Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1957)

DARWIN COMES TO MOVIEDOM. Adapt or diethat is the dire dictum of evolution. To play this little game of craps with Mother Nature you obey some rather rigid rules. Grow antlers, if need be. Sprout feathers, if you must. Indeed, forsake even your egg-laying habits for more advanced avenues of procreation, if the fates so invoke— but by all means make your peace, as best you can, with an unfriendly and perilous environment. Just how successfully moviedom has evolved in the two score years since it wiggled, tremorously, out of the ooze and the brine to take its place among the profit-seeking creatures of the field is open to speculation. Moviedom's central environment is the marketplace. To some extent it has artfully survived the terrors of that unholy ground. From an unlovely starveling that flickered instead of flowed, the film medium has grown smooth and silky. It has waxed higher, wider and more comely. It has acquired a handsome coloration, as well as an organ of speech. The acquisition of a brain and a foresight is again a speculative issue. 0 An examination of the current condition of the movie enterprise would indicate evolution has been only a sometime thing. For this, thanks must go the industry's woeful inertia in the face of sudden change. So long as environment remains tranquil and constant, moviedom does fine. Otherwise it falls to pieces. The entry of television into the marketplace rendered moviedom as hopelessly befuddled as the pin-brained dinosaur in its time of testing. Nature ordered that specie extinct. Evidence of how miserably moviedom has failed to adapt to the modern environment is manifest in today's news. With the rise of TV, film company earnings have sagged to mere subsistence levels, in some cases figures reminiscent of income totals of the sad 1930s. Cinema security prices have dipped in sympathy (see Film BULLETIN Cinema Aggregate below). Production by major studios is following a five year trend of atrophication, as nervous film makers assess their dwindling counting houses. O On more specific fronts, Loew's Leo, once the mightiest creature of them all, is squealing like a pussy cat, counting its blessings for escaping — maybe, just maybe — a tooth and fang battle for internal control. Indeed, there are whispers, incredible as they seem, of a possible liquidation within a year presided over by Loew's newly proposed slate of directors. Republic Pictures, with theatre film production at a standstill, is up for grabs. RKO has cast off its distribution system to lighten the burden. Productionwise that company is barely limping along. Two other film companies, one a long-time giant, are being covetously studied by elements able, if not immediately willing, to take command. Among some firms diversification in outside fields is pulling the oars, while in others proxy contests are avoided by the fortunate circumstance of control being vested in management. 0 Only United Artists seems to have made a genuinely effective adaptation to the recent environment. Sensing the tax-prompted rise in independent production, UA strived furiously to capitalize upon this sudden shift in the FINANCIAL BULLETIN FEBRUARY By Philip R. Ward wind. 20th-Fox made a gallant try to meet new conditions with CinemaScope, and enjoyed, albeit temporary, success. To its credit, the Skouras management of that company is always alert and eager to meet circumstances. Other companies, however, revel in atrophy, resist change, resent the very suggestion that the old order changeth. What is the answer? Evolution's uncompromising mandate remains: adapt and survive, fail and perish. From this it follows that even the once mighty shall tumble b1 the wayside and be weeded out, lest they thoroughly recant the luxury of standing pat. The marketplace brooks no sentimentality. Its decisions are swift and final. Unhappily, this stringent environment appears too much for an important complement of film companies and personnel alike. What is most likely transpiring even now — and the symptoms are there for the looking — is a gradual overhauling of both firms and personnel. In practical terms this means some consolidation of facilities and resources, a sifting of the manpower. What remains will be a hard, hearty, spirited, adaptable new industry that will have grown a new set of feathers to meet the terms of its new environment. Only thus can it survive. O O THE LONG ROAD BACK. The Cinema Aggregate of Film BULLETIN — charted below — reports industry stocks up in January; film companies gaining 5^4 points, theatre companies, 2y8. Some measure of the distance the Aggregate must travel to make up lost ground is had by contrasting January's close with those of the years 1954 and 1955. In '55 the FB Aggregate ended with a reading of 158J/2 for film companies, 37 for theatre companies. The '54 close reported 178V2 for film companies, 40^4 for theatre companies. The January, 1957 close reads: 136^ for film companies, 33^g for theatre companies. Film BULLETIN Cinema Aggregate * FILM COMPANIES THEATRE COMPANIES ' Composed of carefully selected representative industry issues. Page 6 Film BULLETIN February 4, 1957