Macy's v. Movies

Macy's v. Movies

Advertisements for R. H. Macy & Co., Manhattan department store, are bright and saucy, written to make Macy's underselling policy seem chic as well as thrifty. They have influenced other department store advertising, made Macy's publicity director and vice president, Kenneth Collins, who seven years ago taught freshman English at the University of Idaho, the highest paid advertising director in the U. S. Six weeks ago, in an article for Motion Picture Herald, Kenneth Collins told Editor Jerry Ramsaye what he thought about advertisements for Cinema. He said they were inaccurate, exaggerated, nonspecific, overenthusiastic, ineffective.

Cinema advertising executives were moved to sharp replies. S. Charles Ein-feld, advertising and publicity director of Warner Bros., pointed out that Macy's methods were impractical for the cinema, which sells one thing at a time, cannot advertise cut-rates. Hal Home, advertising and publicity director of United Artists, said the rise of Macy's could be entitled "From Gags to Riches," pointed out that advertisement for pictures must "get all selling points over before the picture opens," that films cannot, like stores, build up goodwill. Last week the controversy continued when Kenneth Collins addressed a luncheon of the Associated Motion Picture Advertisers, Inc. He repeated:

"The grossest sort of exaggeration finds its way into motion-picture advertising. It is filled with such lines as, 'you will never forget this picture as long as you live' and 'this is New York's greatest thrill.' Such promises not only weaken the force of your advertising but in addition are the grossest and most flagrant sort of lies.

"One gets the conviction from reading film advertisements that few of the film men who wrote them actually saw the pictures. If they did, they are the worst writers I ever saw. It is bad advertising practice to write about something you know nothing about."

To this blast. "Phil M. Daly" (Jack Harrower), Film Daily colyumist, responded by accusing Macy advertisements of giving the public an erroneous impression that "the department store workers are just One Big Happy Family." He reminded Mr. Collins that the Better Business Bureau of New York has condemned advertisements which claim that a store is underselling competitors (TIME, Oct. 12). The B. B. B. in a letter which Macy's competitors reprinted in advertisements, called such methods ". . . an open attack on the integrity of advertising. . . unsound business. . . inimical to the public interest . . . ruthless and predatory."

The New Pictures

Taxi (Warner). If you have seen The Public Enemy, Smart Money or Blonde Crazy, you have some idea what to expect of Taxi. Authors Kubec Glasmon and John Bright are camera-minded writers and their stories, which usually deal in an offhand way with violent happenings, have speed, vigor and assurance. Fortunately for all concerned, James Cagney attracted Hollywood's attention at about the same time as Authors Bright and Glasmon. When he appears in one of their inventions the result is often brilliantly successful.

In Taxi, Cagney's impudent Irish face is first seen sticking out from behind a steering wheel, spouting Yiddish at a customer. Leader of an insurgent group of cabdrivers who resent the methods of a racketeering corporation, Cagney has ample chance to perform his specialty--a short right-hand punch to the side of the jaw. He threatens his girl (Loretta Young) almost every time he sees her, takes a poke at the clerk from whom they get a marriage license. Right after the marriage, Cagney sets out to avenge a murder committed by the head racketeer of the taxi corporation. Despite his wife's protests, he chases the murderer into a closet and is prepared to shoot him through the door when policemen find him. Like Smart Money and Blonde Crazy, Taxi is a sordid but amusing observation on minor metropolitan endeavors. Good shot: Cagney riding home from Coney Island on a subway and listening, with his hat over his eyes and an expression of dangerous boredom, to the fuzzy comments of his girl's girl friend.

Screen writers are much less often publicized than playwrights. Kubec Glasmon and John Bright have been sufficiently able, original and influential to make themselves noteworthy. They arrived in Hollywood less than a year ago with the unfinished manuscript for The Public Enemy, then called Blood & Beer, which they had already tried to sell to Manhattan theatrical producers. Glasmon, a onetime druggist who says he used to own stores in Chicago, is short, soft-voiced, stocky. He has a wide knowledge of Chicago's underworld, admits that "Glasmon" is a nom-de-plumc, saves newspaper clippings of criminal happenings, like the hero of Blonde Crazy. Bright is younger, larger. He says he used to work for a Chicago newspaper. Glasmon, who recently applied for citizenship, is single, Bright is married. Both are known, in what Hollywood calls its "social circles," as "party hounds."

Girl of the Rio (RKO-Radio) is a passable little border romance made from a play called The Dove, in which the late Holbrook Blinn distinguished himself eight years ago. It is about a Mexican millionaire (Leo Carrillo) who, to facilitate his abduction of a cabaret girl (Dolores Del Rio) has her sweetheart (Norman Foster) jailed and removed from the country. All this is done with a superfluity of Mexican accent by Carrillo and Del Rio, and reiterations of clean young Americanisms by Foster, who encourages Del Rio by saying "Be game, kid." In the play these exaggerations made the action partly a parody of border romance. Because the cinema takes itself more seriously, the climax, where the millionaire lets the girl go in order to increase his selfesteem, seems out of character instead of gay and suitable. Del Rio chants, in almost Gregorian tones, such bits of pidgin slang as "You betcha my life." She photographs as beautifully as ever.

Stepping Sisters (Fox) is a frantic little farce, derived from the comic strips via Broadway, where a play by the same name enjoyed an almost surreptitious run a year ago. The fun in Stepping Sisters largely at the expense of a chorus girl turned socialite (Louise Dresser), is of the "Bringing up Father" variety. Two of the socialite's onetime confreres--one of them (Jobyna Howland) turned tragedienne the other (Minna Gombell) still a blowzy trouper who swaggers with her hips-help stage an allegory at a party intended to be chic. They mock their swank friend, shock her guests by appearing in tights and waving rudely with burlesque spears. Other ingredients of Stepping Sisters are a fat, intimidating butler, a romance between the daughter of the house and a youth whom she describes as a musical comedy leading man. Good sequence: a disastrous rehearsal for the allegory, in which three squalling children appear as the French, German and Italian National Debts.

This Reckless Age (Paramount) is a discussion of what used to be called "the younger generation," intended to show, with a wealth of platitudes and an unlikely climax, that ill-conducted adolescents are capable of acting generously in an emergency. The emergency in This Reckless Age--which was recklessly adapted from The Goose Hangs High--comes when the father of a flip son (Buddy Rogers) and daughter (Frances Dee) finds that he has made an error in business judgment which is likely to land him in jail. His children help avert this calamity, the daughter by readying herself for marriage to her rich godfather, the son by getting money to offset losses for which his father is responsible. This Reckless Age, which amounts to tactless and uninteresting flagellation of a dead horse, is Rogers' last picture as a contract star with Paramount.

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