The Moving picture world (November 1926-December 1926)

December 18, 1926 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 493 Paramount's First Woman Director Signs Paramount's first official woman director is Dorothy Arzner. Just before going to press we learned that B. P. Schulberg, associate producer, had signed her to a long term contract, as a Famous-Players-Lasky director. Her first assignment will be to megaphone Esther Ralston's first starring vehicle "Fashions for Women'' which is ready to go into production. It is said that Miss Arzner also holds the enviable position of being the first woman to be assigned to a directorial position within the last ten years. She Met De Mille Miss Arzner, who is a native of Los Angeles, met William DeMille during the war while he was associated with the Los Angeles Emergency Ambulance Corps in which she had listed as a driver. In 1919 she secured from Mr. DeMille at the Paramount Studios an opportunity to learn the motion picture industry from the ground up by typing scripts. Later on she was assigned to the position of script girl on the set. Her next position was film cutting. It is said that her work in this respect on Rudolph Valentino's "Blood and Sand" was so unique that James Cruze contracted her services for the editing of "The Covered Wagon" and also "Old Ironsides." Miss Arzner has made a deep study of pictures, but more than that, she has studied the peculiarities of human nature. Honeymooners Milton Sills and his wife, Doris Kenyon, shortly after their arrival in Burbank. Langdon New One Raps "]sLZZ Love" As Harry Langdon's new feature progresses, it foretells more and more that "Long Pants" will be a new type of vehicle for Langdon when the time comes for its projection. Langdon and his company have been sharing their working hours between the First National Studio and a location in Verdugo Hills about twenty miles outside the city limits of Los Angeles. "Long Pants" is described as a veiled commentary on jazz love. Admit Negotiations Are Now On With Educational However, There is Said to Be Much in the Way of Complete Absorption Even by Largest Companies at Present THE plausibility of some kind of a deal between Famous Players-Lasky, or, for that matter, any other feature producer, and Educational Exchanges is conceded by a particularly well informed source right out here in the Educational Studios. Why the biggest deal between the two companies, however, could not result in the complete absorption of Educational from this informant's point of view, causes some interesting light to be shed upon Educational's status. A lengthy interrogation brought for us from this particular source, knowledge which is not general and probably some points about this short subject corporation which may be known to but comparatively few in the film industry. Situation Is Intricate As a starter this informant tells us, Educational Film Exchanges does not own a single producing unit, and that each unit is absolutely independent of the other and of Educational. If this be authentic, then a big producer, it was pointed out to us, desirous of obtaining the product at present released through Educational Exchanges, would doubtless find it necessary to make a separate deal with each of these units. If the same producer were desirous of obtaining Educational's exchanges, of which there are about twenty-six in the United States and Canada, he would find a situation even more intricate than that of corraling its short product, we are assured. We hear that Educational owns outright less than twenty per cent of these exchanges— that in most cases its interest in the individual exchange is fiftyone per cent or more. As an example we are informed that the West Coast organization owns 49 per cent of Educational's Los Angeles' exchange. Food for thought for mongers of rumors is provided when, with Paramount as the reported Educational absorber in mind, it is appreciated that William Fox swings a strong hand in the West Coast aggregation. Again, keeping this situation in mind, what would an Educational buyer have to pay for the exchanges if he could purchase them ? We are reminded that the Los Angeles exchange alone cleared over $15,000 last year. Still further we glean for the record that many First National franchise holders have also con(Continued on page 494) Buck Jones finds that the Girls' Champion Basketball Team of the United States makes just an armful. The girls, who hail from Guthrie, Oklahoma, recently paid Buck a visit while he was working on an interior scene of "Desert Valley," his latest Fox Films starring drama. Report Famous In Educational Deal