At the time of one of its previews The Crowd had a wildly ridiculous ending tacked on to it, as I pointed out at the time. I suppose it cost some thousands of dollars to shoot. It destroyed in half a reel what King Vidor so powerfully built up in seven. The impossibility of it was so obvious that finally even the Metro executives saw it. They recalled the prints that had gone out, and replaced them with the version that was shown in Los Angeles. It is not an unusual thing for a studio to make two or more endings of a picture, and to give each one a chance to make good at a preview. It is a sensible practice that should be adopted by other arts. Take architecture. At present when an architect is planning a twelve-story building, he builds from the basement up, and designs a roof that is in keeping with the rest of the structure. That is, he thinks it will look well. Anyway, the contractors go ahead and finish off the building with the roof that the architect deemed the most logical for it. Picture people would have used more intelligence in finishing the building. How could the architect know that Iowa tourists would like the roof he designed? Logical? My dear boy, you and I know that the architect has the right idea, the artistic idea, but we are not erecting buildings for you and me. We must think of our public, dear fellow. And to please the public several roofs would be built, one after the other, and each given a turn on the top of the building until the final choice was made. My illustration is not an extravagant one. Despite the fact that alternative endings have been shot for some of our best pictures, I maintain that such a practice is an artistic idiocy and an economic folly. There is but one ending that any story can have: that dictated by logic. There may be discussion during the story-building stages of what ending logic would dictate. Opinions would differ, but before shooting begins such differences should be composed and the picture given the ending that the majority mind decided was the logical one. To shoot two or more endings is a childish practice, a sad confession by the production staff that it does not understand the story it is putting on the screen. The practice is an off-shoot of executive indifference to waste. Dollars are the cheapest things to be found on any of the big lots. On the payrolls are men who could recognize the proper ending for a given story, but in the executive offices are men who are afraid of themselves and who squander scores of thousands of dollars each year while trying to make up their minds, with which they are furnished quite scantily. When exhibitors fail to be impressed by the cost of a picture a move may be made to reduce the cost. Metro will sell The Crowd to exhibitors on the strength of the large sum it took to make it, which puts a premium on extravagance. Exhibitors reason that if it took that much money it must be good, and buy it on that theory. They should remember that the cost figure presented to them by the salesman consists of three parts: the amount that what reaches the screen really cost; the amount wasted, and the amount that the liar who sells the picture throws in for good measure.
 

Wilfred Beaton, "Promoting Different Endings Is Confession of Studio Stupidity," The Film Spectator, April 14, 1928, page 7.

© 1998, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)

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