HAPPY ENDINGS OR NOT?
On the question as to whether stories and plays should have happy endings or not, there is divergence of opinion. Remarks one author: "What people want is a satisfactory eliding, not necessarily a happy one. Ido not mind tragedy if I leave the theatre feeling ennobled. But when pleasant people are slaughtered without reason, or made slowly to destroy themselves in front of one's eyes, that seems to me to be both bad commerce and bad art.".
With this Mr. Cochran agrees. "I feel," he says, "that insistence on the happy ending is dead. People want an intelligent conclusion—in books, in plays, in films. Ido not believe in fashions. Either a thing is right or it -is wrong. So what I have been saying amounts, in v my view, to the fact that there has been an improvement in public taste." Now for the publisher. Mr. Flower is of the opinion that: "V a book is really first class, people will accept a gloomy ending. But if it is merely 'reading matter,' then the ending must be happy. Apart from temporary fashions—such as that for the short, 'tough' novel from America —I do not think that there have been any important changes in taste."
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19370619.2.176.8
Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 144, 19 June 1937, Page 28
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208HAPPY ENDINGS OR NOT? Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 144, 19 June 1937, Page 28
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