Boxoffice (Oct-Dec 1948)

■— ■■ — By IVAN SPiAR Two More U.S. Film Stars To Rome for Productions That legendary road to Rome is becoming as crowded, these days, as are such congested U.S. arteries as Broadway in New York and Wilshire boulevard in Los Angeles. Deanna Durbin is one film personality destined to make a junket to the Italian capital as the result of negotiations just completed between Universal-International and Scalera Productions, calling for the singing star to topline a musical film which the latter company will make. The film, a cooperative project between U-I and Scalera, will be directed by Gofferdo Alessandrini, who megged “Furia.” U-I will handle the distribution in the western hemisphere. Also due to hit the trail to Italy are Robert Cummings and Eugene Frenke, partners in United California Productions, who also have set a cooperative deal with Scalera for the making of “Password to Love” in Rome. Frenke and Cummings will function as coproducers and Cummings will have the starring role in the film, based on a story by Alexandre Dumas. The Frenke -Cummings team will junket abroad early in 1949 to lay the groundwork for the project. Cowboy Actors Forming Western Hall of Fame The boys who ride thataway in Hollywood’s output of that film staple, the sagebrushers, have decided to start beating the drums a bit louder about their relative importance in matters cinematic. In association with western radio and recording artists, the motion picture cowpokes are in the throes of organizing the Western Hall of Fame, an nonprofit venture “dedicated to the preservation of the historical west and to the memory of the cowboys, past, present and future.” William Elliott and Russell Hayden are among the officers, while the organizers also Although Hollywood’s production barometer is, lamentably, dropping lower and lower, hardly a day passes but what announcement is made by some producer of plans to launch a film project in some foreign locale — usually drawing upon the available technical manpower of the country involved to supplement American crews. Latest nation to be added to the overseas list is India, destined to be the production scene for a group of pictures being planned by Oriental-International Films, independent unit headed by J. L. McEldowney. The producer, who says he has obtained all the necessary financial and governmental sanctions, just returned from that coimtry after shooting several thousand feet of 16mm color include such boots-and-saddles liuninaries as William Boyd, Andy Devine, Hoot Gibson, Monte Hale, Bob Nolan, Roy Rogers, Max Terhune, Jimmy Wakely and Stuart Hamblen. Plans are afoot for an all-star western show to raise funds for the construction of a building to house thousands of the mementoes left behind by such cowboy immortals as Tom Mix, Will Rogers, William S. Hart, Buck Jones, Harry Carey, Art Acord, Fred Thompson and others. William Witney to Meg 'Down Dakota Way' Handed a new one-year directorial ticket, William Witney’s next megging assignment at Republic will be “Down Dakota Way,” upcoming Roy Rogers western . . . Scrivening activity at MGM went on the upbeat with the assignment of fom writers to new properties. William Stone went to work on “Pagan Love Song,” with Ernest Byfield jr. and Alan Friedman teaming on “Arson Squad” and Syd Boehm developing “Side Street.” Story Sales on Ups-wing With Six Purchases That old adage about the ill wind blowing nobody any good was applicable, in one sense at least, to the pall of gloom hanging rather generally over the film colony. Amid the “things-are-tough-all-over” attitude was a ray of optimism among the literary fraternity as they discovered the market for their brain-children definitely and paradoxically on the upswing. Sales for the period totaled six — with two each going to 20th Century-Fox and Paramount. The former acquired ‘"The Doctor Wears Three Faces,” a new novel by Mary Bard, and “The FBI of Racing,” semidocumentary by Art Cohn. ‘"Three Faces” is earmarked as a Jeanne Crain vehicle and probably will be produced by Fred Kohlmar. ’The Cohn property, which will star Mark Stevens and is on Samuel G. Engel’s pro film. McEldowney now is lining up players and technicians and will return with them to India early in 1949 to begin filming the first of a planned, schedule of four features. The O-I outfit has not yet secured a release. Meantime Wales was chosen as the locale for shooting on “Gone to Earth,” slated to star Jennifer Jones and to be produced by David O. Selznick in collaboration with Michael Powell and Emerick Pressburger. Miss Jones will trek to England for the assignment when she has completed her role in MGM’s “Madame Bovary.” Her chore in “Gone to Earth,” incidentally, necessitates her withdrawal from the cast of another upcoming Selznick opus, “Trilby,” which has been done with boxoffice success before. Hal Wallis to Use New Safety Film Heretofore confined for the most part to 16mm home and educational films, the newly developed slow burning safety celluloid is being used for the first time on a .big-budgeted studio project by Producer Hal Wallis, who is utilizing it for the prints of daily rushes on “Bitter Victory,” his new film for Paramount release. The studio itself plans to use the safety film on rushes of all subsequent productions and, as the manufacturing output increases and laboratory facilities are enlarged, it will be employed also on all negative stock. Eventually, it is predicted, the film will replace the inflammable variety entirely both for studio and theatre use. duction slate, is concerned with government efforts to safeguard the public in pari-mutuel betting . . . Paramount’s acquisitions include “Explosion,” by Dorothy Cameron Disney, and a new William Irish novel, “I Married a Dead Man.” The Disney opus is a detective yarn with a Washington, D. C., locale, while “Dead Man” is a suspense yarn about a gal who, for protection, assumes the identity of another woman after the latter and her husband are killed in a train wreck ... To Warners went “Ghost Mountain,” California adventure story of the Civil War era, by Alan LeMay. It will be produced by William Jacobs . . . “Honor Among Thieves,” by George Compton, went to Monogram as a starring vehicle for Roddy McDowall, with Lindsley Parsons to hold the production reins. It’s concerned with corruption in London at the turn of the 19th century. MGM Signs Robert Taylor For 'Viva Zapata' Lead Robert Taylor has been assigned by MGM for the lead in “Viva Zapata,” biography of the Mexican revolutionary hero, which will be filmed on location below the border . . . After 23 years as a comedian, Andy Devine is doing an abrupt switch and will portray a double-crossing heavy in “Montana Belle” at Republic. At the same valley studio Skeets Gallagher, one-time prominent film comic, begins a screen comeback with a part in “Duke of Chicago” . . . The femme lead opposite Ronald Reagan in Warners’ “The Hasty Heart,” to be filmed in England, goes to Patricia Neal . . . Producer-Director Robert Rossen set Broderick Crawford for the lead in “All the King’s Men,” which Rossen is readying for Columbia release. Crime Documentary Films Now Going Collegiate Now the documentaries are going collegiate. Producer Sam Marx and Scripter Leonard Spigelgass of MGM returned to the Culver City film factory after attending Harvard’s famous crime clinic with material for “Murder at Harvard,” a mystery based on the clinic’s scientific solution of an actual slaying. J. L McEldowney Independent Unit Plans to Make 4 Films in India 28 BOXOFFICE :: November 20, 1948