Somehow, it seems movies should be an American invention and while America has contributed mightily to this art form in the past century and a-half, other countries (France, England, and Germany to name a few) have their own, significant movie history.
For my part I became enthralled with motion pictures when I was a boy, and in a very practical way. My mother worked at the Regent Theater in Springfield, Ohio for her uncle, who was not only the theater manager, but also played the organ for silent movies. Mom worked at the ticket counter and snack bar. I naturally went into the family business starting at the bottom. Literally, the bottom. My great-uncle paid me to carry cans of popcorn from the basement to the snack bar. I was paid a silver dollar for each evening’s work which, for a kid, had roughly the same value as a bar of gold.
The first movie I remember seeing was a re-issue of the 1944 film, Buffalo Bill with Joel McCrea, and Maureen O’Hara. I watched secretly through the tiny window of the door leading to the theater itself. Mom’s association with movies (as close to showbusiness as I got), planted the seed for my continued interest in movies, and all things cinematic. It’s a provincial interest and is set mostly in those films made by major American studios. Still, the images flickering on the screen through a pulsating beam of light, have always captivated me.
I came to understand some elements of film making; the stars, character actors, writer, directors, and studio heads, so completely that my younger brother and I could listen to a snippet of the soundtrack and identify the major studio behind its creation. Warner Bros., Paramount, MGM, and 20th Century Fox used sound effects unique for them.
I will now pause while readers roll their eyes.
Of course, that type of knowledge is amazingly mundane and something akin to recognizing American-made cars of the same period by their taillights. But, learning who John Ford was, which studio Frank McHugh was likely to work for, or why there are so many long shots of Jean Harlow in the 1937’s Saratoga, is the sort of minutia that fascinates me.
To me, making movies is storytelling at its best, particularly when the stories are well done. I suppose that’s why I consider myself a visual writer, an observer who studies people, how they act, and how they speak. That’s not to say there aren’t cinematic stinkers; watch 1946’s Duel in the Sun, (subtitled by some Lust in the Dust), which is ponderous, loud, and stuffed with superb examples of over-acting. To call this film melodramatic is to underestimate its soap opera quality. The film was David O. Selznick’s attempt to recapture the magic of 1939’s Gone With The Wind. He failed, but Duel in the Sun is fun to watch.
The Regent Theater played the best and worst of what Hollywood had to offer for decades. Then major studios devolved into conglomerates of unrelated businesses, with studio heads becoming highly paid executives who lacked the star-quality of Harry Cohn at Columbia, or Louis B. Mayer at MGM, and were instead, only businessmen.
If the studio heads had a love for the profession, cultivating banks of well-paid writers, and carefully corralled stars, it was balanced by their need to make money. That was the the bottom line.
There was a constant battle between art and business during the heyday of the studios with monumental battles between stars, directors, writers, and studio executives. Conflicts between David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock, Daryl F. Zanuck and Tyrone Power, Harry Cohn and virtually anybody, and Bette Davis and Jack Warner were roughly as violent as the Banana Wars. These were people with strong beliefs about how movies should be made, and who should make them, and at times, their views merged into a tenuous agreement. Sometimes the battle was comical, sometimes filled with pathos, occasionally tragic. Talented performers Robert Williams and Jean Harlow made a handful of films, but both died young. John Gilbert was ignored after achieving stardom, as he succumbed to drugs and alcohol, and Veronica Lake ended her life as a cocktail waitress. All that glitters is not gold.
Two of the best books about Tinsel Town and the industry are The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood by Max Wilk, and The Parades Gone By, by Kevin Brownlow. The first is humorous, the second a remarkable record of silent films and their impact. There are hundreds of other books about Hollywood, some enlightening, a handful ground-breaking, a few nothing more than public relation’s efforts.
And is Old Hollywood gone? Of course, it is, wounded by television, pummeled by changes in society, abandoned by audiences, assailed by competition, battered by technology. But Hollywood itself? Not at all. Major studios decades before were film factories, producing B films, programmers, serials, shorts, cartoons, and specialty films, sometimes showing them in the theaters they owned. But if you look closely at films today you will see, in one form or another, these same categories exist and prosper.
The Regent Theater may be closed, but people still watch movies on telephones, television screens, computers, and sit in reclining chairs in multiplexes, megaplexes, the occasional drive-in and Imax. Coldly put, supply and demand rules the motion picture industry. So be it.
But consider this, for two hours or so, people lose themselves in fantastic tales, historical accounts, comedies, or dramas, and for that time those flickering images become a personal journey into enlightenment.