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Centauri, issue 4, Summer 1945
Page 16
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Page 16 -Pro and Con- Two reel scientifilms. or, more properly, fantasies, have long been a pet idea of mine, and so I am glad to see Harry Warner catalyzing the concept in fandom. I do not recall the "petition that was started about eight years ago" that he refers to; thirteen years ago WONDER STORIES was asking its readers "Do You Want Science Fiction Movies?", accompanied by a full page petition. Several years later a Mr Reynolds,then director of the Los Angeles Science Fiction League, and I made a personal visit to Universal Studios and obtained an interview with a Publicity Head. Reynolds was a mature man; I an enthusiastic lad of 18 or so. We synopsized stories for the flack mgr[[?]]. and gave him our ideas on why they'd be money makers. I can no longer remember a single story we suggested except John Russell Fearn's Astounding thot-variant, "Before Earth Came", which was a recommendation of Reynolds. ((Editor's note : The following paragraph, taken from a letter from Forry to Charlie Hornig dated January 5, 1935, seems to fit right in here, so..)) I got in a word for Wonder in the interview. Mr. Cummins asked what magazines I represented. I told him I did not represent any directly, but that Wonder Stories sponsored the Science Fiction League, and I was a director of the League. I said that the publishers of Wonder also published Everyday Science & Mechanics, Radio-Craft, Popular Microscopy, and other magazines of science and fiction. He nodded at this, and seemed to know ES&M. In fact, as he mentioned "War of the Words", Bulwer Lytton's story of people coming from the center of the earth, etc., I gathered he was rather favorable toward science fiction stories himself, tho, as he said, he did not have the whole say....... I also had a regular, cordial correspondence with Carl Laemmle, former president of Universal, now deceased, and plugged the production of scientifilms with him at every opportunity. At the Chicon I was delegated to express to filmdom the desire of fandom to see more fantafilms produced. This I did via the Motion Picture Producers Association of America. And I got an article for Vom from the Exec. Sec'y of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences at the time I was working for that organization. Sometimes the studios get as far as purchasing a story---then never produce it. "The Ship That Sailed to Mars" has been owned by Paramount, if memory serves me correct, since 1926. Para owns "Para of the Worlds", "Food of the Gods", "When Worlds Collide", "RUR", "Fifty Years from Now", and others. At RKO, "Gwangi" ---successor to "King Kong"--- proved a war casualty; similarly, "White Eagle" at MGM. Universal bought a Balmer-Wylie yarn, "The Billionaire", about an inventor that could foretell the future, but production was shelved. Similarly, nothing ever came of their purchase, from the pages of Amazing, of Gelula's "Automaton". Director Fritz (Rocket to the Moon) Lang, browsing thru my library, expressed an interest in Gaston Leroux's "Machine to Kill"; I gave him my copy. Daugherty regularly talks scientifilms to anyone who'll listen out at Warner's----and says there are some important people who will. I tried to work thru A. Merritt for a remake of "Seven Footprints to Satan" at that studio
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Page 16 -Pro and Con- Two reel scientifilms. or, more properly, fantasies, have long been a pet idea of mine, and so I am glad to see Harry Warner catalyzing the concept in fandom. I do not recall the "petition that was started about eight years ago" that he refers to; thirteen years ago WONDER STORIES was asking its readers "Do You Want Science Fiction Movies?", accompanied by a full page petition. Several years later a Mr Reynolds,then director of the Los Angeles Science Fiction League, and I made a personal visit to Universal Studios and obtained an interview with a Publicity Head. Reynolds was a mature man; I an enthusiastic lad of 18 or so. We synopsized stories for the flack mgr[[?]]. and gave him our ideas on why they'd be money makers. I can no longer remember a single story we suggested except John Russell Fearn's Astounding thot-variant, "Before Earth Came", which was a recommendation of Reynolds. ((Editor's note : The following paragraph, taken from a letter from Forry to Charlie Hornig dated January 5, 1935, seems to fit right in here, so..)) I got in a word for Wonder in the interview. Mr. Cummins asked what magazines I represented. I told him I did not represent any directly, but that Wonder Stories sponsored the Science Fiction League, and I was a director of the League. I said that the publishers of Wonder also published Everyday Science & Mechanics, Radio-Craft, Popular Microscopy, and other magazines of science and fiction. He nodded at this, and seemed to know ES&M. In fact, as he mentioned "War of the Words", Bulwer Lytton's story of people coming from the center of the earth, etc., I gathered he was rather favorable toward science fiction stories himself, tho, as he said, he did not have the whole say....... I also had a regular, cordial correspondence with Carl Laemmle, former president of Universal, now deceased, and plugged the production of scientifilms with him at every opportunity. At the Chicon I was delegated to express to filmdom the desire of fandom to see more fantafilms produced. This I did via the Motion Picture Producers Association of America. And I got an article for Vom from the Exec. Sec'y of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences at the time I was working for that organization. Sometimes the studios get as far as purchasing a story---then never produce it. "The Ship That Sailed to Mars" has been owned by Paramount, if memory serves me correct, since 1926. Para owns "Para of the Worlds", "Food of the Gods", "When Worlds Collide", "RUR", "Fifty Years from Now", and others. At RKO, "Gwangi" ---successor to "King Kong"--- proved a war casualty; similarly, "White Eagle" at MGM. Universal bought a Balmer-Wylie yarn, "The Billionaire", about an inventor that could foretell the future, but production was shelved. Similarly, nothing ever came of their purchase, from the pages of Amazing, of Gelula's "Automaton". Director Fritz (Rocket to the Moon) Lang, browsing thru my library, expressed an interest in Gaston Leroux's "Machine to Kill"; I gave him my copy. Daugherty regularly talks scientifilms to anyone who'll listen out at Warner's----and says there are some important people who will. I tried to work thru A. Merritt for a remake of "Seven Footprints to Satan" at that studio
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