1951's Stab In the Back

 

LIFE Versus the Movies

August 13, 1951, was Detonation Day, not when a cold war turned hot, but where the Number One family weekly aimed laser at an industry they said was in throes of decline, an industry too late to save. Hollywood saw LIFE’s gesture as one to live ever after in infamy, a sneak attack wholly unjustified. How could amusement for masses occasion such hostility? Everyone read LIFE magazine. A household to afford but one magazine subscription would subscribe to LIFE. Whatever it printed, people talked about. Size mattered, as issues were big as a Declaration of Independence delivered each week to your door. To be on the cover could make a career. “But I thought we were friends,” the movies said as LIFE spoke otherwise, and this after years of paid advertising to enrich Luce coffers (him the editor-in-chief and chief turncoat). And what of a double truck full-color ad for Flying Leathernecks on pages 54 and 55 in selfsame issue that sunk the knife, plus David and Bathsheba on page 37, paid promotion all? The scourge of it … the betrayal. LIFE wrote plain that theatres were finished. Banner across their obit groaned with half-dozen images of closed houses, 3,000 they said and counting, marquees emptied, and dig prose from bylined bombardier Robert Coughlan … “Like the fluttering of doves at the wheeling of a hawk, like the stirring of the seal herd when the hunters come ashore, like the watchful waiting of the villagers at the rumbling of the mountain,” these analogy to Hollywood cowered in shadow that was doom. Citing data opponents said were nursed, Coughlan spoke what many would figure for truth. Why would LIFE lie? And yet regard profile title: "Now It Is Trouble That Is Supercolossal in Hollywood," jibe upon hyperbole long laughed at and now shorthand for bitterest irony.

It was known that television was giving movies a black eye. In fact, mainstream mags including LIFE had taken a few on the chin. Why read when you could watch, and for free! Literacy took a tumble for sure. Everyone kidded the “idiot box,” none more than ones enjoying it most. We all knew or thought Hollywood was forever. How could people who made Samson and Delilah go broke? LIFE knew it needed hard facts to make a case, and so went out and got them, interpretation of same where imagination kicked in. “What dread shape has awakened the dreamer?” asked Coughlan, his answer the boxoffice, down as in way down, result theatres boarded up or turned into furniture outlets. Television was a culprit sure, but mainly it was viewership “arrived at maturity” and rejecting “simple-minded” stories told by Hollywood. Such thus dictated entertainment choice for young postwar families. Go out to a movie, why not? Here’s why not: baby-sitter, parking fees, gas and oil … let’s call the whole thing off. So they did, said Coughlan, shuttered venues the result. LIFE reviewed history re court obliged divorcement of exhibition from production, foreign tariffs blocking income from overseas, myriad of business woes like any industry had, but this being movies, we all had a stake, or at least an opinion. LIFE found a sore and so cut deeper. Not that they were necessarily wrong. Estimates of TV growth were in fact low, for the medium would not merely expand … it would explode. Five years later, after television penetrated all regions of the US, such an article as LIFE’s would seem a soft pat.

Imagine a mirror piece written today, or rather don’t imagine, see for yourself online, hundreds per 2024 proclaiming end to movies, not as forthcoming, but now. Don’t forget those who said talkies would wash up Hollywood, artistically if not economically. Transition awakens grim sleepers. LIFE joked that there were still a few guys getting rich off sale of horse collars, so hope for movies was perhaps not altogether lost. Then as now, the concept of “movie stars” was written off. In a good picture they might get by, but let product be poor and even biggest names would drag it down further. Average cost of films after the war had risen 300%, most barely earning back negative costs in US home market. TV saturated areas had seen theatre receipts drop twenty to forty percent, said surveys LIFE cited but did not conduct themselves. Bad news was cherry-picked from like-mind sources, positive feedback ignored, said Arthur Mayer for the defense, him picked as rebuttal spokesman for the industry. Mayer’s thoughtful essay was whittled from a ball bat to a toothpick by LIFE editors (they printed but 275 words of his response), support letters also minimized in aftermath of 8/13/51. What a time to be attacked what with Movietime USA just launched, nationwide ad sweep a cooperative effort by the industry to bring us back to paying screens. Movietime USA swore that films had never been better. Just linger upon list of ones current and outstanding: The Great Caruso, Born Yesterday, Strangers on a Train, That’s My Boy, The Thing, Showboat. If these weren’t good as anything from record year 1946, then maybe it was time to plain give up.

So above titles were industry’s idea of its best? That alone could be basis for LIFE’s claim, loudest touted of group The Great Caruso, which played six smash weeks in Chicago, a record, and shouldn't that alone confer greatness? There were meantime 107 television stations operating, thirteen million sets in household use. Well sure, said Mayer, but “Just as (people) fitted the automobile, the radio, and other pastimes into their purses and leisure, they are giving a place in their lives to both TV and movies.” No one wanted to sit at home all the time, argued producer and industry booster Jerry Wald, who with partner Norman Krasna borrowed millions to launch an independent venture. It was inconceivable to think that people would abandon movies after fifty years attending them. Yet those who stood beside the industry were “whistling in the graveyard,” according to LIFE. Retaliatory argument pointed to revenue LIFE was losing, and why was Henry Luce attacking movies if not for grudge a result of his March of Time series plus other efforts to break into films not bearing fruit he expected? Continual was claim that nothing was wrong with business that good pictures could not fix, as though doldrums were simple as that, but rundown of releases from early fifties to rescue by Cinemascope show much that was worthy failing right alongside product called “bad” or ordinary. Example at random: Angels in the Outfield, which was much enjoyed, well-liked in hindsight, and lost money, despite being made relatively cheap. Truth was that even quality may not be enough, and that worried Hollywood profoundly.

Punch and then counterpunch … television would wash up movies? No! Hollywood would absorb TV, making of it a supplicant if not slave. Yes, much of production was East Coast-based, but this could change. Whatever video makers do, Hollywood would do better. In the meantime, scurrilous attacks from brother media helped nobody. In fact, there were right-motivated magazines poised to rescue movies from sully LIFE applied, Coronet, Collier’s and LOOK ready to lend supportive hand, if by gestures sudden and some said insincere. Samuel Goldwyn wrote the Collier’s piece, a fix obviously in, while LOOK titled its six pages “Who Says Hollywood is Dying?” These were hurried effort to assist a wounded giant, and to large extent worked. “There still seems to be no end in sight for the veritable avalanche of constructive magazine attentions to the industry following the one adverse blast by LIFE,” said Motion Picture Herald (9/22/51), while oracle Adolph Zukor pledged “that when the industry is through with its efforts, the recent article in LIFE magazine will just be a humorous incident.” In short, shoo fly shoo … we fought worse ogres than this. Imaginative heads sought ways to use television toward their own boxoffice ends. Why not combine television with moviegoing? Simple, said Fox chief Spyros Skouras … Install the enlarged box and give viewers a best of both worlds, a prizefight beamed live to theatres, or a performance of South Pacific from Broadway to home stage, plus “a wonderful movie like The Frogmen.” Giddy by this point, Skouras declared “at a dollar a ticket, I take in a million dollars in one night!”

There was also Telemeter and other devices to supply living rooms with Hollywood entertainment. Insert to a coin box gave access to brand new movies, a single “admission” the whole family could share. Exhibitors raised holy hell at sites where Telemeter was experimented, plus image transmission made features look lousy as TV was accused of being. Theatre television meanwhile died for equipment too expensive and again, an image impossible to watch, let alone enjoy. For sure The Frogmen looked wonderful beside this. Hollywood need would not be answered by pipe-dreaming like this. Dore Schary of MGM admitted that studio overhead, grotesque as it was ingrained, would continue so long as the Lion could turn out uniquely spectacular shows like Quo Vadis and King Solomon’s Mines to let patrons know that there was nothing like mainstream Hollywood to give what television could not, and probably never would. Schary conceded that it was big ones that covered loss from little ones (like Angels in the Outfield), but that little ones were essential to absorb overhead that was unyielding. Weight of latter would shrink in-house production for many majors and oblige them to rent facilities to independent firms. Warners went this route after failure to hold spending at one million per feature or below. For outside bulk buyers, a best bargain Hollywood offered was old negatives to reprint and sell for insatiable appetite that was television. Such windfall was more than studios could resist. Maybe LIFE was right as to Hollywood whistling through graveyards, their own it seemed for finding highest profit through sale of precious libraries.