Boxoffice (Apr-Jun 1963)

•By SYD CASSYD ■QNTVERSAL Studios continues a high activity level with production on three features starting this month. American International follows with two new ones. Paramount has the Jerry Lewis production going steadily, with two others continuing to roll but no new starts scheduled for April. MGM starts one, but has three moving from last month, causing this lot to have 1,800 persons employed. Due to the success of extending their onehour television shows for overseas feature distribution, there is discussion on the lot of extending the length of an Angela Lansbury episode of The 11th Hour. This would take an extra week of shooting, and might set a pattern, since there are so many one-hour shows for TV in this town. Activity at the Fox lot is evident, with one major start for the end of the month. Perhaps the key picture being started this month will come from Buena Vista, where Disney will combine the technique of live action with drawings, a creation which could start another successful trend. AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL “Beach Party.” Musical comedy with Frankie Avalon, Morey Amsterdam, Harvey Lembeck and Jody McCrea. Jim Nicholson and Lou Rusoff will produce from Rusoff’s screenplay. This Pathe-color story covers a middle-aged man who joins a teenage beach party, and falls for one of the girls. He finds that the attempt to recapture his youth is difficult. “Haunted Palace.” Edgar Allan Poe’s story will roll on April 10 with Vincent Price and Debra Paget in color and Panavision. Poe’s eerie tale of a man who inherits a castle brought over from Europe is another classic thriller for AIP. BUENA VISTA “Mary Poppins,” a musical, with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, directed by Robert Stevenson, has an imaginative script written by Bill Walsh and DonDa Gradi. It is the story of two children in England who are left alone until a cute young teacher takes them over. She is a lady of magic who takes them on a magicland tour. They walk through a real sidewalk in a chalkdrawn countryside and also circle the earth on a spinning compass. Finally they are restored to their father. Glynis Johns and David Tomlinson have beeen added to the cast. COLUMBIA No new starts for April, but five shows are presently in production and three more start in May. METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER “Sunday in New York.” On April 15 director Peter Tewksbury starts lensing this Everett Freeman produced show in the obvious locale, Manhattan, and then brings it to Hollywood. Jane Fonda and Cliff Robertson are starred. A small town gal comes to New York, and gets romanti cally involved with a man who doesn’t believe in marriage. PARAMOUNT “Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?” and “Who’s Minding the Store?” are still shooting along with “Love With the Proper Stranger.” No new starts for April here. UNITED ARTISTS Nothing starts at this lot, but two are in production, with one in London adding the Mexican star Pedro Amendariz to the production of “From Russia With Love.” UNIVERSAL “King of the Mountain” is a UniversalPennebaker-Lankershim color film, produced by Stanley Shapiro and directed by Ralph Levy. Executive producer Robert Arthur has Marlon Brando and David Niven starting in France on April 16 for two weeks, when they will return to Hollywood. The story covers a couple of con men who compete with each other to find female victims. These are usually wealthy women whom they entangle in phony causes. “The Chalk Garden” will be shot in England by Ross Hunter-Quota Rentals (Ltd. Prod.). This Technicolor feature will have Deborah Kerr, Hayley Mills, John Mills, and Dame Edith Evans. Ronald Neame directs this story of an incorrigible child, whose grandmother hires a governess to handle her. After many difficulties, the two become very good friends. “Monsieur Cognac” is a Harold Hecht production which was delayed from March and was written up in the March 11 edition. WARNER BROS. “Youngblood Hawke.” Delmer Daves who wrote, and will produce and direct this Herman Wouk story, starring James Franciscus and Suzanne Pleshette. An uneducated country bumpkin with tremendous writing talent comes to New York and falls into the hands of a sophisticated woman agent. Because of her he loses the girl he loves, but becomes famous before he dies. 20th CENTURY-FOX “Move Over Darling” is the new name for this former Marilyn Monroe-scheduled picture with the new title (formerly “Something's Got to Give”) and cast ready to roll. Aaron Rosenberg and Marty Melcher using Mike Gordon to direct in color and widescreen have cast Doris Day, James Garner and Polly Bergen in a comedy about a man who remarries after the disappearance of his wife — only to find that his new honeymoon is disturbed by her reappearance after five years on a desert island. Complications, due to her having a male companion with her, cause this refreshing bit of fate to readjust the lives of all, after some tribulations. “Take Her, She’s Mine.” Producer-di rector Henry Koster’s first assignment under the new corporate structure. James Stewart, Sandra Dee and Audrey Meadows are cast in this Cine-Deluxe Color picture of the daughter of a well-to-do Los Angeles lawyer who goes East to school and becomes involved with a group of political beatiks. This leads to all sorts of trouble for her family. INDEPENDENTS “Magic Carpet.” A Mark 3 Scope Productions, Ltd. will start this one on April 14. Shooting will take place in Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and England. George Breakston is the producer and George Richardson the director. “Fighting Editor” is scheduled for shooting in England in late April under banner of Car-Sales Productions, Ltd. The main lead is a traveling correspondent seeking a story to round out his career on a newspaper. He seeks out editors of leading papers throughout the world searching for unsolved mysterious incidents which are still in the public eye. He is finally frustrated and returns home a defeated man. “Peppermint Cane,” an Ares International Production with Don Snyder, Steve Clarke. The story of a combo and their ups and downs in the entertainment fields. R1 Cliff Robertson and costar Jane Fonda are in New York for initial scenes of the Ray Stark-Eliot Hyman “Sunday in New York” picture for MGM . . . “Distant Trumpet” is being readied by Leslie A. Martinson for a William H. Wright effort for Warner Bros. Judee Morton is one who is being tested for a role . . . Robert Bassing Productions with writer Robert Bassing start preproduction work in “Where’s Annie?” in New York . . . Martin Balsam has a nice part which should give him an insight into the problems of the story purveyors in New York, he plays a literary agent in “Youngblood Hawke” for Warner Bros . . . Gail Bonney will portray a friendly charwoman in a New York apartment house in “Mary, Mary.” . . . Anne Hegira, who absorbed “the method” in New York’s Actors Studio, has the featured role in “Love With the Proper Stranger,” the Pakula -Mulligan production for Paramount . . . Agnes Moorehead plays the role of the strong-minded mother of Jerry Lewis’ fiancee, Jill St. John, in the Frank Tashlin-directed picture, “Who’s Minding the Store?” . . . Six days in bed is the recompense of Peter Breck because of the scene where nine women beat him up, in Samuel Fuller’s Allied Artists’ “The Long Corridor.” Producer Bob Banner has two new partners of television fame, Clint Walker and Robert Pirosh, for the filming of Garland Roark’s novel “Star in the Rigging.” The story concerns the Texas Navy in the 1900s . . . Additional publicity for “Mutiny on the Bounty” will result from publication of “The Mystery and History of the H.M.S. Bounty,” by Bengt Danielson, with a British publishing firm on the assignment . . . The pension fund official in “The Wheeler Dealers” will be played by George Arlen as his first motion picture role. Having a “first assignment” at MGM is snaring a big one. 16 BOXOFFICE :: April 8, 1963