• U.S.

Cinema: Severest Critics

2 minute read
TIME

In the running Art v. Box (Office war, Hollywood suffers fresh wounds each week. The moviemakers are proud and happy when the critics call their product art, but they tremble when exhibitors call the same product bad box office. Every one of the thousands of U.S. exhibitors knows, or thinks he knows, what his patrons like. Last week Boxoffice magazine let the exhibitors review a couple of critically acclaimed pictures: A Streetcar Named Desire and A Place in the Sun, both Academy Award movies.

Wrote Exhibitor Frank E. Sabin, from Eureka, Mont. (pop. 929): “[A Place in the Sun is] definitely not classed as entertainment by my patrons. A sordid sort of thing all through. [Montgomery] Clift and [Shelley] Winters just moped around for the first 80 minutes—then he drowned her and the story whipped up. His march to the electric chair was the windup of the thing. Jolly, what?”

Herman M. Perkins Jr. of Catonsville, Md. (pop. 16,000) on Streetcar: “It is a good thing we didn’t have a money-back guarantee on this. We had more walkouts than on any picture in a long while. Personally, I wouldn’t walk around the corner to see it and evidently that is what most of the patrons thought about it too.”

C. J. Otts of Waskom, Tex. (pop. 719) took direct action on Streetcar: he stood in front of his theater and warned patrons off. Two of them took him at his word. Others wished they had: “The less sophisticated grumbled mightily.”

Cinemogul J. Arthur Rank, Britain’s leading producer-exhibitor, told a London court last week that his film empire lost money at the box office in the last twelve months. What saved the year: a profit of £1,151,000 ($3,222,800) on ice cream sold to moviegoers.

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