'The Way To Love'- Cinema Advertising Slide

Description

Released on the 20th of October, 1933 'The Way To Love' is a Hollywood movie starring Ann Dvorak and Maurice Chevalier. It's plot revolves around carefree drifter who has to save a beautiful performer who is threatened by her partner in a knife throwing act.

This film is one of the last of the 'pre-Code' Hollywood films. These were made between the introduction of the sound 'talkies' in 1927 and the enforcement of the moralistic 'Hays Code' in 1934. With the expanded possibilities of adding dialogue to films (and the need to keep audiences paying during the Great Depression) Hollywood gravitated towards sensationalistic plots with sex appeal, violence and drama.

In response to these films many US states threatened to make their own individual censorship laws meaning that multiple 'cuts' of a single film would have to be made. In response, Hollywood adopted their own, internally enforced moral code which headed off this threat.  The Hays Code would be enforced until the 1960s. 

This film was screened in Foxton on the 4th of August 1934. The 'Manawatu Times' had the following write up on it...

MAURICE CHEVALIER'S “THE WAY TO LOVE”

Bringing new songs and new smiles as a handsome guide of a Parisian tourist agency, Maurice Chevalier Is playing at the Foxton Town Hall to-night in his newest starring Paramount picture, "The Way to Love.” With him are Ann Dvorak and Edward Everett Horton. Maurice takes us on a tour through Paris where he knows all the beauties both scenic and human. His adventures supply all with a delightful hour's entertainment. The new songs he introduces are "It’s Oh, It’s Ah!”, "I’m a Lover of Paree,” “In a One Room Flat” and “The Way to Love.” A selected list of short subjects includes the Mickey Mouse cartoon “Mickey’s Orphans.” 

The theatre was the 'Coronation Hall' and it still stands in Foxton today as the home of the MAVtech Museum. It is still a working cinemas as well! This slide would have been screened during  other films to advertise 'The Way To Love'. Soon to be released features were known as 'coming attractions'. The projectionist has written the day the film was to play in removable ink at the bottom of the slide. 

The slide mount was made by 'Consolidated Film Industries' which was a company specialising in making projection grade copies of films as well as advertising slides- so they probably made this slide too! 

Identification

Object type

Image

Date

1933