Canadian Film Weekly (Feb 6, 1970)

Patek _she made for the studio were boxoffice flops. February 6, 1970 ITS MY BAG By Ed Hocura It’s getting so you don’t expect to read anything but downbeat stories in newspapers and magazines, about the state of Hollywood today. Frankly, I’m getting a little tired about reading the same old stories, and I keep wondering why the studios are content to sit back and not do anything about these adverse criticisms. The latest publication to jump on the gloom bandwagon is Time Magazine. In a story in the Feb. 9 issue, a reporter who doesn’t appear to have done his homework, quotes a Hollywood producer who wonders why Universal would pay Shirley MacLaine $800,000 to star in Sweet Charity when the last three pictures (Any Shirley MacLaine fan will tell you that the actress only made one film for Universal, prior to working in Sweet Charity, and that was Gambit). This overblown statement may not seem important to a Time subscriber, but to the head of Universal it’s something else. The fact that movie companies don’t advertise in Time Magazine is no reason to garble the facts regarding a particular star with a particular studio. The story in Time also mentions that MGM was reportedly paying Julie Andrews and her director-husband Blake Edwards a million dollars not to make She Loves Me. What the story forgot to point out is that MGM would like the husband and wife team to team on another project to fulfill their obligation. The situation has still to be resolved. To a Time subscriber, the story headed “Will There Ever Be A 21st CenturyFox?” makes for juicy reading. And since I have always felt that people who read movie reviews in Time almost never go to the movies, they rely on the magazine to kid their friends that they only go if Time tells them a particular movie is worth seeing. If Time wanted to paint a true picture of the movie industry, and I’m not denying that what they printed wasn’t mostly true, why didn’t they make some comment on the good things happening today? Such as A Boy Named Charlie Brown setting an all-time record at the Radio City Music Hall, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid moving up on Valley Of The Dolls as the number one non-roadshow boxoffice attraction in the history of 20th CenturyFox, and the phenomenal boxoffice success of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the James Bond spy thriller that starred an unknown actor. I may be making a mountain out a mole hill in referring to the story in Time Magazine as a distortion of facts, but I’m sick to death of reading one-sided stories about the movie industry. And isn’t it about time that studio heads did something about fighting back? The time is now to launch a campaign to inform the moviegoing public that Hollywood is far from being written off as Time Magazine has indicated. Who knows? They could even get Time to publish another story headed “Yes, Virginia, There Will Be A 21st Century-Fox.” >, TE a ND LUNCH WITH A PRO: It wasn’t until Frankie Laine came to Toronto to fulfill a two-week engagement at a local nightspot that Pat Harris, the publicity gal for International Film Distributors and Cinerama Releasing Corp., realized that she found someone who could promote They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Not that Laine had anything to do with the picture, it was just that in every interview he gave out, the Jane Fonda-Michael Sarrazin film was always mentioned. It seems that Laine in his early youth was a champion marathon dancer, so a public relations firm hit upon the idea of staging one of these dances and Laine was invited to kick it off. The fact that Frankie Laine has been married for many years to a former actress who was my favorite pinup girl of the late 1930s, was one of the reasons I accepted Pat Harris’ invitation to have lunch with him. The other reason was that I knew Frankie Laine would be worth meeting. Soon to become grandparents, the Frankie Laines (she’s the former Nan Grey who gave up a promising screen career to become a housewife and mother) live in San Diego. Laine limits his singing engagements to six months a year so he can have lots of time to enjoy his favorite hobbies; boating and fishing. Laine freely admitted that he was far from happy when he worked at Columbia Pictures starring in many “B” musicals. “Harry Cohn was one smart operator. He talked me into taking a percentage of the profits for the films I made, and then stuck them on the bottom of double bills with CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Page 3 some Rita Hayworth bombs. I never made a nickel.” But Laine really didn’t need a screen career to keep his wife and family from starving. His long association with Columbia Records was second to no other artists, as his numerous gold records will confirm. Suddenly, however, the gravy train came to a halt. “I hadn’t had a hit record for a particularly long period, and my contract with Columbia was coming up for renewal. Naturally, I was a little worried. Then came the day when I was supposed to sit down and negotiate. I'll remember the date forever. It was November 22, 1963 (the day President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas) and by the time the country got over the shock I knew that Columbia was in no mood to worry about a singer whose records were not selling. So I had to go with another company and start looking for some hits.” Since that fateful November day, Laine’s singing career has remained, like he keeps his boat, on an even keel. He’s in big demand in Las Vegas, has a standing invitation to come to Toronto whenever he has the time, and his records are becoming big favorites with the youth set. “I can always go back to being a marathon dancer like those people in “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” And when he said that, Pat Harris realized that once again Frankie Laine had got another plug in for the picture. Which meant that she could explain to her boss that the lunch could be charged to promotion. * * * ODDS & ENDS: Something new will be tried out in Toronto next month to promote movies. Alex Stewart, of the Motion Picture Institute, together with the publicity directors of the three major theatre chains, -are mapping out plans to have lunchtime movie shows in various parts of Toronto. Admission will be free to the public for these shows, but tickets are available only at stores. Merchants will be visited by theatre managers and they will work together to promote the shows that will be held five days a week, from 11.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. From here it appears to be a good idea for inviting shoppers and office workers to relax during lunch hour seeing a program made up of short subjects and trailers — and all for free. Sounds like something worthwhile that could be tried in other cities . . . It’s hard to imagine exhibitors and theatre owners in Toronto not being more than a little startled at the news that Cinema 2000, a theatre showing uncensored movies videotaped and shown on television monitors, has been granted an amusement license. The theatre is opened 24 hours a day and seats just under 300 people in three separate auditoriums. Admission is three bucks. The fact that Cinema 2000 does not come under the jurisdiction of the Ontario Censor Board allows them to play the kind of films that licensed theatres are restricted from playing. Unless, of course, they want to take a chance on bringing them in, and having O. J. Silverthorn judge them as passable for a ‘“‘Restricted” rating. But after seeing Russ Meyer’s Vixen, the sex film that is doing turnaway business at Cinema 2000, I doubt very much if it could get a “Restricted” rating. It goes much, much further than I Am Curious (Yellow), Fanny Hill and Camille 2000. Mary Poppins it ain’t. Offhand, I would say that Cinema 2000 is a test case for a non-theatre operator who has found something that competes strongly with a licensed theatre operation. And if it succeeds in Toronto, as it is just beginning to now after a shaky start, it could very well spring up in other Canadian cities. My mind boggies at what Cinema 2000 grosses in a week when at 6.30 on a Wednesday night I had to stand 20 minutes waiting to find an empty seat .. . Say hello to Gary Topp, a new member on the staff of Canadian Film Weekly who will be offering weekly contributions from a young man’s point of view. The fact that Topp has his finger on the pulse of Canadian youth, what with his background in writing for a college newspaper, should see his future views and reviews of the film scene a welcome asset to this publications. So now we have an aging editor (46) and a disgustingly young writer (24) joining forces to stick up for both sides. Hopefully, there will be no generation gap in our working together. He'll stick up for his generation, and I will stick up for mine. American International has hefty product lineup American International Pictures recently announced the biggest product lineup in the company’s history in the face of what AIP heads Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson termed “a critical period for the motion picture industry when film studio retrench ment and budgetary realignment is in full force and a severe product shortage appears imminent.” “Our company will distribute 21 feature films to the nation’s theatres during the first nine months of 1970,” said the AIP heads. Princi (Continued on Page 6)