I anticipated something very different from Michael Anton’s “The Hyper- Entertaining of America” (April 15). The development of a very important subject was not there.
“The likes of Louis B. Mayer and Jack L. Warner,” as Anton refers to them, did not force “their fascination with manor-house dinner parties and mahogany speedboats” on an unresponsive public and, by implication, wind up terrible business failures. I would be astonished if Anton could name 10 pictures that were produced by MGM in the 30s.
The output was of infinite variety.
The public ate it up, its entertainment value was strong enough to pull 80 million to 90 million people out of their houses once a week for many years, and it made Mayer, Warner, and a whole lot of other people very well-to-do.
That particular public would have been bored, and probably repelled, out of its socks by the dinosaurs of today.
And, by the way, there were plenty of car chases. But inside the cars were characters the viewer cared about.
ELEANOR SHAUGHNESSY, BRATTLEBORO, VT
