How Not to Go Broke

What kind of pictures do U.S. moviegoers really like to see? Writing in the current Harper's, Publicist Arthur L. Mayer, executive vice president of the Council of Motion Picture Organizations (COMPO), frankly discusses some facts of movie life that most pressagents prefer to whisper about behind closed doors. Mayer's main point: most moviegoers prefer bad movies to good ones.

"In my experience of over 30 years in the motion-picture industry," writes Mayer, "the American people have had plenty of opportunities to support [good] pictures and almost invariably have failed to do so. Although I have helped to import many of the finest pictures ever brought into this country, I was able to ... only because I was simultaneously operating [Manhattan's] Rialto Theater, which consistently showed the worst. The profits on the bad pictures enabled me to stand the losses on the good ones. Most of the critics of the industry are optimists, because they only write and speak about the demand for superior films. I am a pessimist, because I have invested money in them."

Publicist Mayer, whose job is to win friends and good will for the movies, bolsters his argument with plenty of other evidence. Items:

P: Universal-International has climbed out of the red largely on the strength of its Ma and Pa Kettle series designed for "what is insultingly known as the family trade." Each picture in the series costs about $500,000 to make, grosses some $2,500,000 mainly in small towns and neighborhood theaters.

P: Despite a barrage of critical panning, Paramount's Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis farce, At War with the Army, broke a house record in its opening week at Manhattan's Paramount Theater, has since been cleaning up around the country.

P: Paramount redeemed the heavy loss suffered by William Wyler's The Heiress, a big critical success, with the receipts from Cecil B. DeMille's spectacularly profitable Samson and Delilah. "It would appear as if what the industry needs is more Victor Matures (not to mention DeMilles) rather than more mature pictures."

Concludes Mayer: "Frequently, as I observe ... the good receipts for what good people call bad pictures, and the bad receipts for what they call good, I am reminded of Henry Mencken's sour dictum: 'No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.'"

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