Signposts in a Strange Land

by Walker Percy

  Scores of movie magazines appear monthly, and in each copy these prescribed departments follow each other in relentless succession, varying little in content or arrangement. This sameness is undoubtedly due to the method of production. A few large publishing companies such as MacFadden, Fawcett, and Street and Smith publish the large majority of the numerous magazines, so numerous that the ingenuity of the title-makers appears now to be completely exhausted. Each house is responsible for several magazines and each group seems to be turned out by one huge staff. Such conditions prohibit originality and necessitate the production of a practically mechanized article.

  The only variety provided for by formula and mode of production is that of time and circumstance. Time passes and circumstances change, to the great delight of the movie-magazine readers. They can perceive the difference between a 1929 Silver Screen and a 1935 Picture-Play; they know that Ruth Chatterton got her first divorce in the former and that Bing Crosby’s wife had twins in the latter. But, to the casual observer, one is precisely like another. He is equally agreeable to reading an old magazine as he is to a new one, for he desires only to look at the pictures and read the fan letters, which, if anything, improve with age.

  The bulk of the screen magazine is composed of interviews and feature articles. These two departments differ in name and form only; for, although the “interviews” claim to be authentic and contain quoted matter in the first person, great doubt has arisen in the minds of American fans as to whether a Hollywood star was ever interviewed.

  Every movie interview and feature embodies one or all of three motives: to reconcile the peculiarities and weaknesses of a movie star to the ideal held by the fans, to trace the star from his honky-tonk days to his Hollywood pinnacle, and to give the world the star’s philosophy of life. The first device is unadulterated hooey, the second is a dramatized rise-to-fame yarn with a small element of truth, and the third is a stock series of common-sense platitudes which apparently guide the lives of all the stars. Strangely enough, many articles give a star’s advice for a successful married life, the premise supposedly being that practice makes perfect.

  All features and interviews are prefaced by bold-print explanatory paragraphs summing up the article’s contents. Typical as an explanatory paragraph is this heading to a feature in a recent Screenbook: “Bob Montgomery is one of the few who have zoomed swiftly and suddenly to stardom and kept his perspective.” Desultory inspection of screen magazines will prove this “few” to be practically all of Hollywood. It is, evidently, unwritten law among interviewers to invest all stars with a naïve modesty and to disavow all rumors to the contrary. This excerpt from last month’s Hollywood illustrates the general nature of “disavowers”: “Has Janet Gaynor changed? Is she different off the screen? You have read that Janet Gaynor has gone difficult, a genteel word for high-hat. Is it only a legend, a myth?” And like thousands of its predecessors, it turned out to be a malicious myth.

  The life-story type of article appears under titles like these: “When I Had a Dime between Me and the Breadline,”“Franchot Tone Once Did Not Have an Easy Time Eating Three Meals a Day.” More specific are these episodic experiences from the life history of a star: “John Boles Once Served as a Spy in the World War,”“Fredric March’s Diary in the South Seas,”“Victor McGlaglen Once Fought Jack Johnson.”

  Articles dealing with screen villains invariably aver that the villain is in real life a generous and sweet person far removed from the evil character he portrays. C. Henry Gordon, the lamp-headed gentleman who looks like Hitler in a convex mirror, is “not at all like the villain he plays,” according to Silver Screen. And, with the feature writer, it does not go without saying that Bette Davis, in real life, is nothing like the slut of Bordertown and Of Human Bondage. Her genuine sweetness of character must be reestablished by claiming that she sends money to a second cousin in Shanghai.

  In their well-meant intention to salve over inconsistencies in the lives of movie stars with their bland ballyhoo, feature writers are liable to commit ridiculous contradictions in the course of time. A few years ago, when the tough hero came into vogue, one magazine wrote, “James Cagney is mean to everybody. He even threw a grapefruit at his butler for not putting sugar on it.” Last month the same magazine ran a feature beginning: “Despite his rough exterior James Cagney is one of the most refined personalities in Hollywood.” Such inconsistencies can only lead one to believe that ballyhoo is the byword and that the interviewer of “Clark Gable at Home” no more saw Clark than the feature writer of “Clark Gable Bear Hunting.”

  Probably somewhat responsible for that impulse which prompts even the mature and intelligent to pick up a movie magazine and glance through its contents is that most diverting department, the letter box. In this section of the movie magazine are to be found the soul utterances of a curious people. The most inferior magazine contains the most diverting letter box; for the gushing extravagance of the letters combine with the earnest manner with which they are set forth by the magazine to produce a delightful conglomeration of incredibly bad taste. Photoplay, however, specializes in scintillating constructive criticism, a principle which this fan letter doubtless embodies in a burst of originality: “An idea has occurred to me. I think the private life of the screen stars are [sic!]their own business, not the public’s.” Another Photoplay fan relates an experience which the college student should find helpful: “I used to feel tired and blue whenever I had a test facing me the next day at college, until I finally went to a movie the night before one. The next day I made the highest mark I have ever made. No more do I dread test days.”

  The best fan letters are awarded cash prizes, ranging usually from $1 to $25. Many letters go unrewarded, and after comparing these with the prize-winning letters, we still find it impossible to conjecture what the judges consider prize-winning material. It is indeed a pity that all letters cannot receive $10, as did this one, written by a sixteen-year-old Mae West admirer: “I just saw Belle of the Nineties and I enjoyed it immensely, but it is a shame they had to cut out so many good scenes. In spite of that I saw the picture twice.”

  The sentiments of the University of North Carolina are succinctly expressed by this $10 letter which begins: “Janet Gaynor’s sugar-coated sweetness is beginning to cause nausea.”

  A typical prize-winning letter of praise is this restrained message from a Black Water, Kansas, maid: “I will just say that Bing is just the handsomest, dearest, sweetest, most charming actor I have ever laid my eyes on.” Why this letter should win $5 while letters like the following go unrewarded will forever remain a mystery: “Any doctor will tell you that Garbo’s grunting and fluttering of the eye-lids denote a bilious condition.”

  The prosaic thirties have contributed little poetry to the letter boxes of motion-picture magazines, but ten years ago as much space was devoted to poems as to letters. In an old copy of Film Favorites is to be found this choice bit:

  Some like Barrymore

  But I like Garymore.

  Certainly, Ogden Nash must have been a movie-magazine fan.

  Movie magazines often draw from a stock repertory of “special features” in an attempt to break the monotony of the prescribed makeup. These “special features” are calculated to awaken interest by their personal application or opportunity for personal gain. A common species of “special features” is the prize contest, which, since it must be cinematic, appears usually in the form of a page full of unnamed star pictures, with cash prizes offered him who can identify them. Picture-Play introduced a variation when it presented in a recent edition back-view “stills” of several popular movie actors. Screenland, last month, ran a series of cartoons each of which embodied the title of a famous movie. Covered Wagon, for example, was represented by a fat lady sitting atop a baby carriage.

  Appearing only occasionally now are the once very popular contests, the winners of which got a free ticket to Hollywood and a promised contract from one of the studios. These contests with th
eir irresistible terms have been obliterated by the justified and highly publicized accusations brought against them. Since lurid pictures of a Hollywood overflowing with starving contest winners were conjured up in American minds, the Hollywood contests have lost caste. The only current contests comparable to the old sensations are occasional offers of magazines to reproduce the best pictures submitted and to send them for approval to the casting directors of several studios.

  Another variety of “special feature” which is constantly employed occurs in the form of fashion hints, beauty advice, and cooking secrets of the stars, typified by such recent Screenbook “scoops” as “What Sue Morris feeds Chester for Sunday night supper,” “Lili Damita’s new spring frock,” “Ginger Rogers’s facial work-out.”

  Probably the most characteristic and revealing of the magazine institutions is the movie-review department. Although the reviews are supposed to be competent guides to current movies, their comments sound remarkably like the advertising previews of the movies themselves. It is difficult to conjecture whether the unflagging praise which is heaped on most of the movies is due to some great fidelity felt by the movie magazines toward their mother art or to substantial sums paid the magazines for advertising by the studios. Whatever may be the case, all movies are accorded ratings from fair on up, whether by stars, checks and double-checks, or thermometers with the 100 degree mark representing perfect. The reviewers’ vocabulary includes such qualifying epithets as “interesting,” “thrilling,” “exciting,” “entertaining,” and “sweet.” Their rare judgment is illustrated by the high mark awarded Gridiron Flash, which was said to be a “fair picture of college life.” Chapel Hill moviegoers will recall that the same picture nearly caused the destruction of the local theater.

  With the growth of the motion-picture magazine industry from the unnoticed appearance of a few copies twenty years ago to the regular vomiting of prodigious quantities and varieties of magazines which it amounts to today, certain outgrowths and divisions have occurred. In pre-Depression days the price of all movie magazines was fixed at twenty-five cents. But 1929 brought an end to this Utopian, several hundred percent profit, existence, and with the general fall in prices all the magazines except Photoplay promptly dropped to ten or fifteen cents.

  Among the large group of movie magazines, class distinctions have arisen, dictated by the three price divisions, ten, fifteen, and twenty-five cents. The great majority of the magazines, such as Silver Screen, Screen Play, Movie Mirror, Hollywood, and Screenbook, lie in the cheapest classes; some few like Picture-Play belong to the intermediate group; while only one, Photoplay, continues to maintain its pre-Depression price of twenty-five cents.

  Although all movie-magazine readers agree that Picture-Play is a better magazine than Silver Screen, the five-cent price distinction in the lower classes is difficult to account for. In dimension, content, and quality of paper, no difference is noticeable between Picture-Play and the dime magazines. Unless the two prices are arbitrary actions of the publishing companies involving no real difference in quality, practically the only justification of the nickel difference is the slightly more lurid appearance of the covers of the fifteen-cent magazines, the more sensational nature of their interviews, and their superior skill in blotting out double chins and affixing eyelashes in the photographs of the stars.

  But in the case of the aristocrat of the large family, class distinction is immediately visible. Photoplay justifies its subtitle, “The Aristocrat of the Motion Picture Magazines,” by presenting a higher grade of photography and a greater variety in arrangement. Its photographic technique is predominately Vanity Fairesque. In the profile view of Clark Gable, for instance, bold shadows are made use of to obscure the oddly foreshortened ear which appears so disconcertingly in cheaper magazines. The makeup formula is disregarded to the extent of including some fiction and occasionally a Montgomery Flagg drawing—anything to provide variety and to elevate itself above the bourgeoisie, whose attempts at originality are illustrated by Screenbook’s crossword puzzle superimposed on the broad face of Joan Crawford. But, despite all these demonstrations, Photoplay hardly escapes the fundamental hooey which stamps all members of its species. Its editorial comment and interviews are just as ridiculous as the rest and often more so because of their pretentiousness.

  Besides this large class and its internal class distinctions, there exist two outgrowing types of motion-picture magazines, the comic movie magazine and the fiction movie magazine, of which the most popular are Film Fun and Screen Romance, respectively. Neither of these two types attempts to give intimate glimpses in a screen star’s life. Both rather adopt the attractions of other common and more general “slicks.”

  Film Fun is a combination of a sex magazine and a comic magazine, saturated with a Hollywood atmosphere. “Stills” are shown with feeble jests printed below them; full-length photographs of scantily dressed chorus girls are reproduced with dismally punned epigrams appending. The ninety percent nudity of Film Fun is responsible for its popularity in university towns, or perhaps it is the magnificent wit that college students can’t resist.

  Screen Romance and its imitators combine with considerable subtlety the short-story magazine with the glamour of Hollywood. The plots of recent movies are given in short fictional form, illustrated with “stills” from the movie version. The prose of Screen Romance is the slushy idiom of its noncinematic brother “slicks,”True Story and True Romance, and is tirelessly applied to all movie themes, irrespective of the type of plot. Its stereotyped, sex-conscious style undoubtedly suits a large number of movies, but when it is applied to David Copperfield and The Little Minister, the effect is odd, to say the least.

  Movie magazines, with their interviews, letters, and reviews, will go down in history as an eloquent manifestation of a particularly crude Americanism. That the situation is peculiarly American is demonstrated by the amazement and chagrin of foreign actors, who, upon entering this country, find that they are required not only to perform before a camera but to stage a continuous three-ring circus. Many return to their native Hollywoods, but some conform to these peculiar demands and obediently live strange and abnormal lives which occasion endless speculation from the delighted fans. Among the most successful conformists is Garbo, who has conspired with her press agents so cunningly that most Americans consider her one of the world’s major mysteries.

  The raison d’être of the movie magazine is the abnormal curiosity of its readers about the private life of the movie stars. It has no justifiable existence, for none of the large group of magazines offers intelligent criticism or information pertaining to the movie world. The “yes” reviews can hardly pass for criticism, nor can the Hollywood news items claim to be informative. The inquisitive moviegoer, who is naturally interested in the gigantic art of moviemaking, can find intelligent magazine comment only in the movie reviews of noncinematic periodicals. If the relatively small theatrical and literary worlds can support such magazines as The Stage and The Saturday Review of Literature, which have successfully disregarded the sex life of actors and authors, a similar periodical can certainly be supported by the movie industry.

  Naturally, the average moviegoer is not the intellectual equal of the theatergoer or the reader of first-class books, but he is certainly far superior to the movie-magazine fan. Unfortunately, however, the latter type has been mobilized by movie magazines into a loud, influential voice, booming effectually at Hollywood. This class of moviegoer has deluged Hollywood with letters of approval and disapproval and has undoubtedly been partly responsible for the unsatisfactory condition of the movies. The more valuable comments of higher-class movie devotees number far less than the notorious “fan letters” and lack the influential publicity of the movie magazines.

  The appearance of an increasing number of good movies and the mounting discontent against the poor majority indicate shifting trends in the fan public. A few years ago Jean Harlow kept America in a constant turmoil, while a picture like Disr
aeli was a box-office failure. Today, even Mae West productions are abdicating in favor of such films as David Copperfield, The Gay Divorcee, and The Little Minister. Such improvement indicates either the cultural advance of movie fans or the adoption of a militant attitude by an intelligent, brave minority. Whatever may be the case, good movies have proven to be profitable undertakings. The necessity of a superior movie magazine, offering an intelligent appraisal of the Hollywood scene, is becoming increasingly apparent. And with its advent one may hope for a decline in popularity of that masquerading “pulp,” the current movie magazine, and a corresponding conservation of large quantities of paper and ink.

  1935

  Accepting the National Book Award for The Moviegoer

  YOU, THE JUDGES, HAVE made it difficult for me. You must know that the main source of creative energy of a Southern writer is a well-nourished rancor against Yankees. His natural writing posture is that of a man drawing a bead on Yankee culture. Then something like this happens and spoils everything. It takes all the heart out of a Southerner to be treated so well. Why, a fellow is liable to go back home and not write another word for the next ten years. It has happened, you know.

  Nevertheless, I wish to thank—and thank from the bottom of my heart—the judges, Miss Jean Stafford, Mr. Herbert Gold, and Mr. Lewis Gannett; the sponsors, the American Book Publishers Council, the American Booksellers Association, and the Book Manufacturers Institute. And, by your leave, I cannot let this opportunity pass without thanking two other people and two other institutions: my agent, Miss Elizabeth Otis, and my editor, Mr. Stanley Kauffmann, who contributed far beyond the call of duty and ten percent—in fact, I’d just as soon not say how much they did help me—the house of Knopf for their usual beautiful job of bookmaking, and finally my wife, for reasons known to her.

  Somewhere in the novel the main character, Jack Boiling, talks about his aunt, who has diagnosed his difficulties as the symptoms of a previous incarnation. I have something of the same feeling now. Because the last time I was in New York (not counting one weekend)was twenty years ago and the occasion was so different that it is hard to believe it belongs to the same lifetime. I was employed as an intern at Bellevue Hospital, assigned to the morgue to do autopsies. The medical staff would assemble and go over a case and make their best guess as to the cause of death. Then it was my job to stand up with a trayful of organs, lungs, liver, spleen, and such, taken from the poor fellow, and give them the answers.