Box Office is All-Powerful Says Paramount Picture Chief

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 554, 5 January 1929, Page 21

Box Office is All-Powerful Says Paramount Picture Chief

gTARS come and go with such rapidity in the screen world that the effect is bewildering to the'casual observer. The truth is that their destinies are controlled by the box office —an unfailing barometer of popularity.

This current is so irresistible that no personality, however enshrined in the public’s heart, can withstand it unless he or she can meet these changing conditions by rising to new heights of acting ability. Standardised acting, machine-made stories, and directorial efforts along well-worn grooves are to-day the greatest menace to the future of any star (writes Jesse L. Laskv, of Paramount). A star must have the acting ability which will enable him to appear in many varying kinds of roles, and to make them a living reality. This has been most clearly demonstrated by the marvellous success of Emil Jannings, whose every picture has plumbed new depths of dramatic genius. The motion picture camera at one time was the common guide in the selection of future starring material, hut the demand for diversification in story and in acting ability has made it necessary to find other mediums for the discovery of new talent. When the appearance of a new young woman player upon the screen is followed by a deluge- of fan mail

which rapidly mounts to a total of 35,000 letters a month, it is evident that the public knows what it wants, and will insist upon having a Clara Bow. And when a young man finds his monthly mail averaging better than 20,000 almost immediately following his second ’ appearance upon the screen, there is every reason for the elevation of a Richard Arlen to stardom. The tens of thousands of fan letters which pour in at the studios are tremendously important in guiding the production officials in the selection of new people to be trained for future stardom. Often the public becomes impatient at the slowness of recognition for their favourites, and this is quickly reflected in the mail. The list of young players who owe stardom to public interest is so long as to be unquotable. The motion picture public elects its favourites to stardom these days with uncanny accuracy, and it deposes older favourites with a ruthlessness that is pagan in its completeness.

deduce from this that the old man was fond of children. Appaiently those who made the film did not think In order to explain that he wanted a wife, they treated the audience to the sight of a Filipino man-servant in the kitchen, and then slowly dissolved the servant’s figure into that of a tall, capable-looking woman. Then to explain that the old man also looked forward to having children, they showed us the high chair (which was standing in a most inconvenient position just where it would be knocked over every time anyone opened the door immediately behind It), first of all empty and then with a baby sitting in it.

The picture already contains so j many long sub-titles that one more | would have made no difference, if it really had been necessary to explain j the farmer’s hopes. In the second place, when he looked at the chair, j he did not see a baby in it, but j thought how nice it would be later ; on if a baby should sit in it. But to make matters worse, after | showing us the infant in the chair, j the film went on to show six infants j in six chairs. As all these infants j were more or less of the same age, j this was really quite confusing, and did not at all convey what it clumsily tried to do, that the old man wanted to have a large family.

As we have all of us in any case | seen Charlie Chaplin, by one or two of the sketchiest gestures, convey that he wanted to have a quiver full, this 1 collection of meaningless infants was all the more grotesque. In a farce it might have passed. But in a picture which at least set out to be more or less serious it was preposterous.