Movies and Movie Making - Miscellaneous

Howard referred to films as "typical effusions of the conveyor mentality." In Search of My Father, pg. 21

"A certain part of the theater, which has been dying for the past 100 years, did die a natural death and that was the part that went into talking pictures. The public would rather see a bad movie than a bad play because it is so much cheaper. Those at the head of the motion picture industry still find it hard to believe that the public wants anything in the way of motion pictures that is worth while. Despite talking pictures the theatre is still able to exist as a living, breathing organization." "Calls 12 Good Plays Enough for New York," The New York Times, January 22, 1930

from "Films Oppressive to Leslie Howard" when asked his opinion of Hollywood: 

"...he found [Hollywood] incredible and not at all to his artistic tastes."

"Mr. Howard said he found some things about Holywood [sic] to his liking, such as the agreeable climate, the fact that there were no long runs, and working time which permitted an actor to keep the normal hours of most persons."

But "there was something definitely oppressing about the realization that a motion picture was just a part of a vast machine that controlled every one connected with it, he said. Then, actors were seriously given fantastic effusions masquerading as 'scripts,' he said. In addition, he went on, an actor is given no consideration in the selection of a script, and really knows little or nothing about it until he is called to the lot and told to act. He recounted that he had created a considerable furor once by demanding a few hours to rehearse a part he had only known about for a short time.

"'I have no desire any more to to play in the commercial theatre,' he went on. 'And the movies are purely commercial. My plan would be to use that economic independence which the movies can give to an actor, to seek to eliminate the commercial theatre and to attempt to create the kind of a theatre in which we, as actors, could find the opportunity to do the sort of thing we want to do.

"'I noticed the other day that Miss Helen Hayes had announced her withdrawal from the movies and said she didn't particularly like herself in the movies. Like Miss Hayes, I don't particularly like myself in the movies either. But the movies remain the chance the actor has to become economically independent of the movies, and of Broadway, too, in the commercial sense.'"

from The New York Times, April 1, 1935 

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