Judge — June 1938 — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

HE double feature—you are famil- iar with the argument—is as though the New York Philharmonic were required not only to play two sym- phonies every night but to change the symphonies three times a week. In about two months it would run out of good symphonies. Then it would play one good symphony and one not so good, and before long two not so good. Peo- ple would call up to find when the one that was not quite so bad as the other was going on. Composers would de- liberately write bad, tiresome, common- place music to fill up the program. The Board of Governors of the Philharmonic would put in Bingo Wednesday and Saturday nights. The Boston Symphony would give away chinaware. The pub- lic, we would be given to understand, would like it. The theory is, and every movie house proprietor in the land believes it, that out of sheer wanton self-indulgence peo- ple come to the movies to be bored. After sitting for an hour and a half through a pretty good film, they just like to stick around for another hour and a half, though they know in ad- vance that the next film will send them home stupefied. There is not much to be said for the double feature. Of course, if exhibitors Wi y f’ SH z. ks GSS SRG RGU yf PS THE MOVIES By Robert Terrall still exhibited only a feature and a com- edy, Walt Disney would never have set his men to making Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And without the double feature movie critics would have considerably less opportunity to work up indignation. The most effective pose a critic can take is to be indignant, and almost every critic gets indignant about the double feature. Now, you don't catch us getting ex- cited about the theatre, for instance. The theatre can go right ahead and die, and we will not be among those standing at the corner of 45th Street and Broadway, weeping. But if the movies died and eighty million people had to do some. thing else nights, it would make us very sad. In the last few months, a few surveys conducted on the most accepted pseudo. scientific principles have shown that the public, except for grammar school stu- dents and old men who go to the movies to keep warm, really does not like “two smash hits.” Reluctantly the movie house proprietors have begun to shake their heads and go back to the single feature. But there is one notion that they refuse to give up: the notion that no matter how long a picture lasts, the audience must be kept in out of the fresh air for three solid hours—which brings up the question of Selected Short Subjects. Last week we went to see a film at one of the enlightened single feature houses—Test Pilot, noisy in spots but in other spots really very good. Before it came on we saw an Our Gang com. edy, a short musical film with two amaz. ingly bad tap-dancers, something called a Novelty consisting of photographs of dahlias, and a Peru travel lecture in Technicolor. That particular enlight- ened proprietor had been caught un- awares by the single feature. Obviously, if he and the other members of the trade are going back to the formula of a fea- ture and a comedy, which was, after all, a pretty good formula, the indignant critics had better conduct a few more surveys and persuade the industry to take more pains with its comedies. For the next time we go to a single feature house we shall call up to find out when to miss the short comedies, the novelties and the travel lectures, which will not be much different from calling up to find out when to miss the short end of a double-feature, That's this writer's personal opinion. It also goes for THE JuDGE's new Wash. ington Parade, soon to be released by Columbia Pictures, until it proves other- wise. Maybe it'll prove otherwise. “Ou, HOW AM I EVER GOING TO TELL THEM I CAN'T PAY THEM?” The Judge comicbooks.com