The Encore System in The Mikado Film
A Critic Suggests Something Better than
the Tentative Encore System
Frank S. Nugent, The New York Times, 14 July 1939, p. 3
In a week as dull as the last has been, with only four new openings and none of them worthy of extended comment, we caught grimly at the straw Universal offered when it announced, on Wednesday, that for the "first time" in screen history an audience witnessing a motion picture would be rewarded with encores of applauded scenes and musical numbers during a showing of The Mikado at the Palace Theatre. We hurried across the Square that night to see how it worked out and found, too soon, that the encore had been rigged in advance. Universal, which knows its Gilbert and SUllivan, had decided ahead of time that folks would applaud most for "A Wandering Minstrel I;" "Three Little Maids;" "Here's A How-de-do;" and "Flowers That Bloom In The Spring." So, right after the first rendition, the screen presented zoom shots of the word "ENCORE" and obligingly had Nanki-Poo, Ko-Ko, and the rest do it all over again.
The audience caught on slowly, because it happened that the first two encores actually were of songs that had received the most applause. Their next outburst of hard clapping went unheeded: no encore. That miffed them a little. A few recalcitrants hissed. They were disappointed again after "The Moon And I," and there was young young woman, right center, tenth aisle, who was so delighted by Kenny Baker's threat to perform the happy despatch, that she applauded softly, all by herself, for a solid minute and murmured angrily for the next five because Universal wouldn't repeat the scene. We thought she might have been happy Kenny would succeed the next time, but we have no proof, of course. Maybe she was just curious about the dagger.
Universal's gay little experiment was interesting, though however we must deplore its fraudulent that the public, and not the boys in the backgroom, was deciding what it wanted to hear again and what it did not. We resent having been applause regimented too, having to sit through an encore willy-illy and being placed in the silly position of stamping our feet like mad and having the impertinent people on the screen go blandly about their business just as though we didn't exist. (And spitefully we remind ourself that they were ones that didn't exist — ridiculous talking shadows that they are!) No, the prearranged encore misses the purpose for which it was intended: to create a personal bond between screen playing and audience member comparable to that existing current that passes from actor to spectator at a play. If anything, it drives home the realization that the motion picture is, basically, a mechanical contrivance, bloodless and inhuman. We shouldn't be reminded of that. It's all too disillusioning.
In fact, it isn't beyond reason to suggest than an encore system — even honestly contrived — could turn the motion picture into shambles, the laughing stock of the world. You have heard a phonograph record when the needle catches in a single groove, you remember the early Vitaphone pictures when something would go wrong with the playback and the heroine, like a parrot, would repeat: "I love you so, but it . . . I love you so, but it . . . I love you so, but it" until the frantic projectionist was half mad and the audience was in hysterics. Then just imagine a tender scene between Robert Taylor and Myrna Loy, a burst of applause that would trip the decibel machine to "Encore." Back the scene would go, Taylor and Loy do it once again, exactly the same inflection, exactly the same gestures. Then the wags would whoop it up and back they would come for more. "Your mind is like a lovely leaf on a tall tree that whispers what it hears in the wind." Bob would murmur again, "You're pretty grand yourself." Myrna would repeat. We shudder.
Or take the Ritz Brothers (please) and consider the effect of repetition of a gay sequence that seemed done once too often the first time: on what, in a somber vein, would happen to a Hitchcock touch if a band of serious students of the cinema should decide they would like to see it once more to observe more closely how the melodramatist obtained his surprise effects, or what, in still gloomier cases, would be the result of an encore for Camille's death scene, and a command re-performance of the going blind sequence in Dark Victory. We cannot begin to conjure up any other images, or even speculate upon a complete encore of a double bill, a Shirley Temple contest and screeno. [See note below —ed.]
What Universal's wizards should have created was not the encore system, but one quite the reverse — a cast out device or self-service edition by which the patron, according to his rising gore or diminishing attention, could black out a scene, a sequence of it, in extreme cases an entire picture. Mind, we do not suggest that this should have been designed for The Mikado, although we wish we could have blotted out the prologue and a few glimpses of Martyn Green's Ko-Ko. But what a frolic we might have had last week with a cinematic disintegrator trained on Bull-dog Drummond's Bride, News Is Made At Night, The Man In The Iron Mask and Indianapolis Speedway.
Captain Drummond's little adventure should have emerged as a short; News etc. should not have emerged at all — or possibly as a little credit line and a lap dissolve into the newsreels. The Man In The Iron Mask should have lost a garden scene, most of Joseph Shildkraut, a wastebasket full of dialogue and the censor made episode in which Joan Bennett bravely, and with sibilant heroics, plucked a key off a sleeping man's chest. Of Indianapolis Speedway should have retained Pat O'Brien's cigar, one of the racing sequences and Gale Page. Of Ann Sheridan nothing would be left, not even the "oomph." That's the machine for our money.
[The producers objected mightily to Frank Nugent's characterization of the encore system, and they wrote this letter to the editor:]Letter to Screen Editor, from
Louis Pollack, Eastern Publicity Director
Universal Picture Company, Inc.
The New York Times, 19 July 1939.
The background of The Mikado encore show at the Palace, and subsequent events, suggest that Mr. Nugent's article on it last week contained several misconceptions which I know he would prefer to correct.
While it was an experiment, it was not conducted in the spirit of a "gay little experiment," as he termed it. We were nearly five months trying to induce an exhibitor to cooperate by permitting it to be staged in his theatre. Our purpose was more than publicity — we felt that encores could be an interesting and natural development in movie entertainment. Indications now are that we may be on a fruitful path.
At the show which Mr. Nugent saw there were only four encores, but they depended upon applause for presentation. They were not so "rigged in advance" that patrons were going to get them anyway. An upward and backward glance at the projection booth would have cleared up the problem for him. He would have noticed my head sticking out of a porthole as I listened for applause without which I was bound (by several interested executives) to withhold my cue switching on the encore.
It was not our desire to limit the encores to the four numbers Mr. Nugent heard — "A Wandering Minstrel I," "Three Little Maids From School," "Here's A How-de-do," and "The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring." We were forced to do this by the nature of our project.
We could give more encores in The Mikado. With practiced and well rehearsed operators, we might be able to repeat as many as twelve of the numbers. But with present projection conditions and lacking a proper cueing system, this would be unsafe — as far as The Mikado is concerned.
But there is no need for constriction of this kind for future films. Nor need there be fears that the encore idea, if carried out, will descend to the ridiculous. For instance, the "needle in the groove" comparison made by Mr. Nugent will probably not apply at all. On the contrary, "encores" would be filmed as separate scenes. Melodiously, perhaps, they would be a clear repetition of the time applauded, but attaining in arrangement, tempo, and "business" to any ends of novelty. Applaud a Bing Crosby song and Bing will do another chorus for you — with different lyrics, different manner or divertissment. In fact, the changes in presentation possible to the screen far surpass the production possibilities of any stage.
The word "screeno" in the review puzzled correspondent Ersel King. At first we thought it was a typo, but we confirmed that the word was in the original source. Mr. King did some further research and confirmed that it was not a mistake:
It seems that “Screeno” (a shortened version of screen bingo and spelled with or without the capital “S”) was a form of bingo played in American movie theaters during the Great Depression of the 1930s. To bolster attendance on slow weeknights, the neighborhood movie houses would feature the game in which audience members would have a chance to win cash prizes. The story is that many a theater was saved from bankruptcy by the advent of Screeno. The game was played between the two main features, when a number dial and a giant spinning needle were projected on the movie screen. Patrons were provided with toothpicks to punch out the winning numbers on their cards. Apparently, on most nights, patrons paid a modest fee for their cards, but one night a week was designated as “Bank Night” in which the audience would get free Screeno cards with their movie tickets. A 1937 romantic-comedic-musical movie entitled Thrill of a Lifetime featured a song called “Keno, Screeno and You.” Evidently, Mr. Nugent of the New York Times thought the game was as much a waste of time as the use of encores for certain movie sequences.
