Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-08-30
Hollywood Turns Back
To Musical Offerings
ground" That the Cash-Pa paying Public Knew
Little About" Single" of the Future.
By Mollie Merrick.

HOLLYWOOD. Calf. August 90
Taat Hollywood which six months age
refused 10 allow a musical number II
remain in the average production and
openly declared musicals as boy
ONCE failures, has again turned whole
heartedly to the making OF the tune
full talkie.
Most production chiefs will tell you
vaguely that the return of the must
cal film is due to the fact that singles
are good again after being box office
liabilities for som. time" Many OF
them will admit that Ernst Lubitsch' S
successful ventur IS with music in !
period when this type of picture was
considered too dangerous to play with
in the majority of studios did much
to revive public interest in this form
of entertainment
Martin Rreones, chief Of musical pro-
duetian at Metre Geldwyn- Mayer studio,
cones forth boldly with this statement:
Music has not been gone from the
screen--it has been popular all along
1t has backgrounded some of the most
stieally-reeeived releases, but
the public was possibly not conscious Of
its existence. Nevertheless, music has
undergone enc great change In recent
months in that it has passed. in the
Consciousness of exhibitors, from box
ONCE liability into an asset once again.
You cannot ask al executive to con-
fess that motion picture producers
themselves killed music with their RI
diculous usage of songs in pictures and
with the hasty and often crude methods
Of handling the siege musical sue
cesses which they bought and turned
out with inferior treatment. But an
executive of Martin Broones' honesty
will not deny such an accusation when
1t is frankly put up to HIM. He counters
with this most amazing fact:
when you say music has passed
from films, were you aware that of
several talkies made during the period
when music was officially dead in
Hollywood over so per cent of the
foetage had incidental music back
grounding it?"
This is facer. Fifty per cent music
and the audience not conscious Of it2
Mr.. Broones continued: Romance, :
which we made with Gresa Carlo, has
music hackgTounding in so per cent of
Its foetage. We did not intend to make
It apparent because there was a bigotry
against music at the time which was
taking the form of announcements
posted over movie theaters TO the effect
that this show is not a musicale Any
producer reading such notices ON thea
ter marques isn't going to throw him.
self Fundamentally into musical pre-
auctions with the terrific cost which
they entail
ANY song number interpolated into
q musical show costs, VIXEN one COM
putes rehearSals with orchestra men at
their present high price and shooting
time, from six to nine thousand dollars.
Half dozen musical numbers in a
picture, then, run the cost of that pic
tzIre up pretty high without regard to
cast. original cos. Of story, camera
crew, equipment, price of gelatin strip,
time required for preparation of story
and executives salaries which are
charged Up TO the pictures which they
supervise.
Another picture which had q large
percentage of music in IL was Norma
EhesFer's Strangers May kiss With
out making the public conscious of the
fact. we told the story of the girls life
largely with music. When the heraine's
character suffers deterioration after
she has been abandoned by the man