my co-workers and I aren't too afraid that they won't, because we know that our South American friends know we'll be trying out best, and they appreciate that I SOUGHT THEm VIEWPOINTS | They appreciated the fact that we p.ctually came down to them for knowledge, and that we made an honest effort to find out, from them, what they considered the most colorful and representative in their culture, customs, music, color and humor When you visit any country in South America you find that movie-going is a favorite recreation, They are the type -of fans that make you proud you're in the industry. And although they have not liked some of Hollywood's attempts to show their South American customs on the screen, I found that they treat those few cases as isolated Incidents—having nothing to do with their enjoyment of films in general. The most important result of our trip, to me, was the fact that we learned .a great deal of what not to do. From talk- ing to people of every country—from government officials to fruit peddlers—we think we found out .what the composite Brazilian, Argentine, Uruguayan, Chilean or Peruvian citizen likes about his own country, and also what he wouldn't like to see on the screen. For instance, Brazilians know that a lot of Americans have the erroneous notion that their beautiful and progressive country is one big jungle. Naturally, they are proud of their - artists and their music and the beauty of the country itself, as well as. cities like Rio or the modern, strapping industrial city of Sao Paulo. I THAT PAPAGAIO CHARACTER f • We also found out, when we began our verbal poking around, that an unofficial national idol there is a little green parrot called the papagaio. Brazilians are terrific joke- tellers, and instead of saying to their friends, 'Did you hear the one about the fellow that . .' they say: 'Did you hear the one about the papagaio that . ..' Everybody in Brazil that we talked to sooner or later got around to requesting nhat we make a pagagaio character, so right now we've got one short in work that takes Donald Duck to Rio, where he's shown around to all the gay spots by a raffish sophisticated papagaio that turns out. to be a little sharper than D. Duck. ■And in Brazil we were all so hypnotized by the spell of samba music—which has the Brazilians just as hypnotized, Incidentally—that we bought the rights to several of the pieces we liked best, and we intend to make some Silly Symphony-type pictures with this heady. music as a back- ground. Such things as this, we feel, we could have only learned so aeflnitely by being on the spot and getting an over-all idea, from day-in-and-day-out conversations, what the people there like. And we feel that people right here at home are so keenly Interested in our neighbors to the South that they will like to •mow a little more about them. In parts of Bolivia and Peru, some of our artists were so oachanted with the colorful dress and the life in general that tney decided it would be a wonderful place for Donald Duck to flounder as a tourist—and that's just what he's doing. . In Argentina we spent a lot of time studying all the types of gauchos—and there are plenty—and we now know better thMi to dress him up in a Chilean hat! But one Argentine said to us, with twinkling eyes: 'We'll even let you make a few mistakes with our gaucho—so long M you make us laugh.' By John Hay Whitney (Director of the JHotion Pictures Section, Office o] Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs) Product of tlie Country In normal times—times of peace—the man who tries to censor you is the man who is afraid of you. That theorem now, however, is largely of academic Inter- est For the censor of wartime has a legitimate fear—that of the enemy. Right here in America — past and present—we have seen enough exam- ples of peacetime censorship to make evident what brings it about The first was in Salem, 1680, where we had the spectacle of hatchet-faced elders becom- ing so confused at the appearance and behavior of some wilful, buxom and probably not - too - conventional ladies that they called them 'witches.' And so they had them hanged. John. H. iThliiMr In Jamestown, Va., at about the same time, ruled Governor Berkeley, not hatchet-faced, but a red- nosed and gouty old tyrant who loved bis port and feared his people, and who burst forth, with: 7 thank God, there are not free schoob or printing here, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best of government. God keep us from them both.' There are other'examples of censorship in aU the snoopers from Carrie Nation to John S. Sumner and the Watch and Ward Society. Let's not Invoke their ghosts. I THE SENATE FILM PROBE I A very recent one, however, is the picture of a group of United States senators demanding that the film Industry re- frain from taking sides—or, more accurately, expressing itself—in the struggle of democracy against dictatorship. I think that these various attempts at suppression, the old and the new, are all of a kind. "The Puritans feared joy of life, and so they tried to make their life joyless. The tyrants —and for stout Governor Berkeley you can substitute the newer and stouter Marshal Goering—feared criticism, and so they shut the mouths of their people. But what about the would-be censors of this last year of ours, before the Rising Sun outshone itself? They, wanted to use the motion-picture arts to support their own Isolationist stand. What were they afraid of? -It's clear that they feared self-expression, like all the rest They feared the power of pictures. They knew, how tremendous and galvanizing the influence of films may be upon the minds of men. This is a closed issue now, of course. The war has done away with isolationism. But still we're not done with the ' attitude that says, in effect 'the place of art is in the home.' That speaks the same language of condescension and insult as 'the place 6f women is in the home.' - What it means is, keep out of men's way. Don't concern yourself with vital issues. You don't know enough. And, besides, you might say the wrong thing. Be still, or go and dream about a never-never land. Make fUms out of nothing but pasteboard and confectionery. Don't try to reflect the tremendous drama of our daily lives. The men who tried some months ago to put their fingers upon the movies thus admitted that the movies are big. We all know they are big. The United States Government has recognized that they are big. But it believes today that this bigness should not be neutralized, put on ice or camouflaged, but that it should be used. I SEEK PROPER UTILIZATION 1 Not that Washington itself wants to use it. It wants the makers of pictures to utilize it themselves. It' has no inten- tion, for instance, of telling producers that instead of making horse-operas or building castles in Graustark, they should from this day on get to work depicting Japanese as villains. That would be nonsense. We want the horse-operas and we still have a weakness for Graustark. And we don't care for coarse propaganda. 'What the Government has done, in part is to set up the Office of the Coordinator of Inter- American Affairs and to allow me to direct its motion-picture section in cooperation with the motion-picture industry. Our assignment, our slated policy, is to consult and advise. The Office of the* Coordinator also carries on activities in other fields besides motion pictures. Of special importance is its work in radio. Through the efforts of the Office, ex- tensive programs of local long-wave news broadcasts, based on Associated Press and United Press reports, emanate from Latin American stations. Short wave news broadcasts from the United States are being better edited and one of the most powerful U. S. shortwave stations has agreed to air 700 hours a year of special shortwave news, entertainment and educational programs to the other American republics. Also undertaken by the Office of the Coordinator is a comprehensive program to stimulate the teaching in U. S. schools of subjects dealing with the other American republics and a broad program of student interchanges. The Office is seeking to overcome the language handicap and is spon- soring traveling art exhibits and the publication of a guide to all the republics. In the news field, the Coordinator has a staff of trained newspaper people both In Washington and New York to work with the newspapers, news agencies, periodicals and picture services of this country and the other republics. Their work stimulates the publication of news articles and pictures about the United States in other American coun- tries and the publication here of news, articles mi pictures from Latin America. The Coordinator's office hai contracted for the publication of a monthly magazine, 'Za Guardla, By Jerome Weidman The only trouble with this girl, who was blonde and 21 and English and built for sweaters, was that she had an aunt and they both had a passion for the movies which they called the cinema. Aside from that she was fine. The aunt, no. The aunt, to use one of the phrases she employed often, but not about her- self, would never see. 40 again, but she lived her life as though the two- score mark were still a cloud no bigger than her hand on the distant horizon. The aunt was kittenish. . When she wasn't being kittenish the aunt devoted herself, particularly after she foimd out I was an'American, to acting vigorously the part of a chaperon. The girl didn't like that very much. I didn't like it jferoma Wddjiiaii at alL But we were in Batavia, the capital of Java in the Nether- land Indies, halfway across the world from her home iQ Xrfindon and mine in New York, and it was . Vugust of 1939 with a war crowding down on us rapidly. In addition, the aunt wasn't as agile as she fancied herself and she was almost totally blind without her lorgnette, which we could arrange to have misplaced with ridiculous ease, so we did all right. This girl's first name was Jennifer and her second name waa not Carstairs, so, in order to avoid slighting any traditions and inviting any libel suits, I shall call her Sibyl Carstairs, which suits her better than her real name. Jennifer always sounds to me like the Latin for some species of deciduous plant or the trade name tor a mouth wash, Drivgirt'-wasn't" that type. This glri was all right I never found out the name of the aiint because the subject was distasteful to me and because Sibyl always called her 'Auntie.' Sibyl talked that way all the time and It sounded charmlhg. I met Sibyl one day just before tiffin in the hotel bar. I was having a beer which, as Damon Rtmyon puts it about a well known Broadway watering place, comes very good in Java. In t]iese days, which now seem generations back In the past, there wasn't much else to 'do if you were an American of my build, travelling alone, in Batavia. The city, which is flat and clean and very white, is hotter than the Times Square station of the IJl.T. during the rush hour on a summer day. Besides, all the white girls in Java, who are as pretty as iced cup cakes fresh from the oven, are six feet tall or better, are married or engaged to be, and they talk nothing but Dutch.' So I stuck to beer. I was on my second, and drinking it much too fast because the bartender, who wasn't pretty or engaged to be married or over six feet tall, talked nothing but Dutch, <»ither. .. SIBYL SETTLES FOR A BEER I At this point Sibyl came into the bar. I had-never seen her before. So far as I can recall the temperature never dropped below 100 in Batavia, so it must have been at least that at the moment, but she was wearing one ot those filmy cashmere sweater things and she looked as cpol as Sonja Henie in work clothes. She said she was hunting her Auntie, but it was soon obvious that her heart was not in the quest, and she settled for a beer. By the time Auntie showed up we had earned the surly approval of the bartender, who didn't speak our language but knew how to read the esperanto of a mounting bar check, and I had learned that Sibyl and her energetic relative were stopping, in Batavia for a week or 10 days on their way to visit a sheep-ranching uncle In Australia. Sibyl also hadjhe. more salient points ot my own biography well in hand. Among the many things we found we both liked and were homesick for was the movies. Except as I have said, that Sibyl called them the cinema and, further except, that I liked them but she was mad tor them, especially if they were made in America. At the moment there were no movies In Batavia, American or otherwise. But suddenly there were, as there always are when you find someone to do them with, a great many other things in and around Batavia. During the next few days we managed to duck Auntie often enough to do pretty nearly all ot them. In fact, we managed to kick Auntie's lorgnette under the bar table often enough to do several ot those things twice and three times. Sibyl had a lot ot other Items besides sweaters in her luggage. I grew very fond of Batavia during those next few days. I 'SWING, SISTER,' COIHES TO BATAVIA | Then, one afternoon, driving back to the hotel from a swimming resort up in the. hills where we had gone tor • dip and a cocktail, we saw a poster announcing the first showing that night of a newly arrived American film. Sibyl went wild. I was forced to restrain the enthusiasm that as a movie fan of long standing, always wells up in me at the prospect of seeing a new picture: the film advertised was • little item called 'Swing, Sister, Swing" with Ken Murray. That night Auntie was playing bloodhound to our Eliza and she had a firmer grip than usual on her lorgnette, so we took her along. The motion picture theatre was far from the center of the city, on the edge of the native quarter. It was a one-story, box-like affair, made of highly combustible materials resembling tar paper and wood. There were nt seats or chairs. On the rough board floor, liberally strewn with sawdust long past its first youth, several dozen backless benches were arranged roughly in three sections, one against each wall and one in the middle, leaving an approximation ot two jagged aisles in between. It was apparent at a glance that here, as everywhere In (Continued on page 56) (Continued on page 56)