X-RAY ON HOLLYWOOD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 144, 27 March 1942, Page 6

X-RAY ON HOLLYWOOD

"A Challenge To The Sovereignty Or Church. School, And Family"

tomed to the spotlight, has now been X-rayed. The result of a three years’ investigation by Dr. Leo Calvin Rosten and a staff of social scientists financed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations has just been published under the title of Hollywood: The Movie Colony-The Movie Makers. It is described by the American newsmagazine Time as "the best book ever written about Hollywood." Adding up all the evidence which he and his researchers unearthed, Dr. Rosten finds the result "too immense and too subtle for exact appraisal.’’ However, he does say this: "It seems self-evident that Hollywood represents a challenge to the sovereignty of church, school, and family . . . that the movies are ‘more than any other art the social and political problem of our day.’ " _ The author, Dr. Rosten, who also writes under the name of Leonard Q. Ross, is 33 years of age. Here are some of the findings of his book, as quoted by Time (salaries and earnings were given in dollars, but for convenience sake we have roughly reduced them to pounds): ® "Of Hollywood’s 1753 class-A actors (class-B are extras), half earned £1,000 or less in 1938, 54 made £20,000 or more; 50 per cent. of the actors in Hollywood to-day have never earned as much as £2,100 a year. @ The average annual earnings of 7,050 Hollywood extras in 1940 was £70. @ One-third of Hollywood’s actors are not yet 35, 35 per cent. of them are 50 or over, The average age of ‘actresses is 34, of actors 46. Seven per cent. of the actresses, 26.6 per cent. of the actors have had four or more years of college. ® No USS. industry pays such high salaries to so many men as Hollywood does to its 159 producers, executives, and associate producers. Two-thirds of the executives, 31 per cent. of the producers, were paid more than £30,000 apiece in | OLLYWOOD, well accus-

1938. But one-fifth of the producers and associate producers at three major studios earned under £2,500 annually; 52 per cent. of the producers got less than £7,200. @ Of 244 directors active in Hollywood in 1938, 31 per cent. earned less than £2,000 for the year; 34 earned £20,000 or more. @ Of the 800 odd writers in Hollywood few can turn out a complete, competent screen play single-handed. They are paid substantially less than actors, producers and directors. @® A major studio receives from 18,000 to 45,000 fan letters and post cards a

month, 85 to 90 per cent. of them written by girls under 21. Most U.S. fan clubs (each dedicated to the exaltation of one star) are run by housewives or business girls with a vague desire to get to Hollywood. Requests made of two movie stars by 1,821 fan writers included: a cake of soap, a " piece of gum you have chewed," a cigarette butt, three hairs, a bicycle, and permission to name a pet flea after the star. About 76 per cent. of the movie colony have never been divorced. Comment by a nameless observer on the regal bearing of RKO Actor-Pro-ducer Writer Director Orson Welles (Citizen Kane); "There, but for the grace of God, goes God." No Muck-raking HE book rakes no muck. Its job is merely to ungild the lily and count its petals. Such subjects as the economics of picture making, Hollywood guilds, and labour problems, censorship and the Hays Office, Rosten leaves for a later volume. He says little here about the mass of the 30,000 movie workers and movie makers who live ordinary lives on ordinary incomes. The picture he offers

is of the movie colony (producers, actors, directors, writers) and its elitesome 250 people, most of whom earn £15,000 or more a year. Can It Last? Hollywood’s Wealth is first-generation wealth, earned by talent or luck, spent by people unaccustomed to handling money. Hollywood’s rich are very young (46 per cent. of the colony is under 40), Their insistent optimism betrays a vague fear that it can’t last. This anxiety makes them morbid, self-deprecating complainers. As one sensitive soul put it: "In this town I’m _ snubbed socially

because I orlly get a thousand a week. That hurts." Nouveau riche, thriving, socially clambering, the movie colony lacks lineage and decorum. But, says NRosten: "... there is being formed an amuse-ment-aristocracy . . . and Hollywood is assuming the social function of European toyalty-‘ that of luxuriously diverting itself in public and diverting others....’" "Honour Is But Ancient Riches" The elite of Hollywood numbers some 250 producers, executives, directors, actors, writers, publicity experts, miscellaneous key men. Rulers of the elite are seven top executives of Hollywood’s four big studios: Louis B. Mayer and Edgar J. Mannix, of Loew’s Inc. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer); Paramount’s Y (for Young) Frank Freeman: 20th CenturyFox’s Darryl F. Zanuck and Joseph M. Schenck (now appealing against a three-year sentence for income tax evasion); Warner Bros.’ Harry M. and Jack L. Warner. Many of the men who built the motion picture industry are still active in Hollywood. They came from vaudeville, "flea circuses," petty trade, other shabby

zones of enterprise. Because of their lack of refinement they were able to sense and satisfy what the U.S. wanted in the way of entertainment. "There are striking resemblances," says Rosten, "between the founder of the House of Vanderbilt (Cornelius, steamboat owner) and the founder of the House of Mayer (Lous B., theatre owner), between the first Warner (Harry M., butcher’s son) and the first Astor (John Jacob, butcher’s son) . .. In 50 years, names like Zanuck, Mannix, and Selznick may well be great ... ‘ Honour’ says an ancient proverb, "is but ancient riches." In the larger social heavens of the U.S., Hollywood’s star is in the ascendant. Manhattan’s cafe society has helped bring new money and old money together. The . occupation of moviemaking has also taken on prestige — especially since the late ’twenties, when the sound track brought authors, dramatists, and others of that kind to jack up Hollywood’s creative personnel. "The long arm of Hollywood reaches into every province of the manners ‘and mores of our time; it does not, except obliquely and occasionally, touch the ideologies of our day." In 1936 Pope Pius XI. testified of the importance of the cinema by devoting a special Papal Encyclical to it. So did Clark Gable when he took off his shirt in It Happened One Night, and revealed that he wore no undershirt. That gesture cost U.S. men’s underwear manufacturers a 40-50 per cent. cut in business within the year. The influence of Hollywood on language, women’s fashions, home furnishings, and so on, is incalculable.. When David Copperfield was shown, the Cleveland Public Library, which had 500 copies of the book, was cleaned out of it and other Dickens works for weeks,