Welford Beaton EDITOR Robert E. Sherwood ASSOCIATE HOLLYWOOD Introducing a new Associate Editor in the person of ROBERT E. SHERWOOD Fil m Firms Are Going Broke Is Irving Thalberg Really A Genius? We Call on an Aristocratic Cow —By the Editor Breaking Into A Picture Studio Only God Can Make A Blonde They Can't Fool Howard Hughes —By S herwood Na mes and Some Hollywood Vanities Walter Wanger and Ben Schulberg —By Daugherty Babel and Sound Effects —By Trumbo Reviewed in This Number KICK IN SVENGALI LADIES’ MAN DUDE RANCH MAD PARADE SWEEPSTAKES STEPPING OCT FINGER POINTS PARTY HUSBAND SUBWAY EXPRESS THE MILLIONAIRE MEN CALL IT LOVE DADDY LONG LEGS TRANSPORT OF FIRE UP POPS THE DEVIL WOMEN OF ALL NATIONS CHARLES FURTHMANN For seven years with Paramount as Scenario Editor Supervisor Technical Adviser W riter of Original Stories Adaptations And general story-idea man ORIGINALS PRODUCED Underworld Dragnet City Gone Wild Thunderbolt Chances ( released as Street of Chance) Ladies First ( For the Defense) Yellow Sheets (Scandal Sheets) Bull McNab (Derelict) ACCEPTED FOR PRODUCTION The Billionaire Gold Star Mother I Refuse to Answer The Big Grey FI ouse AVAILABLE Management Edward Small — Film Companies Are Going Broke By The Editor HE financial condition of the film industry constantly United Artists is passing out of the picture. What T grows more desperate. Apparently nothing can divert Joe Schenck started, Sam Goldwyn will finish. a panic. The only thing that ultimately will restore M-G-M is the only organization that has maintained a level stability prosperity is a return to the making of motion pictures, but as of in its productions. It made the best all-talkies no one in control of the industry knows what a motion picture when the public was willing to accept such entertainment, and its is, and will not allow those who do know to make them, the troubles only are beginning. The weird extravagance of its prospects of prosperity are remote. production methods added to the loss of revenue for which its The allied organizations of Warner Brothers can not escape present pictures will be responsible, will make it as unsafe finan- bankruptcy. Always lacking picture brains, the brothers were cially as all the other organizations. No one in authority in saved from oblivion four years ago by a mechanical device the Metro studio has picture brains. the sound camera. Since then they have been kept going by Somehow or other I have confidence in Universal’s ability the impetus of money the sound camera brought them. Now to muddle through. Carl Laemmle has a lot of sense. He is they are running out of money. They have nothing left. The used to having his back to the wall and has cultivated an ability stock exchange flatters them by still insisting that their stock is to fight his way out. And I have confidence in Junior. He is worth something. In reality it is worth nothing. in a tough spot. Apparently his father is the only one in the Neither is the Fox stock worth anything. If the company organization who wants to see him retain his job, and I hope were liquidated to-day the assets would not offset the liabilities the sense I conceded to his father is great enough to assure and there would be nothing to distribute among the stock- Junior’s having a fair chance. holders. Even its powerful banking affiliations can not con- ^ ^ Howard Hughes is another in whom I have con- tinue to carry the load, for the basis of the company s worth fidence. He is spending his own money learning the game, is its ability to make pictures that the public will patronize, and and he is learning it thoroughly. He is a brilliant young man it lacks such ability. More than any other company’s was who makes no outward show of brilliance, but who with stub- the extent of its surrender to the stage when the screen went born persistency goes after results and gets them. I think talkie, and that has brought about its rum. Hughes some day will be at the head of a really big producing organization, and he will develop enough executive ability to v Paramount is in a bad way. It has to absorb tre- make a good job of it. He should take over United Artists mendous losses, incurred by unwise financing, at a time when just before it reaches the point of final disappearance. its product is failing to earn enough revenue to take care of the Columbia has the chance of a lifetime. The bigger organi- cost of manufacture and dividend requirements. It is contin- zations are too cumbersome to think. young, alert organiza- uing this year to make the same kind of pictures that reduced A tion like Columbia could put its pictures into the biggest theatres its profits last year. To make the right kind of pictures requires in the country if it only had sense enough to profit by the mis- an ability that it does not possess and which it is making no takes of others and make the kind of pictures the public wants. attempt to acquire. It has a lean year ahead of it. But no doubt Harry Cohn will continue to make the same kind The only strength of the RKO affiliations is the fact that of talkies that the others are making. they have the Radio group as their sponsors. David Sarnoff and Hiram Brown are intellectual giants when there are finan- V cial problems to solve, but they are babies when they approach Robert E. Sherwood a problem that depends for its solution upon the degree in which the fundamental principles of screen art are reflected in HIS Spectator introduces a new associate editor in the a screen creation. The RICO end of their varied enterprises Tperson of Robert E. Sherwood, playwright, one time is selling screen art, but they do not know it. They think it is editor of Life, perhaps America’s foremost commenta- selling conversations. When the other enterprises are called tor on film affairs—in short, a distinguished man of screen, upon to provide the millions of dollars that will be lost by mak- stage and literature. ing pictures that the public will repudiate, perhaps Messrs. My new confrere’s writings on motion pictures have ap- Sarnoff and Brown will begin to ask themselves questions. In peared regularly in lay papers and were written for laymen. that lies RKO’s hope of a prosperous future. It occurred to me that Bob Sherwood during the past dozen * — 4* WELFORD BEATON, EDITOR VOL. 12, NO. 1 ROBERT E. SHERWOOD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR HOLLYWOOD SPECTATOR, published every other Saturday by The Film Spectator, Inc. Welford J3eaton, president ; Howard Hlil, secretary and man-, ager ; at Los Angeles (Hollywood Station) in California. Address 6362 Hollywood Blvd. Telephone GL 5506. Robert Stanley, advertising manager. Entered as second class matter February 4, 1929, at the post office at Los Angeles, California, under the act of March 3, 1879. Subscription price, $3.50 per year; foreign, $4.50; single copy, 15 cents. 4 Hollywood Spectator years must have stored up a lot of things that he would like up until it meets a certain entertainment standard. If this to say to the people who make pictures. We talked it over, standard can not be reached, the picture is not released. By with the result that we have a new member of the Spectator this method Metro avoids having absolute flops, but it does not staff. avoid having gigantic losses represented by dead film in for- gotten vaults. The Spectator itself as an institution has no opinions. No, not a genius. Any picture ever made by Irving could It hereafter will present regularly the opinions of three people, be duplicated for half the cost by anyone with a slight knowl- in order, myself, Sherwood and Dalton Trumbo. My only edge of production and a sound knowledge of the funda- request to my associates was that they were to pan me on their mentals of screen art. pages when I write things they don’t like. Bob Sherwood, y y y the base ingrate, has started it already. You will notice that with this issue the name of the maga- Silence zine has been changed. Instead of The Film Spectator, we now have the Hollywood Spectator. We made the change CORRESPONDENT wants to know when I am going to cease insisting that Hollywood should make silent pic- to permit logically the inclusion in its pages of comment on A tures again. I wasn’t I insisting subjects other than the screen. We have increased the size to aware that was upon provide room for contributions from our readers, and we hope any such thing. I have been urging Hollywood to make again. only picture is that they will make generous use of our pages. We have motion pictures The perfect motion changed the typographical appearance to make the paper one that contains no audible dialogue or sound effects, though a more readable. motion picture of a sort can contain a little of both, but it is not a motion picture if it uses dialogue to tell its story. It is Mr. SHERWOOD is now in Hollywood and while he is a photographed play, and the present financial plight of the here will give Spectator readers the benefit of such observa- film industry is due to the fact that the public has grown tions as he makes. When he returns to his home in New weary of viewing photographed plays.