Hollywood Studio Magazine (January 1972)

Stevens. Top honors for expensive unreleased starring films seem to go to Robert Taylor and Gina Lollobrigida. For Taylor there was The Glass Sphinx, Devil May Care, Last of the Comancheros and The Day The Hot Line Got Hot. The lovely Lollabrigida’s image languishes on the shelves of storage vaults as the big name in Crazy Sea, The Young Rebel, Me, Me, Me, and the Others (that should be a winner), Imperial Venus, and The Sultans. There are dozens of other titles, all on film, lying around, some because production companies couldn’t pay the print costs and the films were appropriated, some because they just didn’t seem to appeal to the existing market, some because the studio that made them went into litigation and wanted to claim a legitimate loss, etc. There are dozens of quite acceptable explanations, not the least of which is finding a theater and an audience for any one of these films without having to invest the necessary $50,000 to $80,000 for rental and promotional expense in N.Y. alone. A national release could cost as much as $500,000 in expenses. Good or bad, starrers like this should be dandies for the audiences that watch the Late Show on free TV in glassy-eyed captivity. And what a treasure-trove of, “first run movies” for CATV. As for film labs — “If these shelves could talk, what stories they could tell.” Dracula expert dies With the recent passing of Henry Eichner, 61, one of the world’s great authorities on fantasy and science fiction, at least one unique organization lost a valued officer. He was a Knight of the Grand Star in the Noble Art of Count Dracula for the Count Dracula Society. Eichner, a well-known medical illustrator, had also devoted more than 30 years of his life to the study of the lore and myth of the lost continent of Atlantis and was the author of “The Atlantean Chronicles,” ironically due for publication by Fantasy Press, almost concurrently with his death. And, although this expert will be sorely missed by all devoted science fiction fans, he will long be considered irreplaceable by the 500 international writers and filmmakers who make up the membership of the Count Dracula Society. (For more information on the Dracula Society, see STUDIO Magazine, Sept. 1970 edition). *** Backwards, oh, backwards With the formation of the new Cultural Projects Committee by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, old films took a giant step out of dusty vaults into public view. For the Academy itself, there was “Intercut,” a retrospective screening series of such almost-forgotten classics as “Roxie Hart,” starring a dark-haired comedienne named Ginger Rogers, and “The Front Page,” with Pat O’Brien and Adolphe Menjou as reporter and editor, respectively, on a double bill for especially-invited guests. In Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theater, there was Filmex, Los Angeles’ first International Film Exposition, which revived Chaplin’s “Modern Times,” the silent version of “Ten Commandments,” (with Leatrice Joy) and, discreetly at midnight, Andy Warhol’s latest epic, “Sex,” which was not a revival. (With or without Warhol, that subject’s been around a long time.) Both “festivals” were the work of committee members Gregory Peck, chairman, and Michael Blankfort and George Cukor, all of the Academy, with the Filmex project jointly sponsored by The American Film Institute, the L.A. County Museum of Art, the Harold Lloyd Foundation, the film schools of UCLA, USC, and Cal Arts, along with the Academy, of course, and limited assists from major studios. Interestingly enough, nobody figured Filmex would make money - and it didn’t. But it didn’t lose much either. So, let us be among the first to clue you in on the fact that it will do a return engagement in 1972. Mark your calendar for Nov. 9-19. *** A rose by any other name? In these erratic days of movie-making for TV, studio publicity departments should be forgiven a few inaccuracies from day to day, especially when it comes to announcing new shows. As a case in point, in one mail comes two releases from Screen Gems — one concerning a “CBS New Friday Night Movie” which named Joseph Sargent as director for “Man On A String,” formerly titled “Tightrope,” which may or may not have been a CBS Old . . . etc. And the other release announced Garry Nelson as director of “Call Holme,” formerly called “The Arte Johnson Show” starring a comedian by the same name. This one is a new projected comedy-mystery series which went before the cameras at Screen Turn to Page 15 £ w 3= — S ° £ w m r— 7 WHAT A WAY TO GO!