20th Century-Fox Dynamo (August 5, 1939)

8 NEW DYNAMO WOBBER WILL PRESIDE AT THIR D DRIVE M EETINGS Plan Second Session For Los Angeles on August 18—Will Complete Swing Around Offices by Sept. 10—Shuttle Sheets Will Be Analyzed—Ten Joint Meetings! General Manager of Distribution Herman Wobber was this week-end prepared to wing his way to the Coast for a series of product conferences with Production Chief Darryl Zanuck and to close several important circuit K-7 deals, preliminary to officially starting the Drive leader on his second series of meetings at the branches on S. R. Kent Drive business. Mr. Wobber’s schedule on the Coast will be an extraordinarily busy one. In San Francisco he is scheduled to negotiate an important circuit deal that means much in Drive revenue to George M. Ballentine’s exchange. However, he expects to have those negotiations and his studio con- ferences completed in time to participate at the first meeting of the second series at Jack Dillon’s Los Angeles exchange on Friday morning, August 18th. In view of the pressure of business and the fact that many important sales deals are pending and demand his personal attention, Mr. Wobber cannot possibly make the second swing around the branches. How- ever, he will attend a few meetings on the Coast while he is there and may be pres- ent at some scheduled for offices nearer New York. However, he will make a complete swing around the branches on the third trip, scheduled to get under way about the first of October. Meantime, the division man- agers will accompany Drive Leader M. A. Levy on the sec- ond trip. Western Division Man- ager William J. Kupper will be the first of the divisional heads to make the swing. The itiner- ary will be changed to coincide with the division managers’ sales dealings. Thus, instead of break- ing up the meetings in the West- ern division’s offices with a visit to the Central loop taking in Des Moines, Omaha, Minneapo- lis, Milwaukee and Chicago, Mr. Wobber has directed that the schedule be so arranged that there will be no interruption in the divisional sessions. Thus, Messrs. Kupper and Levy will cover the Western di- vision in the following order: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle where Portland and Vancouver will be represented; Salt Lake City, Denver, Kansas City where Oklahoma City’s delegation will be present; St. Louis, Dallas, New Orleans with Memphis on hand, and Atlanta with the Char- lotte delegation present. At Atlanta, Kupper will leave the Drive leader and return to New York. The latter will then proceed to Cincinnati for a joint meeting there with Indianapolis. Both Division Managers Suss- man and Gehring will attend that meeting. But, while Suss- ffian will return to New York, Gehring will accompany the Drive Leader to Chicago, to Des Moines for a joint meeting there with Omaha, then to Minneapo- lis, where Winnipeg and Calgary will be represented, to Milwau- kee and Detroit. From Detroit the Drive Leader will proceed to Buffalo for a joint session there with the dollar de- livery crews from Toronto and Montreal. Eastern Division Man- ager William Sussman will re- join Levy in Buffalo and pro- ceed with him to Cleveland, to Pittsburgh, to Washington, to Philadelphia, to Boston for a joint session there with delega- tions from Albany, New Haven and St. John, and on to New York. By the time Mr. Wobber ar- rives at Los Angeles from his San Francisco sales negotia- tions, it is expected that he will K-6 DELIVERY PRIZE CHECKS WILL BE GIVEN TO j WINNERS AT SECOND MEETINGS OF DRIVE SERIES i Mr. Wobber announced Friday that checks covering the vari- ous amounts won by branches on 52-weeks’ total and short sub- jects delivery for the 1938-39 season will be presented to the winners during the coming meetings in the S. R. Kent Drive series. Thus, employees at the winning branches will be looking | forward to the coming meetings with added interest. | The prize winners are announced in this issue of New Dynamo. ’ All employees, from janitor to branch manager, will share in I the prizes available for 52-week’s accumulated K-6 total delivery. Manager, salesmen and bookers will share in the Movietone- Terrytoon prizes, the distribution being in proportion to indi- vidual salary. Mr. Wobber will give the checks to Drive Leader Levy for presentation to the prize winners. Something in the nature of a record will have been established through this method of distribution of prize money, for within less than a month after the completion of the campaign checks will be presented to the winners. Herman Wobber see in completed form the fol- lowing important Kent Drive releases: Louis Bromfleld’s “The Rains Came” with Tyrone Power, Myrna Loy, George Brent, Brenda Joyce, Maria Ouspanskaya and thousands of others. “Hollywood Cavalcade,” the season’s first of a series of five Technicolor super- specials, with Don Ameche, Alice Faye, Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett, Edward Bromberg and hundreds of others. “The Adventures of Sher- lock Holmes” with Basil Rathbone, Ida Lupino, Nigel Bruce and Alan Marshal. “Roughnecks” with Jane Withers and the R i t z Brothers. “Here I Am a Stranger” with Richard Greene, Bren- da Joyce, Gladys George, Richard Dix and many others. He will also view at least four completed Wurtzel K-7 re- leases, including the second Jones Family and the Charlie Chan mystery. Mr. Zanuck will also show “rushes” of the following spe- cials which will still be before the cameras: “Drums Along the Mo- hawk” with Henry Fonda, Claudette C ol b e r t and others. This, too, is a Technicolor special. “Swanee River” with Don Ameche, A1 Jolson, Nancy Kelly and others. “Little Old New York” with Alice Faye, Fred Mac- Murray, Richard Greene, Andy Devine and others. “20,000 Men a Year, with Randolph Scott, and several other productions will have been started during the stay at the studio, but none of these “rushes” will be available for screening on this visit, for those pictures will have been started the week Mr. Wobber arrives at Movietone City. There will be a total of 28 branch meetings. But at these 28 sessions, all 37 branches will be represented. Patterson’s Vancouver and Powers’ Portland dollar delivery crews will attend the meeting at Edmond’s Seattle exchange. Three K-6 total delivery prize- winning branches will be repre- sented at the meeting sched- uled at Joe Podoloff’s Minneap- olis office, for Huber’s Winni- peg and Skorey’s Calgary will attend that get-together. Meantime, local Drive lead- ers are spurring branch per- sonnels to the greatest localized competitive effort in Drive his- tory. That they intend to fur- nish Mr. Wobber with a “great surprise,” as one of them put it, is a foregone conclusion, for no Drive ever was better or- ganized locally than this one. Competitions vary. Many novel angles have been devel- oped and are having the effect which they were intended to bring about. The meeting at Harry Bux- baum’s New York exchange brought the first series to an end last week-end. In addition to M. A. Levy and Roger Ferri, the speakers at that session were Messrs. Wobber, Hutchin- son, Jenkins, Sussman, Gehring, Clark and McCarthy. Every branch of organization was rep- resented at that meeting. Lo- cal Drive leader Joseph Lee stirred his listeners with one of the finest talks made at any ex- change meeting. ALL DRIVE RELEASES WILL BE READY BY OCT. 1 DRIVE-MINDED STUDIO SET 11 PICTURES EITHER READY, CUTTING OR IN PRODUCTION MOVIETONE CITY —By the first of Oc- tober, Darryl Zanuck and his sales-minded studio plan to have de- livered to New York all of the S. R. Kent Drive releases. At forthcoming confer- ences with Herman Wobber, the production chief will give him the exact date when negatives on these pic- tures will reach New York. This Drive-minded studio plan- ned for the Drive at the comple- tion of the 1938 campaign. Zanuck arranged his produc- tion schedule so that during the 18-week Drive period the Do- mestics would have available the most powerful box office ve- hicles ever released in a corre- sponding period. Eleven of the 18 releases are either completed or in the cut- ting department. At the time this dispatch was filed Thursday night, the studio had delivered negatives to New York on the following early Drive K-7 releases: ‘Stanley and Livingstone.” “Elsa Maxwell’s Hotel for Women.” “Charlie Chan in Treasure Island.” “Jones Family in Quick Mil- lions.” “Chicken Wagon Family.” In the cutting rooms were the following: “The Rains Came.” “Hollywood Cavalcade,” the first Technicolor super spe- cial. “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” which was to be shipped to the Home Office in the next few days. “Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence.” “The Escape.” “Stop, Look and Love.” Jane Withers’ “The Rough- necks” with the Ritz Brothers. Nearing completion of camera work were these: “Here I Am a Stranger.” “Charlie Chan in City in Dark- ness.” John Ford and his company entered the second month of “shooting” on another best- seller, the Technicolored “Drums Along the Mohawk.” Next week the third Jane Withers comedy drama, “The Texas Kid,’’and the Jones Family in “Too Busy to Work” were to be started. On Aug. 14, “20,000 Men a Year” with Randolph Scott and others, and “The Simple Life,” a Wurtzel picture, were to be started. The week of Aug. 21 Zanuck set aside to start production on “Swanee River,” another Techni- color super special, with Don Ameche, A1 Jolson and Brenda Joyce; the all-star cast of Mae- terlinck’s “The Blue Bird” with Shirley Temple, and “Little Old New York” with Alice Faye, Fred MacMurray, Richard Greene and Andy Devine. By that time production also will have been started on the first of the new “Cisco Kid” series with Cesar Romero in the title role, and “Day-Time Wife” with Warner Baxter, Binnie Barnes and others. Thus, by the second week of the Drive itself, the studio will have completed, have in the cut- ting process or actually before the cameras all releases for the Big Push, as well as several spe- cials that will not be available until the post-Drive period.