George Gallup in Hollywood (review)

Box Office Receipts

As film scholars, we devote considerable labor to analyze the historical and cultural milieu that creates cinematic art. We also scrutinize the political ideology of filmmakers and their seminal texts. Yet, as Susan Ohmer reminds us in her study of pollster George Gallup, producers in America's motion picture capital are primarily concerned with box office receipts rather than art or ideology. It is essential to keep in mind that a profit-driven industry asserts a strong check upon political and artistic freedom.

Ohmer, a University of Notre Dame assistant professor of modern communications, devotes the first five chapters of this well written and researched volume to Gallup's life and career before his venture into film research. Born on November 18, 1901 in rural Iowa, Gallup earned B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Iowa, followed by journalism teaching assignments at Iowa, Drake University, and Northwestern University. In 1932, he joined the advertising agency of Young & Rubicam. Ohmer emphasizes the scientific rigor that Gallup brought to marketing and advertising, arguing, "this new discourse of empiricism seemed to offer some stability in a shifting and uncertain world" (48).

Gallup formed the American Institute of Public Opinion (AIPO) in 1935, and he became a household word the following year after his new polling organization challenged the prestigious Literary Digest poll which predicted that Republican Alf Landon would defeat President Franklin Roosevelt. In his marketing and political work, Gallup pioneered such concepts as representative sampling and direct interviews. While some critics found the new science of polling manipulative, Ohmer observes that Gallup championed the emerging science as taking the pulse of democracy.

Gallup used his electoral success to elicit new clients in the business community, and the pollster soon turned his attention to Hollywood. His 1939 AIPO survey suggesting that movie audiences preferred single to double features gained the support of independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, while polls indicating the enormous earning potential of Gone With the Wind convinced David Selznick to employ the services of Gallup. While most major studio chiefs believed they intuitively understood audience expectations, financially strapped RKO—emerging from bankruptcy in 1939—signed an exclusive contract with Gallup's new Audience Research Institute (ARI) Hollywood office.

ARI provided marketing information concerning the appeal of story ideas and performers to differing audiences such as the emerging teen market. While Gallup emphasized the scientific nature of his work, Briton David Ogilvy, whom he placed in charge of ARI, often displayed personal prejudice in the advice he rendered RKO regarding Latino performers and female audiences. Through his distribution deal with RKO, Walt Disney also became a client of ARI, whose market research encouraged Disney to refrain from more creative enterprises such as Fantasia (1940).

During the Second World War, ARI abandoned its exclusive contract with RKO and expanded its studio work for a Hollywood under increasing economic pressure from exhibitors and restive performers. Nevertheless, following his failure in the 1948 Presidential election in which he forecasted that Thomas Dewey would defeat President Harry Truman, Gallup closed the ARI Hollywood offices.

Ohmer concludes that the ARI under the direction of Ogilvy did not always display the objectivity that characterized Gallup's business and government surveys. She also acknowledges that ARI often ignored the interests of exhibitors as well as film artists in support of the studios and traditional, rather than innovative, themes. Ohmer observes, "Rather than providing definitive answers, Gallup's research indicates the continuing challenges involved in translating the complexity of our desires into quantitative forms" (229).

George Gallup in Hollywood is meticulously researched in approximately thirty archival sources. Ohmer's extensive primary research in film archives indicates that in the analysis of motion pictures as a cultural and political discourse we must not forget that we are dealing with industry executives driven by the profit motive. But despite the best efforts of George Gallup, studio heads, and producers, forecasting the marketability of films remains an elusive goal.