FILM MAGNATES SUPPORT THE STAGE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 968, 10 May 1930, Page 28

FILM MAGNATES SUPPORT THE STAGE

“MOW is the greatest opportunity i* that has ever come to songwriters, composers and authors. The talking film companies in Hollywood are buying them all up.” So Mr. Guy Bolton, author or partauthor of many of the most popular musical comedies of recent years, told an interviewer recently. He is an Englishman, who now spends most of his time in the United States, writing for the American stage. He was the part-author of “Rio Rita.” A FORCING HOUSE “But the film companies are responsible in America for the partial elimination of the-stage,” he went on. “They now find that they must preserve the theatre as a kind of forcing house, where new ideas can be developed. They are even putting up

the money to back plays and musical shows on Broadway.

“In Hollywood, where 800 pictures a year are now" being turned out, and where everyone lives for films and talks about nothing else, they become stereotyped, mechanical, and write to a set formula. £4 STALLS ON BROADWAY "There is also a great demand foi stage artists. We used to hear that certain actors and actresses were no use to the films —they did not possess what were called ‘screen faces.’ Now they want artists trained to talk.” Mr. Bolton added that “one reason why the stage in America has suffered in competition with the pictures is commercial. A regular price for a stall at a successful musical show on Broadway is 2Ss,” he said. “Sometimes. when the piece is a very big hit, the price goes up to £3 to £4. Yet at a cinema, presenting much the same sort of entertainment, a stall costs only 4s to 55.”