CASE HISTORY OF A MOVIE

by DoreSchary as told to Charles Palmer '23. Random House, 1950, 242 pp., $3.00.

Whatever we may think about the motion picture industry the fact remains that we do think about it. Press agents and zealots have seen to that. Unfortunately, both the cause and result of such interest have too often been misinformation.

It seems odd that a simple, concise explana- tion of the film making process should await the effort of the head of one of the major studios but this volume by Dore Schary (acknowledgedly written in most unghostlike fashion by Cap Palmer '23) is a first step to accomplish this. The film in question is one called TheNext Voice You Hear. Having worked in Hollywood myself, I can safely say that the reader of this book will know more about the production of that picture than nine-tenths of the people connected with it.

But there is more than fascinating detail here. There is a story. Beginning with an octagonal film can sitting unceremoniously on the curb after the preview in Santa Monica, the authors go back to trace the arduous path of production and the human problems connected with it right down to the successful climax when it is selected for that Eldorado of moviedom, the Radio City Music Hall.

For the story and the remarkable detail, one somehow suspects the trained hand of Palmer but in the attitude of the book, its editorial comment, its enthusiasm for people and its practical optimism one knows at once it is Schary. When he explains that movies are first of all a business but that it is today the essence of good business to give an ever-enlightened audience more thought-provoking pictures, we can only rejoice that the industry has an intelligent spokesman whose clear statements can lead to understanding and eventually to the equally clear answers of a selective audience.