WAR COMES TO THE MOVIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 20, 10 November 1939, Page 10

WAR COMES TO THE MOVIES

Hollywood's First Reaction Was An Attack Of The Jitters

swaddling clothes, and Hollywood was then just as keen to keep out of the war-and make money out of it-as was the rest of the American nation. But war stimulated the growth of the movie industry enormously, and during 1914-18, the movies became a major form of popular entertainment. Even at that early stage, Hollywood was beginning to show the opportunism which has since characterised it; and even before America had entered the first World War, the film-producers were finding in the Kaiser the ideal villain. After 1917, a flood of war-inspired pictures came to the screen, of which "The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin" and "To Hell with the Kaiser," were typical. But of all the movies of 1914-18, Chaplin’s "Shoulder Arms" was almost the only one which, in normal times, would have been worthy of serious consideration as a good picture, as apart from good propaganda. When war broke out this September, it found both the U.S.A. and its cinema industry in a different frame of mind from 1914, and differently organised, but in no very efficient state of preparation to meet the new conditions which war created. Though American movie magnates had talked for months about the need for putting their 2,000,000,000 investment on a war basis, the immediate effect of war on shell-shocked Hollywood was, in the words of " Time," an incalculable crossfire of fears, dangers and hopes. iz 1914, the movies were hardly out of their Stranded Stars The question of production was first in the news. Studios had attacks of the jitters about the return of stars from the war zones, while publicity stories painted a terrifying picture of others being mustered to foreign colours, which would mean that costly pictures might have to be abandoned in course of production, and that studios would lose some of their most valuable human assets. Actually, the only important stars still stranded in Europe when war broke out were Robert Montgomery and Maureen O’Sullivan, who had reported for work at M-G-M’s English studio at Denham. And only one Hollywood star actually took passage for Europe: Tyrone Power's French wife, Annabella, who flew by tran-Atlantic Clipper to bring her family back from Paris. ' After an announcement by the excitable Samuel Goldwyn that he had abandoned Raffles so that the actor, David Niven, could rejoin the Highland Light Infantry, work on Raffles was hastily resumed when the British Consulate in Los Angeles thought that Niven would not be needed for at least 30 days. The only other British subjects on the active reserve list (liable to immediate call) were John Loder, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and the Earl of Warwick, whose Hollywood name is Michael Brooke. The only volunteer to turn up at the Consulate was the actor, Alan Mowbray, aged 43, who was put to work listing other British subjects in the movie colony. Box-Office Blackout The immediate blackout of theatres in France and England when War was declared automatically eliminated 40% of Hollywood’s box-office income. Though some English theatres in outlying areas were already being re-opened under emergency regulations and more were expected to follow, questions still in doubt were: (1) how current Hollywood pictures must be affected by the Allied censorship, and (2) how war would affect the transmission of box-office receipts to America. The first major effect this uncertainty on Hollywood (which had already written off the German and ‘Italian markets that once constituted 10% of its foreign gross), was a scaling down of costs on current productions. Director Wesley Ruggles, rather than shave his 2,000,000 dollar budget for Arizona, shelved

the picture. Other producers planned to whittle future budgets over 600,000 dollars down to fit domestic box-office expectations. Since the greater part of production cost is in salaries and overhead, decreased budgets in the long run would inevitably mean tightening the belt in Hollywood’s corporate scale of living. Capturing the World Market But while war immediately reduced Hollywood’s markets, it also, in the immediate future, reduced Hollywood’s competition. British, French, and Ger-

As described in this article, Annabella (now Mrs. Tyrone Power) made a special trip to France aboard the trans-Atlantic Clipper when war broke out to bring her daughter by a previous marriage, Ann Murat, back to America. They are seen here just after their return from Paris man studios shut down; and it was said that their accumulation of product would not last more than three. months. Out of the running, they would leave U.S. pictures a free hand in the rich world market. Russia makes 95% of the pictures shown in its theatres, but all other countries are steady cinema customers of the U.S. India makes only 50% of its pictures, Japan only 35%, Italy, Yugoslavia, Mexico, Sweden and the South American countries all less than 10%. Playing this probability for perhaps more than it was worth, the Hollywood Reporter exultantly proclaimed: "U.S. Pix Stand to Capture 99% of World Market!" Propaganda and Escapism Propaganda was a question mark, with Hollywood evenly divided between plans to capitalise on war

headlines, and plans to make traditional escapist pictures. Samuel Goldwyn announced Blackout Over Europe; Warner Brothers, who fired the first shot this year with Confessions of a Nazi Spy, announced a string of comedies. Charles Chaplin continued with The Dictator, and Paramount bought the timely Battalion of Death. Though American War Department plans for controlling industry naturally include the cinema, the only hint from Washington to date has been a request to advance the release date on two patriotic pictures: M.G.M.’s Thunder Afloat (about the Navy) and 20th Century-Fox’s 20,000 Men (about the college pilot training programme begun by the Civil Aeronautics Authority this year). Old Films Re-issued But so far as the re-issue of timely old pictures was concerned, there was more activity. When a St. Louis theatre manager revived All Quiet on the Western Front, that nine-year-old picture played to packed houses. One week later, Universal, the producers of All Quiet, and of Erich Maria Remarque’s equally tragic sequel, The Road Back, announced plans to re-issue both films. To All Quiet will be added a new commentary fore and aft, and some of the 3,000 feet snipped from the film after it left the hands of its director, Lewis Milestone, will be restored. Universal will also restore to The Road Back controversial footage on Nazi rearmament which was previously eliminated to spare German sensibilities, and add new scenes and a few new characters, including Adolf Hitler. Other re-issues already promised or in prospect are: H. G. Wells’s Things to Come (1936) which unprophetically depicted a rain of bombs on world capitals as the first action in a new World War and, more hopefully, proposed that cities should be bombed with a sleeping potion as a way to end wat; The Big Parade (1925), What Price Glory, (1926), and Cavalcade (1933). News from England News from England, as given by C. A. Lejeune, of The Observer, rather discounts Hollywood's optimism about capturing the entire English market. As soon as it was announced that cinemas in most neutral and reception areas of England would be reopened, British film studios at Denham, Elstreet, Shepherds Bush and Shepperton began continuous production. Although a number of the technical staff and players-have already been called up for active service, the key men, who are mostly over military age, have not yet been taken. American directors, cutters, and technicians already working in England have refused, almost to a man, to leave their posts. Every studio in England is equipped with air-raid shelters, first-aid units, and voluntary fire-fighters. One studio has a miniature Maginot Line under its sound stages, air-conditioned, gas-proof and bombproof, with an entrance wide enough to drive an Austin 7 through. In most cases, the films now being finished were already in course of production on the outbreak of war. Where new productions are mooted, they are mostly of a patriotic or propagandist nature. Mystery Film An interesting hint of a film kept very quiet in the making came from Denham with the arrival of a couple of newspaper " still" photographs, showing Merle Oberon in the uniform of a Red Cross nurse and Ralph Richardson as a flying officer. The players are shown in front of an A.R.P. shelter and a Firstaid Post, respectively. The caption on the photographs reads, " Merle Oberon and Ralph Richardson photographed to-day in a film showing Britain Prepared." Beyond the bare issue of the photographs, the studio has been very discreet about this film, and no title or details of the story have yet been given.