Judge — December 1938 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

the Theatre Broadway, and its attendant borderland of side streets, bars, restaurants, and “theatrical gathering places,” in any one of which Edwin Booth may once have stopped to ask the time, boasts a strange, strident, yet furtive group of ill-clad, ill-fed, ill-housed men in black hom- burgs. Who are they? They are the myrmi- dons of maybe, the pursuers of perhaps—in a word, the boys with a play that will wow the town for a five-year run, if only they can get introduced to Lee Shubert, or “somebody really high up” in the Theatre Guild. We thought we had these cuff-polishers under control, but we underestimated the power of the press. For, lo! out of this month's mail bag comes this rare hispanic morsel of papyrus. We are moved to print it Dear Sir, starts our semi-private correspond- ence: I am reading recentful in THE JUDGE maga- zine a most very interesting article relateful of your reporting concerning of Plays and Play- wrights, in which a laudible disposition toward unknown writers is by you plainly manifest. You no doubt possessing the good sense to be- lieving, that even among garbage a valuable “Gem” some timmes can be found, & this is induceing me to addressing you. Iam a spanish writer—from spain—& posses- sing several plays, all of them written for the Screen, but some of them could very easy be adapting for the Stag. They are; some of span- ish and some of american backgrounds. Very few persons have seeing them and until now I have done little to place them (because I inten the producing of them years ago myself, at a time when I was trying the forming of a special spanish Comp. for the producing of not only my own plays but those of other most fam- ous spanish writers, who had placed to the ef- fect all their plays at my disposal) but these few persons, very intelligent’ ones, and some most versed in theat- rical affairs as well as others, speak of them to me in most laudi- tory manners & I have to judging from their impressions, the public impressions of same, could not fail but be- ing similar. Every one of them is containing something extraordi- nary, unusual, new or sensational, but for the present, I will concrete myself to 1 of them, for being the most indicated for immediate producing for this season on ac- count of a certain cir- cumstances concur- ring. I would like to re- questing from you to reading this play at once or the sooner possible. As the play is containing all ready Adequate Dialogue, it would be requiring relatively little and few aliterations to adopting it for the Stag be it as a Mclo-dramatic Comedy or as a musical-comedy or Opretta of semi-scrious an dolorous character. Am writing it about two months ago aliterating and improving it recentful & am just receiving Copyright Registration from Washington, DC. A person muchly versed in Stag matters, is of the opinion, the play is containing immense possibilities, not only for the Screen but for the Stag, & specialy as a Magnificent Musical Com- edy which you could collaborating on with mu- sic and dancing. Awaiting your news, I beg: ingly remain yours so truly E. F-V. Producers will please form to the right, ace cording to seniority of bank balance. cc, "There he goes losing his temper again!" two sorts of movies don’t compete, is content. Recently, in an effort to entice people into buying more rolls of film, the camera compa- nies have been sneering openly at these pictures of babies and fishing trips and the next-door neighbor's dog. Also they have been sneering at the amount of ingenuity that goes into an ordinary Hollywood movie, implying seductive: ly that anyone could do as well without half trying. All you would need would be a willing cast of characters and a little application. The camera companies would make huge profits, the Hollywood studios would go broke and disap pear. It would be a renaissance of movie-mak- ing. American drama would be invigorated by the activity of 2,000,000 eager amateurs. One example of the new art we have seen (in our first enthusiasm we announced it as the folk art of the 20th century): a little 16mm. amateur venture called Death on Capitol Hill. We are sure it will never get national distri- the Mowies .» coccer teeeatt A man and his wife are sitting in the living room reading the evening paper. The dishes are done, no new national weekly has come out that day, there is noth- ing to do until bedtime. The man reads that motion pic- tures are his best form of en- tertainment—better, anyway, than. sitting around the house not doing anything. So he goes to the movies. If he goes to the movies often enough, the movie industry will stop complaining about the box office, which has been pretty sick straight through the Recession and the Semi-Recovery. Of course another thing may happen. The man may look further on the movie page and find there are no good movies on. In that case, he will go to bed carly and feel better the next day. The box office will feel worse. It may not be tactful to be hunting straws of hope for the movies while the great $250,- 000 contest is raging. We ought to give that hypodermic a fair chance. But we are a litle pessimistic about the $250,000 contest, and after seeing the best recent movies we have begun to think that the chief hope for the movies is a revival of the stage. We also have another idea. Nobody knows how many lit- tle cameras and _ projectors there are in the United States. Maybe there are a couple of million. You know the kind we mean—you put your dog on your daughter's lap, hold the cam- era to your eye and squint, then invite your friends in to see a movie of your dog in your daughter's lap. This has been going on for years and the movie industry has never turned a hair. And Sam Goldwyn, feeling that the bution; it is funny, but its jokes can be en- tirely understood only by the seven people in the cast. It is very vigorous. In our opinion, no Hollywood film since the old silents has had its spirit. It took four days to make and has been seen to date by twenty-two people. The only drawback to our first splendid vi- sion of a united nation of movie-makers is that most of the little cameras just at the moment seem to be in the hands of the wrong people (present company excepted, of course), people who bought them by working hard and who have to keep on working hard to supply them with film, Bu: So we suppose that the 16mm. folk art will con- tinue for the time being to consist of baby pic- tures. But as more and more people discover how easy it sensible as the short end of a Hollywood dou- ess men, in short, not artists. to produce a movie roughly as ble bill, we expect to see the Class B movie entirely wither away. Of course if Death on Capitol Hill is a fair sample, dining-room mov- ies will be just as irrational and outrageous as the old Class B. But there is one good thing: fewer people will see them. THE JUDGE FOR DECEMBER comicbooks.com