Harrison's Reports (1955)

December 10, 1955 HARRISON'S REPORTS 199 Zachary Scott, her boy-friend, Yvonne meets Kurt Kaznar, who was promoting a gambling club in the Bahamas, and invests heavily in the proposition, unaware that a gang of international racketeers were Kaznar's secret partners. The investment proves profitable and Yvonne's success as a hostess and singer causes men to vie for her favors. Among them is James Arness, operator of a fishing boat, but the life he has to offer is too simple for Yvonne. Complications arise when she meets and once again falls in love with Howard Duif who, years previously, had romanced with her. He was unaware that there had been a baby, born dead, and that Miss Inescort, his doting godmother, had hushed up the matter. She becomes engaged to Duff, despite the misgivings of Barbara O'Neill, his mother, but trouble looms when Jvliss Inescort arrives on the scene. To protect herself, Yvonne decides to tell Duif that she had tricked Miss Inescort into believing that she had been her husband's mistress, but before she can do so she learns that his mother was really the "other woman." The sudden death of his mother prevents Yvonne from telling Duff the truth lest he be disillusioned about the dead woman. Just as she loses Duff, Yvonne finds herself faced with new troubles when Kaznar's racketeer partners, discovering that he had falsified the club's accounts, descend on the place. All this leads up to a gun battle in which both Kaznar and Scott are killed while Yvonne is rescued by Arness and the racketeers eliminated by the authorities. It ends with Yvonne settling down with Arness. It was produced and directed by Edward Ludwig, from a screenplay by Bruce Manning, based on a story by Adele Comandini. Adults. "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell" with Gary Cooper, Charles Bickford, Ralph Bellamy and Rod Steiger (Warner Bros., Dec. 31; time, 100 min.) This is an absorbing, factual dramatic account of the stormy career of General Billy Mitchell, a leading exponent of air power in the early days of aviation, who deliberately risked disgrace and dishonor in a court-martial to bring before the public the serious defects in the nation's small and ignored air force during the early 1920's. Photon graphed in CinemaScope and WarnerColor, the story has strong dramatic and emotional situations, and grips one's interest throughout. Gary Cooper is excellent as Mitchell, portraying him as a highly sympathetic man who was sincerely dedicated to his belief in air power and genuinely concerned over the safety of men who were flying in outmoded planes. The first part, which deals with the events leading up to the trial, shows how Mitchell, to prove that planes can sink a battleship, violates specific orders to accomplish the feat. As punishment, he is reduced to colonel and relieved of his command. Nevertheless, he continues his campaign for a stronger air force but to no avail. When a close friend dies in the crash of the Navy dirigible Shenandoah, and a group of Army fliers lose their lives in unfit planes, Mitchell, fully aware that he would be courtmartialed, summons reporters and charges the Navy and War Departments with incompetence and criminal negligence. The most interesting part of the production is the court-martial, which takes up the entire second half. There, the prosecuting attorney, ably portrayed by Fred Clark, blocks the admission of evidence indicating the validity of Mitchell's charges, but Ralph Bellamy, the defense attorney, eventually finds a legal maneuver by which such evidence becomes admissable. The testimony offered by his parade of witnesses is given wide publicity in the newspapers and proves highly embarrassing to top Army and Navy officials. On the final day of the trial, Mitchell, though weak from a recurring attack of malaria, speaks his piece and is then put through a relentless cross-examination by another tough Army prosecutor, brilliantly portrayed by Rod Steiger, who tries to show that Mitchell is unfit for service, that his theories were mere dreams and that he is a publicity seeker. The trial ends with Mitchell found guilty and suspended for five years. Though deeply hurt, he accepts this rebuff gracefully, gratified that he had made his views known and that time would prove their accuracy. In view of the fact that one is aware of what the verdict would be, since it is based on historical fact, it is a credit to the fine direction and acting that one's attention is gripped from start to finish. It was produced by Milton Sperling, who collaborated on the screenplay with Emmet Lavery. Otto Preminger directed it. Family. Brief Reviews "The Spoilers," a Universal-International release starring Anne Baxter, Jeff Chandler and Rory Calhoun, is the fifth remake of Rex Beach's classic adventure story, and shapes up as a fairly good action melodrama. "At Gunpoint," an Allied Artists release in CinemaScope and Technicolor, and starring Fred MacMurray and Dorothy Malone, is a better-than-average off-beat western that should go over well in theatres that specialize in such pictures. "Inside Detroit," a Columbia release starring Dennis O'Keefe and Pat O'Brien, is a routine gangster-type program melodrama concerning a racketeer's unsuccessful efforts to gain control of an auto workers' union. Full reviews of the above pictures will be published next week. MYERS LASHES BACK AT PHILLIPS (continued from bac\ page) Answering your precise question, I do not think it would be logical to say that if film rentals are regulated it would follow that the admission prices of a theatre also should be regulated. I say this because in law school I learned about the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce and the limitations on that power. I have read the cases and am familiar with the powers of Congress over the interstate leasing and shipment of films and have definite ideas as to how far that power extends and where it ends. I am aware that when the Government caused certain driveins in Chicago to be indicted for agreeing upon admission prices the Court said no interstate commerce was involved and that was that. While I am inured to the caviling of certain laymen among the film companies and divorced circuits, you are the first lawyer to raise the bugaboo of regulated admission prices. Your position is tantamount to saying that if Congress sees fit to exercise its power to regulate the price of the products of an industry which are shipped in interstate commerce, then Congress also has the power and in fairness ought to regulate the price charged by the local retail mer^ chant in selling such products to consumers. You assert that on merchandising engagements exhibitors fix their own admission prices. A few years ago I made a survey which convinced me that with respect to certain prerelease engagements the admission prices had been fixed by dictation of, or at least in agreement with, the distributors. Perhaps I had better not be too dogmatic about this now because we expect to make another survey with respect to some more recent examples. I must say, though, that I am impressed by the phenomenon of so many theatres playing a picture on prerelease not only at advanced admission prices but prices advanced to a uniform level. 8. In closing, let me say that while your declaration that Paramount will not be put in a straitjacket is the stuff of which headlines are made, there really was no occasion for it. Allied has proposed no form of regulation or arbitration that Paramount and the other film companies do not thrive under in foreign markets. The conditions imposed abroad, including what amounts to compulsory arbitration of film rentals, have not impoverished Paramount or caused any deterioration in the quality of its product. The great pity is that there should be any necessity for the program which Allied has adopted as a last resort and against which you protest so vehemently. That there is something wrong which the film companies can and should correct, I have no doubt. This conviction is based on the gross disparity between the ever-mounting net earnings of the film companies and the poverty of so many theatre owners, the contrast between the film companies' submission to regulation abroad and their assertions of unlimited power in dealing with American exhibitors, and the evident purpose of the film companies to starve out the independent exhibitors and confine the business to the big city first run theatres. The record will show that Allied has tried by all conceivable means to arrive at a solution of the problems arising out of distributor-exhibitor relations by peaceful nego-. tiation. That Allied has been forced to adopt extreme measures is due to the fact that its reasonable and temperate complaints, as exemplified by my letter to Mr. Weltner, are either ignored, shrugged off, or slapped down. Yours very truly, (Sgd.) Abram F. Myers