The Film Daily (1937)

THE Thursday, May 13, 1937 -ggn DAILY 25 lJOTOPHONE OPENS INDIANAPOLIS MEET Indianapolis — More than 125 RCA sales executives, district managers, sales representatives and service supervisors from all parts of the country converged on Indianapolis last night for the opening of a three-day sales convention today at the Lincoln Hotel. Indianapolis was selected as the site of the convenion in order to give the Photophone men an opportunity to inspect ECA's new big manufacturing plant there. In addition to RCA Photophone's own executives, there will be talks by theater and equipment company heads during the daytime sessions and at two banquets. These include: Lester Isaac, sound projection supervisor, Loew's, Inc.; Sid Samuelson, former president of the A. S. A. M. P. E.; E. C. Zrenner, chief engineer, Interstate Circuit; Harry Brandt, president, I. T. 0. A.; Frank Cahill, sound projection supervisor, Warner Bros.; Dan D. Halpin, vicepresident, Dictograph Products Co., and Herbert Griffin, vice-president, International Projector Corp. Edwin M. Hartley, RCA Photophone head, opens the sessions this morning and will officiate as chairman. Edward Auger, Photophone sales executive, will act as vicechairman. Today's program includes discussions and addresses by Halpin, Griffin, Zrenner, Isaac and Samuelson and a visit to the Sanders Theater to hear new RCA High Fidelity sound equipment. Tomorrow, most of the time will be spent at the Indianapolis plant. After an address by Vance C. Woodcox, RCA sales executive, Dave J. Finn, Photophone advertising manager, will outline the company's advertising and sales promotion plans for the year. Others to speak will include Max C. Batsel and C. N. Reifsteck, Photophone engineering aces, and Brandt and Cahill, the two latter banquet speakers. N. 0. Subsequent Squawk Over "Milking" of Films New Orleans — Hold-overs and move-overs in the first-run commercial area are bringing squawks from subsequent run exhibitors who claim that film is milked before it reaches them. Exhibitors point out that while it was possible for them at one time to get a film within clearance time from first-run, now the money makers get moved over and then brought back for third commercial area runs before being available. Pointing out that they have to q. 60 days before a film is avail\ Je for neighborhood run and then possibly another 60 days before the film is available to their particular zone, exhibitors claim they are not grossing as expected on strong product since the move-over has become almost a habit. 134 Vitaphone Shorts for 1937-38 Embrace Eight Series, WB Meet Told (Continued from Page 1) consist of 30 two-reelers and 104 single reels, it was stated. Sax will supervise production of 92 subjects. Six will be made at the Burbank studio, in addition to 36 cartoons by Leon Schlesinger at the coast. Production lineup is based on results of a survey recently made by Moray on a tour of this country and Canada. The Brooklyn studio will produce 24 of the scheduled 30 two-reel "Broadway Brevity" musicals; 18 one-reel "Melody Master" band numbers; 12 Vitaphone "Varieties"; 12 Vitaphone "Pictorial Revues"; and 13 "Floyd Gibbons Headline Hunters." E. M. Newman will produce a series of 13 "Colortour Adventures." At the coast studios, Leon Schlesinger will make 20 one-reel "Merrie Melody" cartoons in three-color Technicolor, and 13 one-reel black and white "Looney Tune" cartoons. The Burbank studios will produce six two-reel "Broadway Brevities" in Technicolor. Vitaphone will release 30 two-reel subjects composed of the following units: Six shorts in three-color Technicolor, which will be produced at Burbank under supervision of Jack L. Warner, and featuring contract players of the studio. Scheduled are Sybil Jason in "The Littlest Diplomat"; Walter Cassel in "Romance Road"; John Litel in "The Man Without a Country"; an All Girl Revue with Rosalind Marquis, Fred Lawrence and the Warner "Golddiggers" girls; "Remember the Alamo" with an all star cast; and "Belle of New Orleans" also with a cast of star names. The Brooklyn Vitaphone studio will produce six "Broadway Headliners," featuring the Yacht Club Boys, Hal LeRoy, Dave Apollon, the Preisser Sisters, Georgie Price and Eddie Leonard, six all star presentation revues featuring such popular headliners as Donald Novis, Dorothy Dare, Bob Hope, Aarons and Bi'oderick, Countess Albani, June Allyson, Billy and Beverly Bemis, Irene Bordoni, Walter Cassel, Bernice Claire, Joan Abbott, Irene Beasley, Fifi D'Orsay, Evan Evans, Josephine Huston, Lucille Manners, Selma Marlowe, Duke Mc Hale, Tommy Rafferty, Gloria Rich Georgie Tapps, Dale Winthrop, Rufe Davis and others. Also included will be six comedies several of which will star Ken Murray and Oswald; and the remainder to continue the "Joe Palooka" and "Joe and Asbestos" comedies. Six more two-reel subjects will be produced in this series. They will be a combination of comedy and music and will be known as the "Vitaphone Gaieties." Vitaphone inaugurates a new series of one-reel short subjects with the Floyd Gibbons "Headline Hunters," produced in Brooklyn. One-reel "Melody Master" series will present orchestras of Phil Spitalny, Leon Navara, Mai Hallett, Carl Hoff, Henry King, Enric Madriguera, Carl Deacon Moore, Tommy Dorsey, Clyde McCoy, Milt Britton, Clyde Lucas, Russ Morgan, and Rubinoff. This year's series of 13 one-reel "Color-Tour Adventures" produced by E. M. Newman, will present a number of Far Eastern beauty spots. Filmed by Cameraman R. W. Roos and Gerald Marfleet in natural color, the 1937-38 travel itinerary will include the high spots of New Zealand, Australia, South Sea Islands, Tahiti, Borneo, Ceylon, India, Malay States^ Philippines, China, Japan and Siberia. The off-screen dialogue will be supplied by such radio announcers as Paul Douglas, David Ross, Basil Ruysdael, Alan Kent, Milton J. Cross and others. A series of 12 one-reel novelty subjects will include unusual entertainers and personalities plus favorites of the stage, night clubs and radio. Already scheduled are Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Crawford, Salici's Puppets, Clem McCarthy, the Radio Ramblers, Miss Juliet, and an "Unreal News Reel," announced by Paul Douglas. Four of Vitaphone's "Big Time Vaudeville" reels featuring variety headliners will complete the series. Number of "Merrie Melody" cartoons in Technicolor has been increased to 20. The number of "Looney Tune" cartoons remains at 16. Program also embraces 12 onereel Vitaphone "Pictorial Revues." Drive Sets Columbia Record Columbia's Montague Sweepstakes drive, in honor of Abe Montague, General Sales Manager, broke all records for billings and collections in its last week as returns reveal that the branches have gone 190 per cent over stipulated quotas. All exchanges, in their composite standing, have exceeded 125 per cent of their quota for the entire 15-week period, it was said. Two FIT Houses Darkened Salt Lake City — Rick Rickets on, division manager for Fox Intermountain Theaters, has closed the Kit Carson Theater at LaJunta, Colo., and the Plaza, at Las Vegas, N. M. New House for Prescott Prescott, Ark. — R. B. Hardey, who has managed the Gem Theater here for more than 25 years, has leased the Hamby building and will remodel as a theater. NEW BOOKS HOLLYWOOD'S MOVIE COMMANDMENTS. A Handbook for Motion Picture Writers and Rev viewers, by Olga J. Martin; published by The H. W. Wilson Company, New York, 1937. Price $2.75. That Olga J. Martin, former secretary to film code administrator, Joseph I. Breen, has seen fit to subtitle this book, of which she is author, "A Handbook for Motion Picture Writers and Reviewers," is, considering the sweep and vitality cf its contents, an understatement. The wox-k is definitely wider in scope than that, — bordering more on what its main title suggests, namely a "bible" of a decided sort for all to whom a thorough understanding of the industry is a matter of consequence and necessity. Touching as it does on vital aspects of screen writing, film production, suitability of product for exhibition, and finally the requisites for acceptability of the finished footage for general public consumption, "Hollywood's Ten Commandments" deserves a prominent and accessible spot on bookshelves, both of those professionally engaged in, or aspiring to, industry activtity. Exclusive of the addenda, the book is composed of 45 chapters, which, in turn, have been grouped into six divisions: The Movies and the Public, Moral Values in Pictures, Crime in Pictures, Sex in Pictures, General Picture Subjects, and Screen Writing Problems. In the first of these divisions, Miss Martin, well qualified by experience, ability and association with filmland's executive leaders to discuss her thesis, gives a brief but comprehensive resume of events which led to the formulation of the Motion Picture Code in 1930; the decisive battles subsequently waged within and without the industry to bring about an equitable enforcement of its provisions and amendments; how the Code, recently described by Joseph I. Breen as a "great human document" attained its present perfected form; and the invaluable contributions made by Will H. Hays and the M.P.P.D.A. in effecting a practical balance in viewpoint between producer-distributor interests and the world of picturegoers with respect to the proprieties of all films and individual sequences thereof. Ensuing chapters delineate the elements permissible in screen scripts, as well as those plots and incidental increments which are prohibited in Hollywood. Organization of the facts has been undertaken by Miss Martin with an eye toward thoroughness plus brevity, and in this she succeeds handsomely, with the result that any reader may not only use the book as a ready reference volume, but also easily digest the contents at a single sitting. — G. H. M. 3rd Week for "Dr. Knock" "Dr. Knock enters its third week at the Cinema de Paris tomorrow.