The Bulletin’s Day Book

When it comes to shedding crocodile tears motion picture exhibitors can match the best lacrimosal efforts of the gelatin stars they feature on their screens.

Take the case of William Goldberg, for example, manager of the Fifty-fifth Street Playhouse. He denies he is part owner. The theatre, which in past years made a considerable reputation by displaying German-made films, is now showing what purports to be a French picture, “Adieu Les Beaux Jours.” Whereby hangs a tale.

A report in the current issue of Variety, theatrical trade publication, stating that this picture was really a German product disguised by the Ufa Films, Inc., American distributors of German-made films, with the intention of beating the boycott, caused a Bulletin reporter to dash up to Fifty-fifth street to get to the bottom of the business. He got to the bottom.

“Why do you hound us?” Goldberg wanted to know of the reporter who assured him that he had left his bloodhounds behind this trip.

“As far as I know, this film is not German-made,” he said. “It was made in France. It has French actors in it. And the scenes are laid chiefly in France and Spain.”

But who distributed the picture in this country? Who rented you the print?

“There’s the name, right on the program,” Goldberg answered, holding up a program with the name “Alliance Cinematographique Europene” plainly marked on it. “As far as I know it’s a French company.”

But you didn’t get the film from the producers themselves, did you? Who, the reporter patiently repeated, was the distributor of the picture in this country?

On that point Goldberg was very vague. He denied that the distributor was Ufa Films, Inc. It was some “individual” whom he couldn’t or wouldn’t name.

According to Goldberg the last time the theatre had exhibited an avowedly German-made film was about a year ago, when the anti-Nazi boycott was instituted by Jews in this country.

“Since that time,” Goldberg said, “we’ve taken a terrible licking. I assure you this boycott has cost us in the past year $40,000. Right now we could be making a good profit by showing films distributed by Ufa and other German film companies. There’s a demand for those pictures. Most of my patrons are Gentiles. And in recent months I’ve had many requests to show ‘those beautiful German operettas and comedies on which you made your reputation’. A lot of these people who are doing a lot of shouting about supporting the boycott are doing so at not one cent’s cost to themselves. It’s cost us $40,000. We’re taking an awful licking.”

“Do you know,” Goldberg went on, “that every day we are offered German-made films by the dozen at practically nothing? If we accepted them I assure you we could clean up. Instead we have consistently refused to have anything to do with them.”

Bursting with emotion at the sacrifice the exhibitor was making in his efforts to support the boycott, the reporter walked a few blocks down the street to 729 Seventh avenue, the headquarters of Ufa Films, Inc.

There George Nitze, vice-president in charge of Ufa’s distributional activities in this country, gave his version of the business.

Asked whether the picture being shown at the Fifty-fifth Street Playhouse was a Ufa production, he stated emphatically that it was. Asked whether Ufa had made any attempt to disguise the picture as anything other than a Ufa product, he said emphatically that it had not.

“Ufa Films,” Nitze declared, “is proud of its productions. Its trade mark appears on every film that we distribute in this country. The Ufa trade mark was on that ‘Adieu’ film when we turned it over to the Playhouse. We sold it as a Ufa product and the exhibitors who bought it bought it as a Ufa product.”

Nitze professed not to know whether the film’s producers, the Alliance Cinematographique Europene, was a subsidiary, as Variety stated, of the German Ufa.

Only two theatres have refused to show Ufa films, he said. One of them is the Little Carnegie Theatre on West Fifty-seventh street and the other is the Italia on Broadway near Ninety-fifth street. Most of the theatres in Yorkville are showing Ufa films, he asserted.

To return to Goldberg. The reporter called him on the telephone, informed him what Nitze had said about the Ufa trademark, and asked him what he had to say.

“Was the Ufa trade mark on the film when you purchased it?” he was asked.

“I don’t know,” Goldberg answered. “I’m only the manager here. I don’t examine the film that closely when we get it.”

“Is the trade mark on the film now?” he was asked.

His answer was a subdued negative.

H. W.