Stage Not Dead

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 732, 3 August 1929, Page 24

Stage Not Dead

LONDON PRODUCER AND THE EFFECTS OF “TALKIES” THE POSITION IN AMERICA The theatre is like the heroine in an old-fashioned melodrama—it Is always being “ruined” (writes Herbert Clayton, the London producer). Not long ago I went to the United ; States on business connected with the i theatre, and upon my arrival was ' greeted by an expert. “You might i as well have stayed at home,” he ! said genially; “the stage is dead.” As there was no boat ready to take me back to England at the moment, my friend agreed to drive me to my hotel. Presently we passed a theatre. “What’s running there?” I asked. “ ‘Hold Everything’,” he t®ld me. “I want to see that,” I said; “tonight if possible.” “My dear fellow', you can’t get a seat there for weeks ahead.” It was a stage musical comedy, not a talking film. A moment later we passed a smaller theatre, where a drama called “Street Scene” was being payed. No seats were to be obtained there, either, for many nights ahead. I found that halt a dozen other Broadway theatres were in the same very prosperous state. Yet New York has the talking film craze as strongly as any place could have it. There are talking pictures, there, such a “Broadway Melody,” playing to astounding business. But so, in previous years, were silent films like “The Four Horsemen,” “BenHur,” “The Big Parade,” and so on. I looked for the other side of the talking picture. I asked a New Y'ork friend vTiat V'as the worst dialogue picture being shown there. "How can one discriminate among so many?” he asked. But finally he took me to one, in a suburban picture theatre which is usually prosperous, where the house was almost empty. I spoke to the theatre manager about talking pictures. “With a good one,” he said, “we do 25 per cent, more business than w-e ever do with a silent. A bad one, like this, does 30 per cent, worse than any ordinary film w'e’ve ever had.” A good talking film, partly on account of “curiosity value”—which will not last for ever—does magnificent business. But a bad one ! Why, therefore, should the theatrical industry panic, killing itself with fear before the contest has well begun? Talking films will be another nail in the coflln of bad theatrical shows. If we put on bad show's, we deserve all the nails they can drive into us. On the other hand, in two cities, Manchester and Glasgow, which were named recently by a theatrical manager as having been killed for touring purposes by talking films, we played a provincial company of “Virginia” against the competition of ‘,‘The Singing Fool”—certainly the greatest money-maker of all the talking films so far—and actually played to bigger business than the record-breaking “No. No, Nanette” did three years ago, when Great Britain had never heard of a talking film.