The motion picture industry is one of the leading industries of the United States, employed during the fiscal year ending July 1, 1938, an estimated total of 281,500 persons in the production, distribution and exhibition of pictures. A conservative estimate of the capital invested in the industry in the United States would be $2,000,000,000, apportioned as follows: theatres, $1,880,000,000; studios, $100,000,000; distribution, $20,000,000. Studios in Hollywood, California, the world center of the industry, regularly employed 25,000 persons during 1937, with a payroll of $91,000,000.
Pictures of feature length produced in the United States in 1938 totaled 588 (estimated). More than 30 per cent of the feature length pictures in 1937-38 consisted of the perennially popular Westerns and other action pictures. Over 10 per cent were musical films, and the remaining 60 per cent included current subjects, biography, history, drama, popular and classical literature.
Enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code, a self-regulative process adopted by the members of the Association of Motion Picture Producers and Distributors, has brought about a definite advance in the moral and artistic quality of American motion pictures. This improvement has been particularly apparent since 1934, when reorganization of methods of enforcement of the Code resulted in the required submission of all stories for approval by the Code Administration before they go into production. For example, during 1937, seventy-five completed scripts were rejected by the Administration. Of these, 46 were rewritten and eventually approved and produced; the remaining twenty-nine, which were definitely discarded, contained highly suggestive dialogue, deals with easily imitated forms of crime, with venereal diseases or with the drug traffic.
Production costs climbed from $135,000,000 in 1935 to $165,000,000 for the 1937-38 season. The increase was due to more elaborate and expensive pictures, wage and salary increases, and greater tax burdens. Organized labor has made astonishing strides in unionizing the industry during the last three years. The crafts — painters, plumbers, cobweb makers, draftsmen, etc. — were first brought into the A. F. of L. Actors' and writers' unions were recognized by the studios in 1937. Directors are now in the process of organization.
There are 16,251 theaters in operation in the United States (1938) with a total seating capacity of 10,924,484. One hundred forty million feet of film per day are exchanged between these theaters and five hundred branch exchanges. Box office receipts for 1937 were in excess of one billion dollars with an average admission price of twenty-three cents. An average of 85,000,000 persons a week attended motion picture theaters in the United States in 1937, as against 80,000,000 in 1935 and 86,000,000 in 1936. Approximate world attendance would be close to 235,000,000 a week.
According to Nathan D. Golden, chief of the Motion Picture Division of the Federal Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce there were 62,895 sound picture theaters in the world on Jan. 1, 1938, an increase of 7,332 over the number reported for Jan. 1, 1937. Of the 26,202 silent motion picture theaters still in existence, the majority are located in Russia. In the United States there is one theater for every 6,742 persons; in China, which has a total of 250 theaters, the average is one theater for about 1,600,000 persons.
There are 500 featured players in the industry. The office of Central Casting in Hollywood placed 15,936 extras in 1937 for a total of 294,307 days; a daily average of 963 extras were employed on working days throughout the year. Less than $500 a year was earned by 14,091 extras; 7 extras earned from $3,000 to $3,300. The average daily wage for extras was $10.03.
Recent advances in natural-color cinematography as well as laboratory processing of color film on prints were notable in such outstanding productions as Robin Hood, Marie Antoinette, Suez, A Star is Born, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Color has also been extensively used in the making of shorts. However, cost and technical requirements of color photography are still a serious handicap, and until these can be reduced to approximately those of black and white photography, color cannot make great headway in the motion picture field.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a brilliant fantasy in color produced by Walt Disney, was the motion picture sensation of the 1937-38 season. It is expected to make an all-time world-wide box office record, having grossed $4,000,000 in the United States in the first ten months after its release.
According to a statement made by Nathan D. Golden on Feb. 14, 1938, 70 per cent of screen time in all foreign picture theaters is taken up by Hollywood films. Exports of American sound and silent films reached 215,721,956 feet during the past year, an increase of about six million feet over 1936. Argentina imported the greatest total footage in 1937, followed in succession by Great Britain, Brazil, the British West Indies, Panama and Mexico. Foreign markets bring in thirty to forty per cent of all revenues received by American producers.
During 1937 approximately 1,809 features were produced outside of the United States, as compared with 1,374 in 1936. The 1937 figure includes approximately 500 made in Japan, 350 in India and 225 in England. The Administration of the Motion Picture Production Code approved forty-one foreign-made pictures during 1937 for showing in the United States. Of these Mayerling, produced in France, and The Elephant Boy, produced in India by a British company, were outstanding.
In marked contrast to the situation a few years ago, the major studios are taking an active interest in the making of shorts — one-, two-, and three-reel pictures including serials, newsreels, and sport, music, science, and historical subjects. Slapstick is entirely out; the present trend is toward shorts which are informative as well as entertaining, and their production is increasingly regarded as training ground for future actors, directors and writers of feature length pictures. One nine-minute short, The Romance of Radium took thirteen months in production. Production of shorts is not confined exclusively to Hollywood, but is divided almost equally between the film capital and New York City.
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