Salt Lake Telegram | 1934-04-26 | Page 4 | Walter Winchell on Broadway

Walter Winchell BROADWAY BROADWAY- ON ON If I Were ere the Roosevelt of Hollywood I would relegate the Hollywood director to n a position of comparative unimportance in the in- in like that of the stage director to the theater theater thea- thea ter and cut his salary accordingly Why make n a hero of the director of such a good script as s say y Cavalcade or The House of Rothschild It would have been a hard job to spoil either of them Nor could a good director make a good picture out of such a bad script as say The Fire Chief If the director does a rewrite job thereby thereby there there- by saving a bad story why not credit him as a writer which he certainly deserves S S S SId Id I'd talk to some of the cinema reviewers reviewers- whom I know use their newspapers to air their petty sulking and jaded opinions The They d do not suspect it but they are arc l keeping some of their readers away from movies that they might enjoy enjoy- and the groans roans of the critics often send these people peo- peo pie to other pictures that they dont don't like or Und un- un d S S S Si i I would start a school for lor censors which all present and prospective morals experts would have to attend in order order- that they mi might ht learn what is and what is not damaging to the youth of America S C 0 There they w would uld also learn that exhibitions of bad manners on the part of a flick flicker r hero can have a worse effect on a child than a ri risque que joke which he probably cannot understand understandS S S S SAnd And they would also learn to delete scenes where major crimes are made m-ade praiseworthy such as the snatch sequence in Lady for a Day And the Dillinger heroics now planned for lor pro pro- S S C The scenarists would be paid royalties instead of salaries for their work This would induce them to take more time and pains with their crea- crea Every Hollywood writer is expected to turn turnout turnout out a masterpiece in two months It always took Ibsen two years with the exception of one job which he tossed off in a year I and it is hard to believe that picture scribes are very much more clever than was Ibby