ENTERTAINMENT PRESS
The relationship of journalism to the entertainment media
changed in important ways with the rise of movies in the
early twentieth century. For the local newspaper the key
relationship was the review (really preview) of the upcoming movie, as well as profiles of stars and the regular revenue from advertising movie schedules. Variety started with
reviews in 1907. The New York Times commenced in 1913.
Nearly all newspapers in 1915 reviewed D.W. Griffith’s The
Birth of a Nation.
Early on, audiences needed the guidance of film reviewers on two levels. The simple consumer reporting aspect of
the review was vital. Does the reviewer recommend the new
film or not? At the same time, the art form was still new
and film fans were learning how to interpret the emerging
syntax of film. Yet remarkably as the narrative form—with
stars—became what is now called the Classical Hollywood
Cinema, by 1920 journalistic assessment of a film was formalized. Although audiences have grown slightly more
sophisticated, film reviewers are still doing what reviewers
did in the 1920s. Movie reviewing is a standard journalistic
beat.
Carl Sandburg, for example, wrote movie reviews
between 1920 and 1928 for the Chicago Daily News. Consider the one he wrote for the now classic Keaton’s The
General. Published January 18, 1927, it reads little different
that what one might read seventy-five years later:
“If they’ll put Buster Keaton at the head of the armies
next time there’s a war his maneuvers will bring that war to
a pleasant, painless and prompt conclusion, because the belligerents will simply die laughing…. The General, we are
told, is based upon historical fact and treats in a lighter vein
an incident during the Civil War known as ‘the Andrews
railroad raid,’ which occurred in the spring of 1862 when
a band of Union soldiers invaded Confederate territory and
captured ‘The General,’ one of the South’s crack railroad
engines. Buster plays the part of Johnnie Gray, the young
railroad engineer who piloted ‘The General,’ and Marion Mack is Annabelle Lee, his sweetheart…. Annabelle
…happens to be in the baggage car when the raid takes
place and is carried off into the enemy country—Johnnie
in hot pursuit—neither of glory nor his sweetheart, but
of his beloved engine. How this pursuit covers him with
honor; jumps him into the rank of commissioned officer
and throws him into the arms of his adored one must be
seen to be appreciated.”
Sandburg ended with his recommendation: “The [photo]
play is chuck full of hilarity, pathos and thrills, such as when
Johnnie chases himself with a loaded cannon; attempts to
burn down a bridge and gets on the wrong side of the fire;
shoots a cannon into the air and with fool’s luck hits the
dam that floods the river and puts the enemy to rout…. If
you want a good laugh, don’t miss The General.”
Newspapers and the Hollywood Tradition
Film reviewers write for newspapers and their work is primarily read to help the reader decide whether or not to see
a particular movie. They are journalists. A secondary purpose of a film review is to help the reader to appreciate film
as an art as Sandburg shows us. Film reviewers present their
own opinions as a tool for others’ use.
Part of the difficulty inherent in film reviewing is that
it is simultaneously a form of consumer reporting (what is
the film about? who’s in it?), a statement about the worth of
a film (is the movie good or not?), a teaching opportunity
(how is this film an example of film comedy?). When these
things come together, as Sandburg demonstrated, it is journalism that enlightens, entertains, and is useful in deciding
whether or not to go see the movie.
The reviewer must select just enough of the most important plot points and present them in a way that makes the
thrust of the narrative clear. The well-written review is
enjoyable to read, and the informal prose of the good writer
is as subjective as can be. Style is a remarkably personal
element, and one which is due at least as much to personal
talent as to technical skill. Entertainment lies in how the
information is expressed.
Where many reviewers run into trouble with their readers is in the evaluative section of their review. What are the
criteria? Usually the reviewer seeks a good story, acting that
is seamless with the characters, and a twist that makes this
film story just slightly more complex and clever that the
average narrative film.
For example, James Agee, who reviewed for the Nation
and Time in the 1940s, wrote intensely personal and seemingly casual columns. His first column for the Nation set
out his goals: “I would like so to use this column about
moving pictures as to honor and discriminate the subject”
and thereby serve “you who are reading it. It is my business
to conduct one end of a conversation, as an amateur critic
among amateur critics.” Agee presented himself as a participant in a discussion rather than an authority laying down
the objective truth about films, and that was part of his skill.
His columns read like a post-movie chat with a friend; they
are the answer to “So, what did you think of the film?”
More importantly, he saw himself as a devotee or admirer of cinema rather than as someone laying down immutable
laws about what was good or bad. Agee presented himself
as a film lover writing for other film lovers, not primarily as
an arbiter of taste.
Classic Reviewing
Bosley Crowther was the nation’s foremost film reviewer
as he penned review after review from 1938 to 1967. His
career presented a classic case of the reviewer in the pretelevision age. Throughout his nearly thirty years of movie
reviewing, the New York Times editors considered Crowther
just a specialized reporter with a beat he learned on the job.
Crowther’s movie reviewing career started in college where
he served as an editor of the Daily Princetonian, and in his
senior year, 1928, won a national essay contest sponsored by
the New York Times. For his writing performance, Bosley
was offered a job on the city beat. In 1933, Brooks Atkinson
asked Crowther to join the Drama Department. He spent
five years covering the theater scene in New York and then
in 1938 changed desks and began writing for the Movie
Department. Two years later he became the chief film critic
for the Times. During his tenure, Crowther wrote an average of about 150 reviews a year. His beat required two or
three reviews each week plus a lengthy Sunday column in
which he would comment on the movie scene in general. In
1967—at age sixty-two—after nearly thirty years on this
beat, Crowther stepped down from his position as chief
critic. Crowther had a national, even international, profile
at the New York Times, and his career set an example for
many other critics whose reviews appeared in hundreds of
newspapers across the country.
Radio
As Crowther and other newspaper reviewers tended their
craft in the 1930s, national radio became a factor with
which journalists had to reckon. Although radio stations
were often owned by newspapers and seen as direct competitors, radio on the local level never developed reviewers
per se. Radio more often offered gossip, and two women
gossips dominated the airwaves.
Hedda Hopper started as a movie and radio actress. She
failed at both professions. What came next? In 1939, on
CBS, she launched The Hedda Hopper Show. Louella Parsons had achieved success for rival NBC, and Hopper came
to challenge her. Hopper’s ratings were not tremendous but
good enough for sponsor Sunkist to keep her on CBS until
1947 and then picked up by NBC until 1951. She also did a
five-minute chat show with Hollywood’s big names. Gossip
was never in short supply on these broadcasts, and the stars
and their films got plugs galore. She would report almost
any rumor, but to her credit, she was quick to confess her
mistakes, and spent much of her time on the radio making
amends. She played a game with the studios and her listeners, getting leaks from studio public relations departments
that had been calculated to increase the box-office. Unlike
her rival Parsons, Hopper did not start her gossiping in the
newspapers. She started out in radio and was so successful
in programs on both CBS and NBC during her airwaves
career; she then became a nationally syndicated newspaper
columnist.
Louella Parsons had a style all her own. She gushed
and came over the radio as sweet as honey. If you listened
closely, you could almost hear her breathless praise. But she
was known to drip venom, too. Louella did try her hand at
acting, but she was meant to be a Hollywood gossip. During the town’s heyday, she was probably the best known
film industry chronicler in the land. She started her famous
career writing for the Hearst newspapers. She was learning
with NBC what would work on the radio. Indeed, she took
to radio in reaction to the model Hedda Hopper initiated in
1939. In 1945, ABC signed her to do a fifteen-minute show
on Sunday nights, following Walter Winchell on ABC. The
duo gave ABC its top-rated half hour. Thereafter for seven
years, Parsons had a steady audience and fought Hopper for
the title of “Queen of Radio Gossips.” Only the coming of
television ended their “orchestrated feud” in 1952.
Newspapers and Reviewing Radio Entertainment
Radio stations carried their own entertainment to be reviewed.
From the creation of NBC in November 1926 and CBS three
months later, U.S. newspapers carried brief descriptions of
programming. So with the networks came examples such
as Ben Gross who pioneered a regular column about broadcasting in the New York Daily News, which he continued for
forty-five years. Newspapers across the United States added
columns about schedules, programs, and celebrities during
radio’s network era in the 1930s and 1940s. Yet the reviewing
never developed. For example, a Gallup poll of radio reviewing in newspapers that appeared in Fortune in the April,
1939, came to the following conclusion. Question: Do you
read the columns in the newspapers about the radio stars and
programs? Answer: 1/3rd “Yes”, “1/3rd occasionally,” and
1/3rd “Never.” Yet the third who read about radio in newspapers were addicted. Yet there was never a prestige to radio
show reviewing that there was to what such critics as Bosley
Crowther wrote about movies in print.
But gossip was an important part of radio programming.
Everyone wanted to know the truth about celebrities—
whether movie or radio stars. Radio made the gossip genre
part of broadcasting that would continue with television.
Television
The coming of television changed a newspaper/radio reviewing mix. Newspapers reviewed TV shows in the same manner as movies. Jack Gould, for example, was a TV reviewer
for the New York Times from 1947 to 1972, complementing
Crowther’s film reviews for much of that period. Early on,
newspaper writers had to view the live shows in rehearsal
or at the same time as the audience. With the coming of
videotape in the late 1950s, the networks could send the
entertainment programming on tapes to newspaper reviewers ahead of time so they could truly review the shows like film critics.
The big change came with reviewing in a specific magazine, TV Guide; with reviewing films on television with
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert; and then with TV gossip in the
Parsons and Hopper tradition with Entertainment Tonight.
When the average television fan wanted a review, they read
TV Guide. Walter Annenberg—inspired by a Philadelphia
area television magazine called TV Digest—conceived the
idea of publishing a national television feature magazine,
which he would then wrap around local television listings.
Annenberg purchased TV Digest, along with the similar
publications in other cities such as TV Forecast from Chicago, and TV Guide from New York. He combined their
operations to form TV Guide. The first issue—covering
the week April 3–9, 1953, featured Lucille Ball and Desi
Arnaz’s real life son, Desi Jr. As TV spread to 99 percent
of American homes, Annenberg expanded the magazine by
creating new regional editions and purchasing existing television listings publications in other markets.
Reviewing came when Annenberg and his aide, Merrill
Panitt (who would go on to become TV Guide’ s editorial
director), realized that in order to achieve the circulation
necessary to make their publication a truly mass medium,
they needed to go beyond the fan magazine approach that
had been typical of most earlier television and radio periodicals. They therefore created a magazine that was both a
staunch booster of the American system of television, yet
at times also one of the most visible critics of the medium’s more egregious perceived shortcomings. In fact, TV
Guide’s greatest accomplishment under Annenberg may
have been the magazine’s success in walking the fine line
between encouraging and prodding the medium to achieve
its full potential without becoming too far removed from
the prevailing tastes of the mass viewing public.
As a consequence, TV Guide became extremely popular,
widely read, and very influential among those in the television industry. A large number of distinguished authors wrote
articles for the magazine over the years, including Margaret
Mead, Betty Friedan, John Updike, Gore Vidal, and Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr. Many of these writers were attracted by the
lure of reaching TV Guide’ s huge audience. At its peak in
the late 1970s, TV Guide had a paid circulation of nearly
twenty million copies per week. In 1988 Annenberg cashed
out and sold TV Guide to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in 1988 for approximately $3 billion—at the time,
the largest price ever commanded for a publishing property.
Murdoch then changed the tenor and influence of the magazine by using it to boost his Fox Television Network.
Because of television, Roger Ebert became perhaps
the most recognizable film reviewer of the last quarter of
the twentieth century. Although his column for the Chicago Sun-Times won the first Pulitzer Prize given for film
reviewing, most movie fans associated him with his TV
show. Partnered with Chicago Tribune reviewer Gene Siskel—and after Siskel’s death, with critic Richard Roeper—
Ebert’s show with its trademark thumbs up or thumbs down
should be credited with turning the TV set into a reviewing
machine with clips, not descriptions.
They played TV parts: Siskel was the tall, thin one who
looked and acted like a dower university professor, while
Ebert, rolly-poly, played the curmudgeon, lover of Hollywood, and was willing to say filmgoing was not so serious,
but great fun.
They started on the local PBS Chicago outlet WTTW
in September 1975. When the two critics disagreed, sparks
often flew to the delight of viewers. After two seasons, the
successful series was retitled Sneak Previews and appeared
biweekly on the PBS network. By its fourth season, the
show became a once-a-week feature on 190 outlets and
achieved status as the highest rated series in the history of
public broadcasting.
The two stars left PBS in 1981 to launch At the Movies for commercial television under the banner of Tribune
Entertainment, a syndication arm of the Chicago Tribune.
Basically utilizing the same format as Sneak Previews, the
significant change came as the reviewing was shortened
for advertisements. In 1986, citing contractual problems
with Tribune Entertaiment, Siskel and Ebert departed for
Disney, a major studio. The series became simply Siskel &
Ebert. It set the standard offering reviews—with clips—for
more than four thousand films over twenty-two years.
In his defense of television film reviewers, Ebert pointed
out the show was the first national venue to discuss the issue
of film colorization, the benefits of letterbox, video dubbing and the technology of laser disks. And, in May 1989,
extolling the virtues of black and white cinematography,
they videotaped their show in monochrome—the first syndicated program to do so in twenty-five years. Ebert argued
their appeal came from their disagreements—two friends
who had seen a movie and discussing their differences of
opinion. In February 1999, an era ended when Siskel died
unexpectedly. But the standard and principles of the genre
had been set.
In 1981 a new type of show began: ET (Entertainment
Tonight) This Paramount studio syndicated show about
movies and television continued the tradition of Parsons
and Hopper. ET provided the latest gossip from the entertainment world in what seemed like a newscast. For more
than generation, ET has aired in first-run syndication (in
November 2000 it aired its five thoudsandth show), maintaining consistently high ratings. The brainchild of Al
Masini, otherwise known for creations such as Lifestyles
of the Rich and Famous, ET was an “infotainment” magazine presenting news-style coverage focused on the world
of entertainment—but from a Paramount point of view.
Rather than receive the show physically (on tape via courier), local stations could tape the satellite broadcast of the
show and air it at their convenience anytime that same day.
This meant that the show had the “up-to-the-minute” feel
of a newscast.
ET looked like a newscast (complete with two anchors,
a man and woman who introduced stories from a desk in
a studio) and emphasized freshness with such features as
“today’s” celebrity birthdays. For Paramount studio, the program’s producer, it meant free public relations for Paramount
movies and TV shows, being made across the lot. By the start of the second season, Mary Hart was a star and would remain
the show’s hostess into the twenty-first century. ET thus took
news gathering seriously (the Associated Press cites the show
as a source, and Hart has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame) but recognized that the “puff”
pieces were what made the show attractive. The successful
ET formula became a proven gossip strategy for the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Further Reading
Adkins, Gale. “Radio-Television Criticism in the Newspapers:
Reflections on a Deficiency.” Journal of Broadcasting, Summer 1983.
Agee, James. Agee on Film: Reviews. Boston: Beacon, 1964.
Arledge, Roone. Roone: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins,
2003.
Altschuler, Glenn C., and David I. Grossvogel.. Changing Channels: America in TV Guide. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1992.
Barbas, Louella. The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of
Louella Parsons. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2005.
Broddy, Larry. Turning Points in Television. NewYork: Citidel
Press, 2005.
Ebert, Roger. “All Stars or, Is There a Cure for Criticism of Film
Criticism.” Film Comment, May/June 1990.
Eells, George. Hedda and Louella. New York: Warner Library,
1973.
Gould, Lewis L. Editor. Watching Television Come of Age: The
New York Times Reviews by Jack Gould. Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2002.
Haas, Ealasaid. “A Peculiar Form of Journalism: A Peculiar Form
of Journalism: The Art of Film Reviewing,” master’s thesis,
Stanford University, 2001.
Laurent, Lawrence. “Wanted: the Complete Television Critic.”
In The Eighth Art. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1962.
Orlik, Peter B. Critiquing Radio and Television Content. Boston:
Allyn & Bacon, 1988.
“Radio Industry.” Fortune, April, 1939.
Register to the Bosley Crowther collection: MSS 1491 Harold
B. Lee Library. Departmenrt of Archives and Manuscripts.
Brigham Young University.
Seldes, Gilbert. The Public Arts. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1956.
Shayon, Robert Lewis. Open to Criticism. Boston: Beacon Press,
1971.
Smith, Ralph Lewis. A Study of the Professional Criticism of
Broadcasting in the United States. New York: Arno Press,
1973.
Variety Radio Directory, 1938–1939.
Watson, Mary Ann. “Television Criticism in the Popular Press.”
Critical Studies in Mass Communication, March, 1985.
Westin, Av. Newswatch: How TV Decides the News. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1982.
Douglas Gomery