Variety (January 1954)

V©.fe~193 No. 5 NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1954 PRICE 25 CENTS SHOW BIZ 1953-WOTTA YEAR Come to Britain in ’54; No Festival No <v Coronation, Not Even English Spoken By KICIIARD MEALAND London. In England, women do not chatter. They natter, or have a natter. Tlu* English do not normally like anything over-publicized. This makes it difficult for advertising agencies, sponsored television, motion picture publicists, rising politicians. Douglas Fairbanks Jr., salesmen, debutantes, film stars, Palladium headliners, CinemaScope, Riviera party-givers, Communism. American necktie manufacturers. and Great Lovers. There are a leu exceptions, but only a few. The Royal Family, the Comet jet. Mt. Everest, Sir Winston Churchill, Guinness, and Schweppes. They applaud understatement. Tlrs endears them to Bing Crosby and Jack Benny, the throwaway joke, anybody who stammers, the dirty old raincoat, small cars, backroom scientists, Rose Murphy, dealmutes. Manx cats, shy murderers. gentlemen burglars and stiffupper-lips. They never say: pip-pip, by Jove, what-ho. toodle-oo, cheerie-bye, and all that sort of rot, don’tcha know. They say: get cracking, okay, chcero, righto, good show, bloody, ruddy, sticky, ducky and I couldn’t care less. When they wish to sound slightly whimsical, which is often, they use "me” instead of ‘‘my." They still use rhyming slang. A (Continued on page 87) Uncut Features Aired Freely Into Homes But Censored for Screens v , 1( Washington. ™ct that television is not subject to any official bluepencilling is rammed across in a document filed Jh* hnil,( S> SuPreme Court by the Motion Picture Assn, of Amer ,ca and Independent Theatre Own u*r i ° n9b'°‘ Is made that me 1 V is unencumbered and uneshainod. films are subject to the i«a°UsliS,oncies’ exP*nse and alij*ed ln(‘k °f logic of censorship b0'rds in six states. Argument was made in the form an amici curiae brief which thoV,n * ie b*Sh court to reverse the Columbia film, it n (,),U0 A favorable ruling, fo. n J)|Hr ,W°Uld PUt 30 end t0 a11 mom ( f . oca! and state govern tion r?nn°rSuip of pix Presentafirst ,! lu brief rePresents the teami>i/ni' ^ an exbib group has trihuit W1 h the Producer-dis»,, .;,s;;.sn a cour‘ fight against ia'RUC:d that from 1948 to over rv Pt 1,836 films shown neve, u *n 0hl° ?f these, 546 had 484 t, n un submitted to censors; ori l ;! rn4 submitted (prior to cm? hut sh°wings ) and Sated t or ere. sbown in unexpuriive famrM?n,in the home via TV; Ohio i l0‘; ejected by the PrcM-, M?i,d f Censors for theatre 'duhon were televised. Red Barber’s Surgery On Ear After Gridcasts CBS sports counselor Red Barber will be operated on Jan. 14 to restore partial loss of hearing in his left ear. He'll enter the New York Eye & Ear Infirmary Jan. 13, remain for 10 days and convalesce* at his Scarborough (N. Y. ) home all of February. Barber is now' in Florida w'here he covered the Orange Bowl grideo on New Year’s Day for CBS-TV and will go to Mobile for the web's radio coverage of the Senior Bowl game on Saturday (9). His final pre-hospital activity will be at noon Jan. 13 when he'll give a talk at Trinity Church. In March he’ll go to St. Petersburg, Fla.', to ready himself for his new baseball assignment as telecaster of the N. Y. Yankee games. Look For a Big Black & White ’54, Sez RCA’s Folsom Although the nation's economy has reverted from a sellers’ to a buyers’ market, and despite introduction of color television, -black and white set sales will "continue in the millions” in 1954, RCA president Frank M. Folsom said in a year-end statement this week. Folsom added that RCA will accelerate its promotional activities to achieve high black and w'hite sales next year. Such sales, he said, would occur because of the "orderly introduction of compatible color” and because of the compatibility features of the new tint system. Reporting on other color developments, he said RCA had received by Dec. 31 orders for color telecasting equipment (for network-transmitted shows) from one or more stations in 58 cities. Equipment for color film projection is also being developed, with one of three systems already In commercial production and the other tw'O still in the development stage. Discussing the business prospects for 1954, Folsom emphasized the fact that while the "14-yearold sellers’ market is gone,” the coming year "can be good for business.” He said RCA is preparing to reshape its productive capacity to "increase efficiency” in order to enhance the values of its products to the consumer, is streamlining its operations and selling organizations and is concentrating on building stronger sales staffs. By ABEL GREEN In 1953, show' business shifted faster than a Moscow delegate to the United Nations. More than any season of recent memory, 1953 lived up to the show biz adage that there’s nothing more permanent than change. It was a year of great, risks and shifts and innovations. It was also a year with humor, for the business there is no business like always delights to .augh at itself. And, in so doing, show biz helps set a national laugh pattern. This was the year of Jelke and Jorgensen jokes, of Godfrey’s "humility,” of Italian, haircuts, scrabble and parakeets. More seriously, 1953 saw revolutions in the technology of enter-, tainment and that Greatest Show’ on Earth — the British Coronation. Best of all, as regards the producers and exhibitors of motion pictures, a reawakened and revitalized industry met the challenge of television and theatre closings head on. There was a happy improvement from the preceding year’s lethargy when too often one heard the supercilious crack, "Oh, I haven’t seen a movie for six months.” Lighter values of 1953 embraced such items as Marilyn Monroe as the continuing No. 1 space-grabber (Zsa Zsa isn’t a bad runner-up! > and Dr. Kinsey and Polly Adler among (Continued on page 58) For ‘Faded’ Paper-Mate Eddie Cantor is talking a radioTV consultation post with Paper , Mate, the. ballpoint pen people, j separate and apart from his own radio and. video activities. That SI, 000 check aw’ard to Cpl. Robert j Weston on Cantor’s past Sunday • show’ for Colgate, which caused I NBC executive producer Sam Fuller to “fade" Cantor’s cuffo, plug for Paper-Mate, was the result of the company volunteering the check, award. Cantor wanted to know’ why NBC and Colgate weren’t consistent Lawrence Langner about alleged cuffo commercials, citing the Sylvania award he presented on the same program to Donald O'Connor, since Sylvania has been getting into many programs via the device of a plaque or a clock. SILENT POLICE WATCH ‘FRENCH LINE’ UNREEL St. Louis. RKO’s "The French Line" opened here last week without a Production Code seal and with police officers in the audience but no action was immediately taken to condemn the film as "obscene” or to seize the print. Rumors of such drastic action circulated through town after a denunciation of the film starring Jane Russell w’as read from every Roman Catholic pulpit in this preponderantly (65%) Catholic community. Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter warned Catholics it would be a "mortal sin" to see the pic. Police officers departed quietly after the first screening stating only that they would file a written report to police chief Jeremiah O’Connell, w'ho had given them their assignment, <since. St. Louis has no official censor. With all the publicity, "French Line” opened to SRO the first day. Early Deadline This edition of Varifty went to press ahead of the normal Tuesday deadline. Production detail, binding, etc., and the size of this 48th Anniversary Number made it necessary to omit . certain standard departments. n Thinks Flick Hollywood’s production c ode needs no changes but could stand a broader and more generous interpretation, says Dr. Hugh M. Flick, the New York censor. Flick opined. last week that the | code could stand both tightening up and liberalizing. "They should start cutting some of the brutality out of gangster pictures and i westerns," he thought. “To us that’s a far more worrisome thing I than the moral issue. This is : where films really contribute to juvenile delinquency.” Trouble with the code handling as it’s practiced now is that interpretations are given on the basis | of "past performance” rather than j on a picture-by-^picture basis, Flick I declared. "That’s a mistake. Each picture should be judged on its own. merit. We run into this problem all the time.” He said he was disturbed oyer the "French Line” incident since it appeared as an attempt to capitalize on the code issue. By LAWRENCE LANGXER ( Co-Director , The Theatre Guild) In my opinion, the most important thought we can hold for the year 1954 is a welcome to the newest playwrights. It is they who represent the theatre of the future, and by the nature . of .. our w e 1 c o m e to them may well be determined the question of whether we will have any theatre in the future at all. The past of our theatre is undoubtedly .impojlant. It is the origin of the traditions and standards which have been passed on from generation to generation. Behind our past stands Shakespeare to set a standard of poetry and beauty which has never been eclipsed. In the future are the plays, written and unw’ritten, .with which oncoming generations will enrich the theatre. The present is merely that place where the future and the past intermingle and produce the .theatrical harvest of today. Whether that harvest be rich or poor, worthy or unworthy, depends on us. When we w’elcome the new author with production costs of between. $60,000 and $70,000 per play, lor example, we are welcoming him with a shower of brickbats; for we expect him to meet an economic competition with which, either be ( Continued on page 87) Higher Education Quick To Exploit Sexsation Minneapolis. That the University of Minnesota Film Society follow's the news of show biz has been demonstrated before now. Newest example, following Marlene Dietrich’s sexsationa.l nightclub costume at Las Vegas, sans la bra, is this: Society is presenting an. on campus revival of three old Dietrich films, "Blue Angel,” "Seven Sinners” and "Destry Rides Again.” It’s Sir George Robey; Now 85, Music Hall Star Never Played States London. George Robey, veteran favorite of the British music halls, is a surprise designation for knighthood on Queen Elizabeth's New Year honors list. The new Sir George was born Sept. 20. 1869 and made his debut in 1891. His war work, won him, in 1919, the rank of Commander of the British Empire and in 1937 he was appointed to the General Advisory Council of the 1 British Broadcasting Co. i Robey is also a painter of oils and has cx: hibited at the Royal Academy.) I Although a headliner in British and colonial show biz for well over i 50 years, Robey never played in the United Stales. In his prime he was literally “booked solid” lour and . five years ahead and that fact, plus some diffidence on his part,, precluded A in e r i c a n bookings. Many showwise folk thought Robey would have clicked in the States, as did many another London musi| cal figure. ! A Companion of Honor , was be. slowed on John Christie, founder ■ of the Giyndebourne Opera House,