Variety (January 1954)

Wednesday, January 6, 1954 Forty-eighth Anniversary PICTURES Exbib’s first Question, ‘Who’s in It? opmg on By KDMUND GRAINGER Hollywood. I think it was Rabelais who said "It is wise to get knowledge from, every source — from a sot, a pot-, a fool. la winter-mitten, or an old 10 slipper.” I don’t know into just which of those categories a produ cer fits. HoweVer, I have always felt that Hollywood has tr e a t e d too lightly the development of new talentin all creative Eddie Grainger fields as well as in the acting ranks. I believe the industry is suffering some of the effects of this oversight , right now. In the development of “new faces,’’ however, the exhibitor must share some of the responsibility. with the producer. Every film salesman knows that an exhibitor’s first. question is “Who’s in it?" The picture might have half a dozen of the most promising new players in Hollywood heading the cast, but an exhibitor favors a film with one long established star name (perhaps too long established!, even if the no-star film is much the better of the two. Showmen are just as capable as producers in spotting new talent and potential stars. So when the producer gambles time and money on the development of new personalities, it should not be asking too much to. expect the exhibitor to back him up With intelligent sonalities in his local situation. There are considerably less than a dozen stars big enough to carry a picture to boxoffice success today, It stands to reason that even one of these stars can’t be in every picture. The star system will always be with us, but today the public is demanding more than just a star name. It has tired of many promotion of interesting new perof the old favorites and it has become highly critical. A good star (Continued on page 48) Col to Finance, Release 3 More Warwick Pix . Hollywood. Warwick Productions which recently completed three Alan Ladd starrers abroad, closed a deal to make three more features to be financed and released by Columbia. Starter will be “Cockleshell Heroes,” based on a yarn by George Kent and slated for filming in England rand France. Next will be “Prize of Gold,” a novel by Max Catto, With lensing in England and Germany. Third will be announced later. , By ARTHUR R. KRIIM ( President , United Artists Corp.) There is, of course, a complex of factors underlying United Artists' ability to grow, to alter, and to prosper through 35 years, both lush and lean. One key to the company’s hardihood certainly lies in the special virtues of independent films — benefits which extend to producer, distributor, exhibitor and public alike. The unique advantages of independent production are evident in tne first creative phase of a picuie, The producer is given a free * n ,n nis choice of material. He s never saddled with a prefabrit,ttled ?™ject that may or may not an / , 1 up his alley. He selects and develops a stopy with which 1 Htirnalcly concerned and handle 0 *S idealIy equipped to the independent producer it u wt scn Proiect, he mounts 10Ut cOnstraint or hindrance. no studio taboos or hibiftin(irnC€Snt‘0.be. jo^Sled, no inof .n^.confllct with the judgment 0 stuj hea^. The pict«re .. IntramVe'lcd reat‘Ve capacities are mo*'Ve Is naturally as to'^hp-d«3t tbe ^dependent as atinc hdl°4uProducer' But °Pcr' makbm hln the Hme necessity of denonl3, pirture^the in cxDifir^0? ls free *° inipr^ivise and studia ;„?-n ,th« absence of a fixed ideas be cah develop new able iri^n.d Ln t.be absence of suit . d-s, he is not goaded into,*.. « continued on page 48) year. To U. S. Taste By FRED HIFT Combination; of audience resistance, television and lack of outstanding productions has made 1953 an . unexciting year for the indies handling foreign language films! A few of them, like “Seven Deadly Sins,” “Rome 11 O’clock” and “Forbidden Games,” did weil in spots but certainly didn’t puli this, branch of the industry out of the rut it’s been in for the past couple of years. Indie distribs are taking this dull performance in their stride. At the same time, they’re more than intrigued by the potential expansion of their market via dubbing which has provided a distinct boost for a couple of Italo imports such as. Italian Films Export’s “Anna.” What’s worrying them more than the obvious difficulty of getting their “intellectual” audience backbone to come back to the theatres is the lack of suitable product emanating from the European studios which are going full-blast. Italo producers, they maintain, now have, their eye on the American mass market and what they conceive to be its tastes. This is resulting in a rash of “big” pictures that also lend themselves to dubbing and in a lesser number of the more sensitive films which were a postwar specialty from Rome and which delighted artie audiences. “They're now trying to emulate the American ways of exploiting their imports,” i.e. sex ’em up, says Noel Meadow, vet importer-distrib. He called ’53 the worst year for foreign films in the U.S. since the late forties and said television was part of the reason for the slump. Arthur Davis, who specializes in French films and whose “Seven Deadly Sins” has been a limited hit (it’s on the Legion of Decency's Condemned list) complained of the (Continued on page 48) Hayes-Healy’s CBS Pad, He to Peter Lind Hayes & Mary Healy have been signed by CBS for a longterm radio-TV pact understood to be minimum five years and calling also for the individual services of Hayes. Male part of the Mr. and Mrs. comedy-song team will be the official pinchhitlcr for Arthur Godfrey, and thus he’ll be taking the sub-throne spot vacated When Robert. Q. Lewis got himself a flock of shows on the web and extricated himself from the subbing chore. Hayes already put this part of his pact in motion by stepping in . for Godfrey at the tailend of last week when the headman and his troupe, were appearing at Thule Air Base in Greenland. Hayes & Healy will be formatted in a nighttime stanza early this ’52:11253,510.000 By GENE ARNEEL The big pix of 1953 Came really kingsize; it was a year of boxoffice blockbusters. Blue chip productions — those grossing $1,000,000 or over in U. S. and Canadian rentals — numbered 135 and they’re ringing up a combined estimated total of $311,950,000. In 1952, 119 films in the $1,000,000-and-above category were listed at $253,510,000. Money in the till gain for ’53; $58,440,000. Major studios pounced on bigness in . production as though, it Were just invented. At 20th-Fox, it was, and with unprecedented payoff. First in 20th's CinemaScope process, “The Robe,” fits head and shoulders above any new picture entry down through the years in terms of income. “Robe” is the colossal smash of 1953, with a potential gross of $20,-30,000,000. There’s no “look to the past to predict the future” basis upon which a more precise estimate can be made. .That the film will reach $20,000,000 appears a certainty. Some execs at 20th (and a few at rival distribution or-r ganizations) seem confident that the pic will reach $30,000,000. $12,500,000 for Col’s Flattie, ‘Eternity’ Sharply contrasted in production technique is No. 2 in the parade of clicks: Columbia’s “From Here to Eternity.” Without any anamorphic squeezeplay in the lensing, and framed conventionally (Continued on page 66) INDIE PROD. ON STARS VERSUS By HAL B. WALLIS Hollywood. As long as there is a picture industry, “stars” will be important. Unfortunately, stars no longer aumatically insure the success of a picture; but in combination with a proper story and production, a star or group Of stars greatly enhanced the earning potential. On the other hand, pictures with an offbeat and different quality can frequently do very well, even without tfic impetus of a star name. A case in point is our “Cease Fire,” produced in Korea in 3-D without a single recognizable face (as a milter of fact, every player in the picture was an actual GH, However, exhibitors do not do enough to promote “new faces,” Clamor as they do for new fresh tal (CorUinued on page 48) Hal Wallis Peck-Parrish Indie Buys Lea’s ‘Wonderful Country’ Hollywood. New indie film producing company. has been organized by. Gregory Peck and Robert Parrish to start operations in Mexico early in 1955. First production will be “The Wonderful Country,” based on a novel by Tom Lea. Before he goes into production, Peck has commitments to star in “The Purple Plain” in Ceylon, “Moby Dick” in England and the first of a fiverpicture deal with 20th-Fox in.. Hollywood. By JO RANSON This was an infinitely more harrowing year for the radio and television cacoepists. Largely because performers opened their big mouths and struck out metathetically, a leering public most impure in spirit and mind, gave them a jumbo horse laugh. This year’s tongue slips, boners, booboos, fluffs and snafus were rated bigger and better, saltier and saucier. Up and down AM and TV trails many a pear-shaped vowelperformer tripped on his scrotal tongue and quickly landed on the fluff hit parade.. A hole in the head, in some instances, would have been the lesser of two evils. Fluffers do not subscribe to the Latin dictum, Vox audita perit littera scripta mane.t (the spoken word dies, the written letter remains). For them this old Latin saw has a hollow ring. The unlucky ones who transpose letters or syllables or who malaprop their way on the airlanes know durn well that the spoken word is never forgotten and they know that on the morrow their colleagues also can be the victims of this tongue-tripping torture. No one, it seems, is immune. It happens to the star in Radio City, New York, and it happens to the lowly announcer in Split Infinitive, Iowa. In communications history 1953 will go down as the year in which a goodly number of earthy, fourletter, Anglo-Saxon words bounced off the tongues of those facing live, and sometimes supposedly dead, . microphones. The grand prize for the fall and winter semester must naturally go to the altogether uninhibited radio announcer on the Washington station who, during one of Fulton Lewis Jr.’s broadcasts over the Mutual Broadcasting System, rudely uttered a naughty exclamation that might (Continued on page 66) By SPYROS P. SKOURAS Through the years the motion picture industry has been distinctive among American businesses for its ability to recognize and meet constantly c hang i ng standards in the public demand for its prodpet. In my own opinion, . the record of the motion picture industry has. proven over and o v e r again its capacity for Spyros Skouras sensing and responding to higher requirements of popular taste id both artistic and technical ways. Each time there has been a major shift in public taste, such as when sound was introduced, the adjustments necessary have been in some degree painful but our industry has been able to take a long-range view and accept the immediate burdens imposed for the sake of the general welfare and advancement. In the period just ahead, I believe that not only the production branch of our industry but the exhibition branch will face a challenge such as they have neyer had before in providing screen entertainment that will have unquestioned merit and will be equal to the task of overcoming all competition for the entertainment dollar, especially that of television in the home. While it is understandable that some theatre owners are hesitant about making new investments in equipment just as some producers have wavered about entering new types of production, I cannot em(Continued on page 65) U S. Films Pace Glasgow. U. S. films remain top favorites at cinemas here, First place at the Odeon, downtown ace house here, was gained by “Call Me Madam” (20th) with top gross. Next in popularity with the patroiis were “Snows of . Kilimanjaro” (20th) and “The Red Beret”. “House of Wax” (WB) held leading position at the Associated British Cinemas key house, the Regal, followed by “April in Paris” (M-O) and "Julius Caesar” (M-G), “Road to Bali” (Par) gained secondspot at the C.aumont. beaten by the Coronation pic “A Queen Is Crowned.” “Shane” (Par) was third. Other favorites hoxoffico-wise at key theatres were “Military Policeman” (Par), “War of Worlds” (Par), “Because You’re Mine” (MG) and “Quo Vadis” (M-G>... Award to Elmer Davis U. S. Supreme Court Justice j William O. Douglas, winner of the award last year, did the honors for the Authors Guild last week, in handing the Lauterbach Award for 1953 to Elmer Davis. This is named ! for late Richard Lauterbach, war ' correspondent who died of polio 1 at 30. • I Said Douglas of Davis; “He risked the hysteria and passion of the day by speaking on the unpopular side of important, issues” ... in a dark day of intolerance he spoke, for the bright conscience ’ of America.” Subscription Order Worm Enclosed find check for $ Onp Y«nr Please send VARIETY for Two Years 1/6 To (Pleaao Print Name) Street City . . . . Zone .... State ....... Regular Subscription Rates One Year— '$10.00 Two Years— $18.00 Canada and Foreign^-$1 Additional per Year VARIETY Ine. 1 54 West 44th Street N.w York 34. N. Y.