Hollywood in the Television Age
by Samuel Goldwyn, 1949
Goldwyn's predictions for the future of television offer a
look at the general attitudes of the independent producers toward television. Of
his predictions for the future of TV, many were held in common by the Society of
Independent Motion Picture Producers, of which Goldwyn was a leading member. In
this essay, Goldwyn predicts that movies would be shown on TV, that eventually
movies would be made specifically for television (and replace the B-movies
formerly shown in theaters), and that pay-TV would also be a reality.
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on SIMPP's efforts to lobby for pay-TV in the early 1950s
Motion pictures are entering their third major era. First there
was the silent period. Then the sound era. Now we are on the threshold of the
television age.
The thoroughgoing change which sound brought to picture making will be fully
matched by the revolutionary effects (if the House Un-American Activities
Committee will excuse the expression) of television upon motion pictures. I
predict that within just a few years a great many Hollywood producers,
directors, writers, and actors who are still coasting on reputations built up in
the past are going to wonder what hit them.
The future of motion pictures, conditioned as it will be by the competition
of television, is going to have no room for the deadwood of the present or the
faded glories of the past. Once again it will be true, as it was in the early
days of motion picture history, that it will take brains instead of just money
to make pictures. This will be hard on a great many people who have been
enjoying a free ride on the Hollywood carrousel, but it will be a fine thing for
motion pictures as a whole.
Within a few years the coaxial cable will have provided a complete television
network linking the entire country. Whether the expense that is involved in
producing full-length feature pictures for television can possibly be borne by
advertisers or will be paid for by individual charges upon the set owners, no
one can say today. But we do know that with America's tremendous technological
capabilities and our ability to adjust to new situations, nothing will stand in
the way of full-length feature pictures in the home produced expressly for that
purpose.
Even the most backward-looking of the topmost tycoons of our industry cannot
now help seeing just around the corner a titanic struggle to retain audiences.
The competition we feared in the past—the automobile in early movie days, the
radio in the 'twenties and 'thirties, and the developing of night sports quite
recently—will fade into insignificance by comparison with the fight we are
going to have to keep people patronizing our theaters in preference to sitting
at home and watching a program of entertainment. It is a certainty that people
will be unwilling to pay to see poor pictures when they can stay home and see
something which is, at least, no worse.
We are about to enter what can be the most difficult competition imaginable
with a form of entertainment in which all the best features of radio, the
theater, and motion pictures may be combined. Today there are fifty-six
television stations on the air, with sixty-six additional stations in process of
construction. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission points out
that by 1951 there may be 400 stations in operation. There are now 950,000
receiving sets installed, sets are being produced at the rate of 161,000 per
month and next year that rate will be doubled. Soon there will be a potential
audience of fifty million people or more.
Here we have the development that will change the whole entertainment
business. Fifty million Americans will be able to sit at home and take their
choice of visiting the ball park, the prize-fight matches, the wrestling bouts,
the legitimate theater, and the motion pictures without stirring from their own
living rooms. It is going to require something truly superior to cause them not
only to leave their homes to be entertained, but to pay for that entertainment.
How can the motion picture industry meet the competition of television? Most
certainly the basic business tactics—if you can't lick 'em, join 'em—apply
in this case. If the movies try to lick television, it's the movies that will
catch the licking. But the two industries can quite naturally join forces for
their own profit and the greater entertainment of the public. Instead of any
talk about how to lick television, motion picture people now need to discuss how
to fit movies into the new world made possible by television. Here are some of
the ways in which that tailoring process can be effected:
First, the reality must be faced that if the motion picture industry is to
remain a going concern—instead of turning into one that is gone—it will have
to turn out pictures several times as good as pictures are, on the average,
today. Such recent pictures as Joan of
Arc, The Snake Pit, Portrait of
Jennie, Johnny Belinda, The Search, and Miss Tatlock's Millions are
proof that Hollywood has creative capacities which are utilized all too rarely.
Pictures like these, far above the average today, will have to be the norm in
the future.
A factor on our side is that people will always go out to be entertained
because human beings are naturally gregarious. But before the moviegoer of the
future arranges for a baby sitter, hurries through dinner, drives several miles,
and has to find a place to park, just for the pleasure of stepping up to the box
office to buy a pair of tickets, he will want to be certain that what he
pays for is worth that much more than what he could be seeing at home without
any inconvenience at all.
Assuming that better pictures will be made, there remains the problem of how
the motion picture industry is going to receive financial returns for pictures
made for television. The greatest potentialities lie in a device called
phonevision.
This device is not yet known to the American public because it has not yet
been placed upon the commercial market, but to motion picture producers it may
well be the key to full participation in this new, exciting medium of
entertainment. Reduced to its simplest terms, it is a system by which any
television-set owner will be able to call his telephone operator, tell her that
he wishes to see The Best Years of Our Lives (if I may be pardoned for
thinking of my favorite picture), or any other picture, and then see the picture
on his television set. The charge for the showing of the picture will be carried
on the regular monthly telephone bill.
Phonevision is normal television with the additional feature that it can be
seen on the phonevision-television combination set only when certain electric
signals are fed into the set over telephone wires. No television set without the
phonevision addition is capable of picking up phonevision programs, and no
phonevision-television set can pick up such programs without those electrical
signals supplied over the telephone wires on specific order.
The fee paid by the set owner will presumably be divided between the
television transmitter, the picture producer, and the telephone company. The
range of possibilities which this prospect opens to motion picture producers is
almost limitless, for every television owner becomes just as much a box-office
prospect inside his home as outside it.
It must be borne in mind that full-length pictures in the home are not
necessarily something which will be realized in the immediate future. Despite
the rapid pace at which we hurtle ahead, I am inclined to believe that the
production of full-length pictures designed especially for home television will
not become a practical reality for at least five to ten years more. Although
phonevision seems to be ready for commercial adaptation today, it is obvious
that no motion picture producer can risk the huge investment required for a
full-length feature picture for television alone unless he has some reasonable
assurance of recovering his costs.
In addition to producing for television, motion picture companies will
undoubtedly make strenuous efforts to participate in the ownership and operation
of television stations themselves. Already several of the larger companies have
made extensive plans along these lines. An element which could blight the
development of television would be the introduction into that field of
monopolistic controls and practices similar to those which, in the motion
picture industry, have hurt independent production. But this possibility should
be reduced to a minimum by the fact that television-station ownership by theater
companies and their affiliated interests, as well as others, will be limited by
the Federal Communications Commission rule which provides, in effect, that no
single interest can own more than five television licenses.
What effect will the exhibition of films over television have upon the type
of films produced? First, one must hedge by saying that until we know whether
the use of phonevision can supply sufficient revenue, or until advertisers can
bear the cost of such full-length productions—a remote possibility,—we will
all remain in the dark as to the direction to be taken by pictures produced
essentially for that medium. One can venture a few predictions, however, as to
the reasonable probabilities.
There is no doubt that in the future a large segment of the talents of the
motion picture industry will be devoted to creating motion pictures designed
explicitly for this new medium. As today's television novelty wears off, the
public is not going to be satisfied to look at the flickering shadows of old
films which have reposed in their producers' vaults for many years. Nor will the
public be content to spend an evening looking at a series of fifteen-minute
shorts such as are now being made for television. There will be a vast demand
for new full-length motion picture entertainment brought directly into the home.
I believe that when feature pictures are being made especially for
television, they will not differ basically from those made for showing in
theaters. The differences will be chiefly variations in techniques. The craving
which all of us have to lose ourselves, temporarily at least, in the adventures,
romances, joys, trials, and tribulations 0£ characters created by storytellers
does not change much, whether those characters are portrayed in a novel, on the
stage, or on the screen—or whether that screen is in a theater or in one's own
living room.
But in this new medium there will undoubtedly be a greater emphasis on story
values than exists today. A person rarely walks out of a theater before he has
seen the picture he came to see, regardless of whether it lives up to his
expectations. A variety of reasons are behind this-the admission price he paid,
the fact that he has no control over the program, the fact that if he leaves it
will probably be too late to go to another theater, etc. At most, only one of
those factors—the equivalent of an admission price—will be present in the
home. The knowledge that the spectator will be able to move £rom one picture to
another by the mere turn of the dial is bound to make those who will produce
pictures primarily for television concentrate on keeping the audience vitally
interested.
I believe, too, that there will be a reversion, £or a time at least, to a
lustier, broader type of acting than we have seen since sound changed motion
picture acting techniques. Because of the small viewing sur£ace of present-day
home television screens, the subtleties of underplaying which can be observed on
the large motion picture theater screen are lost to the television viewer.
Unless the home screen becomes measurably larger, actors will find that the
emotions which they can portray today by nuances will have to be conveyed by
much broader expression.
Along the same general line, I am inclined to believe that the pacing of
feature pictures designed primarily for television will be found to be more
rapid than the normal tempo of motion pictures in the theater. Feature
television pictures will probably not run over an hour—a reduction of from
thirty to fifty per cent of the running time of present-day features. The need
for compressing the essential elements of the story will inevitably result in
accelerated tempo.
All of this makes for an exciting and stimulating future even though it is
impossible to forecast what the specific nature of the interests of motion
picture companies or individual theater owners in television stations will be.
Ultimately, a pattern will evolve out of the jumbled jigsaw puzzle of
experimentation.
The certainty is that in the future, whether it be five or ten or even more
years distant, one segment of our industry will be producing pictures for
exhibition in the theaters while another equally large section will be producing
them for showing in the homes. The stimulus of this kind of competition should
have nothing but good results. The people best fitted to make pictures for
television will be those who combine a thorough knowledge of picture-making
techniques with a real sense of entertainment values and the imagination to
adapt their abilities to a new medium.
The weak sisters in our ranks will fall by the wayside. But no one in our
industry who has real talent need fear the effects of television. I welcome it
as opening new vistas for the exercise of creative ability, spurred on by
intense competition.
I have always been basically optimistic about Hollywood and its
potentialities. I see no reason to change my views now. I am convinced that
television will cause Hollywood to achieve new heights and that, as time goes
on, above these heights new peaks will rise.
SOURCES:
Hollywood Quarterly.Winter, 1949/50.
See Bibliography.
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