Paradise Lost?

Seldom has Hollywood been so frightened about its future. In a panicky wave of economy, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had cut its payroll 40%--wiping out one entire echelon of executives. Columbia Pictures had fired 25% of its employees, and RKO's Gower Street studio had been dark for ten days. This week the entire industry was shooting only 25 pictures. Even though the first of the year is always a low point, this was not quite half as many pictures as were under way at the same time last year.

The panic had various causes: the new British tax (TIME, Aug. 18), a big "Boo!" from Congressman J. Parnell Thomas-Red-hunting committee--and a 15% drop in box office. One reason so few pictures were being made was because Hollywood was not sure of the kind of pictures to make, except that they had to be cheaper. And with the box-office drop--which cut down the long wartime runs of pictures-there had to be more of them, probably 500 v. 365 in 1947.

Two for One. Instead of making one $3,000,000 musical, there would now be two for $1,500,000 apiece. As MGM's Louis B. Mayer put it: "You can't overwhelm audiences with mobs and spectacles any more. Intimate pictures are the thing." Furthermore, M-G-M could no longer afford mobs and spectacles. Nor could anyone else, unless the mob included one of the few top stars (Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman and Betty Grable) whose appearance usually guaranteed a profit. Nor did Hollywood think it could film any plots or take up problems that cut deep into contemporary life. Such films might be branded as "subversive."

Hollywood had so badly bungled its case before the Thomas Committee that it now feared, rightly or wrongly, that all its wares would be suspect.

RKO's Dore Schary had "postponed' two pictures, The Boy with the Green Hair (which preached racial tolerance) and White Tower (a plea for international harmony). There was doubt that Frank Capra, already well into making State of the Union (for M-G-M), would have started this satire on U.S. politics under present circumstances. One frightened Hollywoodenhead said that even last year's Academy Award winner The Best Years of Our Lives could not have been made now (one of the villains was a banker).

Hollywood's way out seemed to be escape movies and relatively inexpensive little formula pictures about domestic life that Hollywood knew would pay off; they had generally paid off before.

In all this ill wind, there was some good. It had, at least, blown many of the best directors (Frank Capra, William Wyler, Leo McCarey) out of the ranks of the independents and back into the fold of the big studios. Their talents would help in the troubled times ahead. How troubled would they be?

Enough for All. Judged by profits alone, moviemakers had done superlatively well in 1947. The estimated net of $100,000,000 was down from the alltime peak of 1946, but it was still far better than in any peacetime year. Some companies that had been on thin ice a few years ago were now on solid ground. Last week, Cartoonist Walt Disney reported that on his gross of $6,619,912 he had netted $307,075, his best ever. (He had not even taken into consideration $450,000 in blocked foreign earnings.)

But Warner Brothers gave a better picture of the future. Warner's high profits ($22,094,000) were due chiefly to the release of pictures made as long as two years ago, when costs were lower. Said President Harry Warner: "The pictures now being released were produced at high costs . . . with the decline in domestic and foreign receipts. . . ." The decline, said Warner, was shown in the first quarter (which ended in November) of Warners' current fiscal year. Earnings were estimated at less than half of what they were in the preceding year. This was because of the cut in British receipts and the box-office drop.

Nevertheless, there was hope that things were not so dark as Hollywood thought. Last week Britain was still trying to work out a deal to modify the effects of the tax, lest it wreck Britain's own theater business and seriously weaken Cinemagnate J. Arthur Rank's empire just when he has a chance to earn some badly needed dollars (TIME, Dec. 21). And no matter how Hollywood feared the bark of pressure groups, the bite had not yet proved painful. Among the two big moneymakers of 1947, according to Variety, were David O. Selznick's Duel in the Sun and Darryl Zanuck's Forever Amber, both of which had been frowned on by the Legion of Decency.

In the end, the real victims of the panic might well be the moviegoers, who would probably get poorer fare for their money.

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