EXHIBITORS' BALLOT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21278, 3 September 1932, Page 10 (Supplement)

EXHIBITORS' BALLOT

MARIE DRESSLER'S LEAD SOME SURPRISING RESULTS A further interesting ballot has been conducted among American cinema owners and managers by the Motion Picture Herald, a leading trade journal. Twelve thousand exhibitors were asked to supply & list of the ten players who drew the greatest number of people to their theatres during the past nine months, irrespective of the nature of the films, the weather conditions, or any other circumstances. According to the returns so far published, the biggest box-office magnet in the United States is—no, not Greta Garbo or Norma Shearer, but the one and only Marie Dressier. She is well above' the rest, with Janet Gaynor second, Joan Crawford third, and Wallace Beery fourth. Garbo comes in a rather inferior seventh, below Will Rogers and Charles Farrell, and followed closely by Clark Gable and Norma Shearer. Marie Dressler's triumph seems to be a great victory for the unsophisticated type of film, since her pictures, as we know, nearly always appeal strongly to "family" audiences. It is strange to find Garbo so far down the list, considering the feverish excitement with which her every move is followed in America. Marlene Dietrich is even less favoured, for she is placed nineteenth, beneath people like Joe E. Brown, Sally Filers and the Marx Brothers. Robert Montomery is still farther down the list, and so, at present, are George Arliss, Fredric March, Barbara Stanwyck and Ruth Chatterton. Ruth, who had a tremendous " vogue " in the hey-day of the talkies, has bad pictures to blame for the evident slump in her following, but the others would probably be much more successful in a British ballot. Conversely, it is doubtful if either Will Rogers "or Charles Farrell would get so high a place in this country. Most filmgoers, whether British or American, apparently agree about Janet Gaynor. Critics may declare that she connot act, cynics may shudder at the sugariness of her pictures, but the box-office proves that she can out-Garbo Greta when it comes to a matter of sheer, downright personal popularity. Her admirers are nothing, if not staunch.