Motion Picture Daily (Oct-Dec 1955)

ve-: 84 2a utg ■ fa i i Tefeuision A CONCISE REPORT AND ANALYSIS OF THE SIGNIFICANT NEWS AND EVENTS Spotlighting the News Commercials • More imagination and showranship in TV commercials will ring more audience attention, ]aii J. Hudson, vice-president, western division, for ABC, told a : uncheon meeting of the Hollywood Advertising Club last Monday. His ti ddress was titled "The Public .nd TV Commercials" and Mr. Ludson said what Television To>ay has been saying editorially on everal occasions. Commercials ; hould be "live, intelligent and ■ elective." What Price "First" . ► When NBC, with considerable : "fanfare and many trumpets, sent Alexander Korda's "The Constant Lusband" out over the TV circuit ast Sunday evening in a "Color Spread Spectacular" they hailed he presentation as a notable first. 1 J?irst it may have been, in showing i motion picture before theatrical •elease, but therein the "firstness" ipproximately ended. Despite Rex i Harrison's mighty and partially successful striving in the title role is the much married bigamist with nost convenient memory lapses, :he film was quite British — but not jf the best British. It was farce, A out a trifle heavy-handed for all its polish. Sponsorship, necessarily desirable, tended to get in the way I with too many commercials, to sat, isfy Buick, Sunbeam, Lewis Howe Co., and Maybelline. Too many, too often, gives a picture a task to overcome before it starts. The net of the matter would seem at "CHRISTMAS CAROL" w Various versions of Charles asp Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" will be all over the radio and '-■ television dials this coming holiday season. One of the most notable — and most omnipresent — versions undoubtedly will be the feature-length film presentation starring Alastair Sim and distributed by Associated Artists. The film originally was released theatrically in 1951 and last year was televised over 40 stations. Associated Artists now reports that 80 stations have signed contracts for its holiday showing and that more are signing up daily. this moment to be that quality will out, regardless, and that an older motion picture never seen before is as new to the viewer as a new picture never seen before, and that advance buildup is no substitute for satisfaction. New York Sport ► A non-native once characterized New York as the place where everybody seemed out to get somebody else, whether for personal pleasure, profit or the sport of the chase. This comes to mind with the report of some remarks made by Leo Durocher, former manager of the New York Giants, and now with NBC as part of that organization's talent development program. Mr. Durocher was in Detroit, talking to the sports day luncheon of the United Foundation Torch Drive, about his role in television and the excitement of looking for new talent. Almost concurrently, Milton Berle arrived in New York with plans for a TV film series, a situation comedy, and who does he want to star in it? Leo Durocher, the same one out in Detroit looking for new talent. NTFC Fall Forum ► All-day Thursday in New York the National Television Film Council will be holding its Fall TV film forum at the Hotel Delmonico. "Live" speakers will include John J. Schneider, vice-president of Biow, Beirn & Toigo, president of the NTFC, and Dr. Alfred Goldsmith, NTFC board chairman and "father of television." Also in prominence : Ralph Cohn, of Screen Gems; Archie Mayers, of Standard Television; Bert Hecht, of Bill Sturm Studios; Marshall Rothen, of Kenyon & Eckhardt. Sold Out ► National Telefilm Associates believes it has established some sort of mark, being "the first major TV film distributor to have completely sold out its film library of syndicated film series and feature films in the New York area." Among the stations involved are WCBS-TV, WOR-TV, WPIX and WABD, and the properties include western features, the "Fabulous Forty" package of Korda-Rank features, and such series as China Smith, Orient Express, The James Mason Show, Bobo the Hobo, Police Call, Man's Heritage. !nevitab!e and Right ► It seems not only inevitable but right that Walt Disney, who has now — -or has had in the past — cameramen everywhere else in the world, should have two representa tives aboard the U. S. Government's Operation Deepfreeze, the ambitious, four-year Antarctic expedition under the supervision of Admiral Richard E. Byrd, USN (Ret.). The Disney representatives are Lloyd Beebe and Elmo Jones (see cut) and their results will be shown on either Disneyland or the Mickey Mouse Club, both of ABC-TV, beginning some time next spring. Review Time Near ► The end of the year is nearly at hand and that means its time for summing up, at all levels. INSTelenews announces that it will have available "prior to Christmas Eve" a half-hour, fully scored and voiced review of the sports high(Contimied on page 14) In Our View IN MUCH the same way that Spyros Skouras, president of Twentieth Century-Fox Film Company, spearheaded so energetically and successfully the motion picture's move toward the new technique of the wider screen, so have Brigadier General David Sarnoff, NBC and RCA board chairman, and Robert W. Sarnoff, executive vice-president of NBC, spearheaded the current television industry move toward color. At the moment the drive is being carried forward energetically, its success is yet in the future. However, it would seem rather inevitable that the campaign will eventually meet with success. In the first place, there can be no gainsaying the fact that improvement in rendition, of any type of entertainment or anything else for that matter— must have a salutary effect on the public reception of that commodity. That the current obstacle is largely one of the retail price of sets is, of a certainty, not an insurmountable block, since the whole history of industrial enterprise has proved that initially high prices never remain a permanent obstacle to full use. Now NBC plans a $12,000,000 color expansion program, the declaration of intent following last week's Chicago station-conversion announcement. This new plan envisages large-scale physical and technical development of color in New York and Hollywood, particularly centering in major facility additions to Color City, at Burbank, California. The seeming reluctance of other TV interests to plunge into the color stream is understandable, but the way would appear clear. The fact that color will become an admirable, justified, practical working tool of the medium does not mean necessarily that all programs will be— or should be— in color. But the inevitability of color as a TV adjunct would appear unquestioned.— C. S. A. 11