Unearthing audio of Preston Sturges and Hedda Hopper: Ah, how things have NOT changed...

Recently, I came across the audio of an interview that the great writer-director Preston Sturges granted to the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper for her radio program "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood" on Jan. 28, 1951. What caught my attention about the conversation was not only the eloquence of both participants (though it may have been scripted) but the subject that they were discussing: concerns about the future of their industry amid the arrival of new media.

Sturges and Hopper were discussing the impact on film of the then-new medium of television, but their larger concern was one that still resonates with many people in the media today -- not only filmmakers, who have already had one strike over new media and may still have another over the issue, but journalists, who see print jobs disappearing as readers increasingly turn to the Web for their news and entertainment, with advertising dollars close behind.

Sturges submits the thesis that: a) one can't stop change, b) one shouldn't want to stop change, and c) change usually benefits the majority of people over time, if not immediately. This won't bring any immediate comfort to those who have just lost their jobs as a result of change, but perhaps it will give them some hope for the future.

Is content the message, as Sturges suggests, or is "the medium the message," as Marshall McLuhan famously advanced 16 years later? The future of the media rides on the answer to that question. Both arguments have their points. Here are Sturges':

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STURGES: "Hedda, why don't we come right out and discuss the biggest question in Hollywood: With falling box-office, rising prices, television, are the movies on the skids or aren't they?"

HOPPER: "You brought it up ... now knock it down."

STURGES: "Well, I have some opinions about the future, and one of them is that you can usually judge it by the past. Whenever the motion picture industry has seemed to be in its gravest danger, it has actually been shedding its skin in order to grow bigger and stronger. This happened a long time ago at Fort Lee, New Jersey, then in New York, then in Hollywood. One day, a terrible thing was perfected -- at least they thought it was terrible. It was called 'sound film,' and it seemed to ring the knell for the great art of motion pictures."

HOPPER: "But that's just the way our gloomy-gusses are talking today, Preston, about -- if you'll excuse the expression -- television."

STURGES: "I think they're barking up the wrong tree. As a matter of fact, Hedda, I think that television will make the movie industry sharpen its wits. Too much security is bad for art; competition is good for everything. That's point one. I believe, furthermore, that the future of the motion picture is, to a great extent, television, and by the same token that the future of television is the motion picture. This should be a very fine wedding."

HOPPER: "But you're not counting on Hollywood weddings, Preston -- you know how short they are!"

STURGES: [laughs] "I'd like to say something witty about witty women, Hedda, but I can't think of anything witty to say."

HOPPER: "All right, Preston. But you're the one who's beating around the bush now. What do you think of the future of movies as they are?"

STURGES: "Well, I think the film factories of Hollywood, London, Paris, and Rome are pretty good, considering the enormous amount of product they have to turn out. But the way these efforts are presented is something else again."

HOPPER: "You mean our exhibitors will have ... "

STURGES: "I think our exhibitors are going to have to be a little more amiable, a little more polite, and sit up a few nights thinking of how to give a little more service to their patrons. At the present time, their ideal seems to be to have as long a queue as possible, waiting as long as possible in surroundings as uncomfortable as possible, preferably outside in a rainstorm. Why, in any other line of business, the patrons would be supplied with rubbers, raincoats, umbrellas, free sandwiches, holding stools and hot coffee!"

HOPPER: [laughs] "You know, our producers will love you for that, but I don't think the exhibitors will. But now, get down to cases: What about television? Where will our audiences come from if people stay home?"

STURGES: "Okay, the $64 question. I believe television is wonderful, radio is wonderful, sound film is wonderful, and the legitimate stage is wonderful. Each has its place and is really a part of that wonderful institution called 'the theater.'"

HOPPER: "Yes, Preston, as Shakespeare said, 'The play's the thing.' The way it's brought to us is secondary."

STURGES: "Right, Hedda. No matter what the medium is, it's the theater that brings riches to the poor, laughter to the sad, music, consolation, adventure, romance -- the unattainable. Long live the theater."

HOPPER: "And long live Hollywood!"

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Photos (left to right): Preston Sturges, Hedda Hopper

Comments

[Arye Michael Bender]

A radio show as important to Hollywood (at the time) as Hopper's would have been fully scripted, which makes the tone of the interview even more remarkable. Hopper and Parsons spoke for the studios. Every word in their columns and radio appearances followed Publicity Department dictates.

One wishes Sturges would have been allowed to make more movies.