8 - Wielding the Scissors: Industry Politics and Play in Movie Magazines, 1933–1934

Summary

In 1937, American publisher Albert Griffith-Grey attempted to launch a new movie magazine. Introducing his new publication into an already crowded market, Griffith-Grey justified his venture by explaining that this was to be not just a new publication, but a new type of publication entirely: a movie magazine not designed for movie fans. Instead, his proposed publication would have ‘contents directed to the discriminating class’, as Film Daily noted (20 July 1936, 2).

Attempting to inaugurate a new kind of publication, Griffith-Grey seemed to have made assumptions about the gender of the usual readers of regular movie magazines:

CINEMA ARTS is a quality movie magazine (cinemagazine to you). It will attempt to do for the Cinema what FORTUNE has done for Industry and ESQUIRE for Men.

[…]

One thing we guarantee: You won't have to hide CINEMA ARTS under your arm when you meet a friend. Most likely, the friend will have one too … (LIFE, 7 June 1937, 5)

With its comparisons to male-oriented business and lifestyle magazines, and its promotion in ‘serious’ lifestyle magazine and trade journals, Cinema Arts set out to capture a serious-minded cultural readership. Larger, more high-minded, and more expensive than its rivals on newsstands, Cinema Arts lasted for just three issues.

While much could be made of the circumstances surrounding Cinema Arts’ launch and sinking, including the misogynistic presumptions about its readership, I take Griffith-Grey's slight against the seriousness of the then contemporary movie fan magazines as a point of departure for this chapter, since my aim is to dispute the inevitable triviality of these publications. In doing this I will consciously delve into a particular recurring element of movie magazines, the prize competition for readers, which ostensibly bears out all Griffith-Grey's implicit snobbery, especially since, in the contest I will consider, the top prize was a one-week trip to Hollywood, and the runners-up awards included a refrigerator, a radio, and ten Max Factor make-up sets, all rewards likely to be coveted most by female readers.