Judge — May 1938 — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

THE MOVIES By Robert Terrall N Germany, Dr. Goebbels has taken over the movies; the actors and ac. tresses and directors do what he tells them. But one thing he hasn't yet been able to do: get people to go. In Berlin just now there is revival after revival of Broadway Melody of 1938, with Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor. But for Dr. Goebbels’ films there are two showings a day, at 6:30 and at 8:30, and no one at all comes at 6:30. In France, the cinema as an industry is so disordered that one enterprising direc- tor is able to put almost every capable actor and scenario writer to work on one film—Un Carnet de Bal, or as we call it, Life Dances On. In Italy, Mussolini tries his best to get Hollywood producers to come and build studios in Rome, but something always comes up. In Austria, a half dozen films, ready for release, are burned. In Russia, all the Soviet studios to- gether turn out about half as many films a year as Warner Brothers. In England, the House of Commons spends three days arguing and ends up by “requesting” Hollywood to make some of its films in England, or else. And the result, read from American marquees, is this: Mayerling (French) ; Generals With. out Buttons (French); Life Dances On (French); Burgtheater (Austrian) ; Storm in a Teacup (English) ; The Girl Was Young (English); Lenin in Oc- tober (Russian); Baltic Deputy (Rus- sian); Peter the First (Russian). Two years ago a catalogue like that would have been ridiculous in an Ameri- can magazine. In New York there have “For HEAVEN'S Sakes! WALKING RIGHT THIs Way Past Our Winpow— Robert TayLor!” always been theatres showing foreign films. (One theatre is showing a movie from Lapland.) In the last couple of years almost every city with a sizeable foreign population has acquired one or two of these shabby little theatres, usually called “The Fine Arts.” But the really astonishing thing—it has happened only in the last few months—is that movies like Mayerling and Baltic Deputy, one in French, the other in Russian, have started the rounds of the ordinary, neigh- borhood, 25¢-before-6 theatres, being shown with such pure examples of the Hollywood art as Kansas City Princess and Radio City Revels. And the audi- ences are apparently no more restive than they ordinarily are. Hollywood had bet- ter look out. No American producer is much wor- ried about European films taking away his American market, but he is worried stiff about his European market. Forty per cent of Hollywood's profits come from foreign countries. And there is one idea held in common by foreign coun- tries: they want to keep out Hollywood . Movies and nab the Hollywood forty per cent. Of course this is all to the good, every- thing considered. But a producer who has to look out for the interest of his stockholders, some of whom, after all, are members of his immediate family, cannot consider everything. That, in case you have wondered, is why Holly- wood producers are so incessantly panic- striken. That is why they go out of their way not to hurt anybody’s feelings. That is why only a half-a-dozen films every six months touch on any topic of any interest or importance. Unquestionably, from the Hollywood point of view, the for- eign film is a menace. The Judge comicbooks.com