Judge — July 1932 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FTER seven years of patiently ex- A plaining to Hollywood its faults and of guiding my public to those movies which were made with some skill or which had some small quantity of entertainment in them, I take this space to stop and wonder just who is interested in better if not bigger movies. This year the producers are not going to have time to calculate what the public might want, as they have in the past; the producers are not going to be able to keep up their dog- chasing-his-tail existence (whereby a writer goes to Hollywood for thre months, is paid an ample sum for sitting in a studio cell regarding his stomach, forthwith dashes back to New York and writes a book about Hollywood which is immediately pur- chased by the producers and turned over for adaptation toa newly arrived writer); the producers, in t, are going to have to make pictures which they themselves believe to be sood. They can’t make many mistakes this y. If they all make doctor dramas showing life in the emer- gency room and the public decides form of thriller the will very li shut. the cleaners and the studios decor- ated with “to rent” signs. do the producers have to make pic- tures which pay, they have to do it right away, which means they can not buy enough books or plays to keep them going. They must find th material in Hollywood and they have to decide right there on the spot, without the aid of literary reviews, or without the knowledge that a theatre-going public. has seen their story in play form, whether their material is good or bad. All of which puts it up to the Pro ducers suddenly, and it is lo; they should rush through th ch things as they themselves believe to be good. T is my opinion that this material, which we will see during the com- ing year, will be wilder, less stand- dized and more entertaining than anything else the boys have ever JUDGING THE OVIES By PARE LORENTZ shown us, For one thing, even a movie producer must be aware of the fact that the depression has had one soothing salutary effect; it has drowned the cries of the morali and it has gently shoved them back in the primeval mud from which they sprang. With unemployed men walk- ing the streets, with revenue men making last-minute desperate raids nst the day when they will ell apples, with war clouds in every direction, with the Rockefellers crying quits at the sight of next year’s tax bills, with all the trouble and confusion which exists in the land of the Anti-Saloon League, no- body cares what the moralists think or do, Lacking funds or support there is very little that they can do, and the producers have only to be careful of ordinary decency and the local sheriffs, no very great check on any manufacturer. Besides being wilder, I think this product will be more legitimate. By that, I mean that movies will ac- tually be movies and not just pres- entations of famous names and faces or reproduced stage pl. viven this encouraging the motion picture, what is the pub- lic going to do? The public is not going to evince any greater desire to go to movies than they have shown this year, which means that more theatres must be bankrupt and more companies must their sto get down in the penny class. It means also that the general public is not interested in better or legitimate mov that it is not interested in honesty instead of the censor-weaseling they have had for ten years, and that, in fact, it is becoming bored with movies. For a while the money poured in so some of the producers must have that going-to-the-movies a necessary function in life. They forgot that it was a habit, like whistling in the bath-tub, which might be discontinued by any number of people at any given time. And I think great hordes of people are dis- continuing that habit not, as you might think from reading sour fel- lows who complain at the lack of 20 merit in pictures, but because they simply have read too muc! en too much, and he too much about the movie: nd they can’t be driven or fooled or scared into theatres any more. 11s boredom is the only possible explanation for the enormous drop in customers, because if the customers were lly interested in better movies they'd be flocking to the theatres right now. But the phrase which one hears on every hand “aren't movies getting terri- ble?” is not occasioned by any new critical insight on the part of the movie audiences, it is brought about by the same ennui which causes old Union League members to shake their heads and mumble when Hoover is mentioned. It is an ennui which includes the whole show that has been going on these past ten years. The country is tired of the Republican Party. It is tired of tabloid murders, it is tired of talk about labor and capital, it is exhausted with hurrahs about fac- tory production: it is tired. That pub has been goaded into remembering names of famous di- vorcees, remembering titles of best- sellers, remembering catch-phrases about the government. It has had comic strips, magazines, books, and advertisements hurled in amed at it in trains, over s, in school rooms, and in offices and it wants to go somewhere and go fishing and forget about it. The loudest, the most amazing, profit- producing, scandalmonging, fame- forging institution in the whole show was the motion picture. Well, the boys are tired of the show and they are tired of the red tent. The enough, finally. And no matter what the producers give them, how well- directed, how many competent people appear, it will not serve to increase patronage this year, and will do no more good than the election of the fortunate gentleman chosen by the Democrats to be president. We'll just have to wait for the children to grow up before we can have another real circus, j comicbooks.com