Wall Street wants the Motion Picture Studios under Its Eyes.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 145, 20 June 1931, Page 26 (Supplement)

Wall Street wants the Motion Picture Studios under Its Eyes.

Will the great Hollywood film colony be taken to New York? Hollywood is quaking over the prospect. Wall Street wants more work done at less cost, and if it cannot be accomplished in California, writers, directors, actors, technicians and the army of employees will be moved, bag and baggage, to New York, where pictures will be made under the eyes of the bankers and big producers, says a Hollywood correspondent. That is the threat of the moment, and it is serious. Harley Clarke, of the Fox organisation, and Adolph Zukor are chief movers in the plan, Clarke because he believes pictures are a public utility and should be produced more economically. Zukor has had the Astoria studio on Long Island directly in sight since talkies came, using Broadway actors who are playing there, and who have responded splendidly, appearing at the studio early and working hard during the hours they can spare for the work.

Costs Cut. Production budgets have been kept down, and the product has nearly all been good box-office. Ernst Lubitsch, who has been working at Astoria for some time, says he never wants to be sent to Hollywood again, as he finds the co-operation of studio officials. and everyone connected with the business far greater in New York than in Hollywood. . Zukor laid down the law to the California producers on a recent visit. He told them they were too exclusive; that they spent too much time admiring themselves and posing for others to see, and forgot they were hired to work. He laughed at the numerous conferences in which the heads'of departments engage, and told them to confer less and get results.

One source of expense aimed at, gossip says, is the needless and wasted energy spent in preparing stories for production. One of the studios estimates that £IO,OOO is used up in many instances before a proper manuscript is turned in. Big Money for Stories. The studios pay big money for stories, and sometimes as many as a dozen writers work at them before a satisfactory screen play comes out of the writers’ department. The record was seventeen men writing and rewriting one story, and they were paid from £IOO to £4OO a week. Efficiency men estimated this extraordinary expense, and placed it before the big men of the industry. They showed that one company which has a writing force of thirty men changed the men so often that 150 are employed during the year, and many of them, drawing fat salaries, never reach the screen with their work. These experts have been going through many of the studios, and at least two of them have promised to stop the leakage in this direction. Hereafter they will not engage any man merely because he has written and had published a novel, or has had a play produced, for many of. them know nothing about screen technique and are only drones in the hive. After the first threat of moving the industry, to New York, on second thought it was considered that many millions are invested in stages and other buildings necessary for the making of pictures; that California is ideal atmospherically for the work, and that employment conditions are different. So the edict to move has been held up for a time to see whether there will be a reformation in Hollywood.