Motion Picture Daily (Oct-Dec 1934)

MOTION PICTURE DAILY Friday. November 30. 1934 MOTION PICTURE DAILY (Registered U. S. Patent Office) Vol. 36 November 30, 1934 No. 128 Martin Quigley Editor-in-Chief and Publisher MAURICE KANN Editor JAMES A. CRON Advertising Manager Published daily except Sunday and holi days by Motion Picture Daily, Inc., subsidiary of Quigley Publications, Inc.. Martin Quigley, President; Colvin Brown, Vice-President and Treasurer. Publication Office: 1790 Broadway, New York. Telephone Circle 7-3100. Cable address "Quigpubco, New York." All contents copyrighted 1934 by Motion Picture Daily, Inc. Address all correspondence to the New York Office. Other Quigley publications: MOTION PICTURE HERALD, BETTER THEATRES, THE MOTION PICTURE ALMANAC and THE CHICAGOAN. Hollywood Bureau: Postal Union Life Building, Vine and Yucca Streets, Victor M. Shapiro, Manager; Chicago Bureau: 407 South Dearborn Street, Edwin S. Clifford, Manager; London Bureau: Remo House, 310 Regent St., London, W. 1, Bruce Allan, Representative. Cable address: "Quigpubco, London"; Berlin Bureau: Berlin Tempelhof , Kaiserin Augustastrasse 28, Joachim K. Rutenberg, Representative; Paris Bureau: 19, Rue de la Cour-desNoues, Pierre Autre, Representative; Rome Bureau: Viale Gorizia, Vittorio Malpassuti, Representative; Sydney Bureau: 102 Sussex Street, Cliff Holt, Representative; Mexico City Bureau: Apartado 269, James Lockhart, Representative; Glasgow Bureau: 86 Dundrennan Road, G. Holmes, Representative; Budapest Bureau: 3, Kaplar-u, Budapest, II, Endrc Hevesi, Representative; Moscow Bureau: Civtzev Vrazhek. N. 25, Apart. 146, Moscow, U. S. S. R., Bella Kashin, Representative. Cable address: "Samrod, Moscow." Entered as second class matter, January 4, 1926, at the Post Office at New York City, N. Y., under Act of March 3, 1879. Subscription rates per year: $6 in the Americas, except Canada $15 and foreign $12. Single copies: 10 cents. Long to Edit Magazines Ray Long on Wednesday was made editor of Photoplay and Shadow/flay, recently acquired by the Macfadden Publications. He will divide his time between this city and the coast. Long, who left the magazine field three years ago, was until recently with Fox in a writing and editorial capacity. Kathryn Dougherty, publisher of the magazines, made the appointment. /. T. G. A. Meets Sunday The first meeting of the season of the Jewish Theatrical Guild of America will be held Sunday at the Ritz Theatre. George Jessel, first vicepresident, will preside in the absence of Eddie Cantor, president. Film Chest Fund Mounts Hollywood, Nov. 29.— Film workers have contributed $77,940 in the current Community Chest drive. This is more than one-third the $225,000 quota set for the industry. Many are doubling their last year's contribution. Cantor Luncheon Guest Eddie Cantor will be guest of honor at a luncheon to be tendered by the Ass'n of Foreign Press Correspondents today at the Gotham. He sails tomorrow on the Rex. "Bovary" Held at Acme _ "Madame Bovary," French production, is in a second week at the Acme. Insiders' Outlook EXACTLY what do the names you read about every day mean at the nation's box-offices ? A horde of exhibitors, independent of producer ownership or affiliation, furnish a telling answer in the current issue of Motion Picture Herald with results surprising and deflating to many Hollywood egos, the basis of the competition being the names of the ten performers whose pictures drew the greatest number of patrons from September 1, 1933, to September 1, 1934, and the number of times a specific player was mentioned. It's well worth consideration for the flurry which "The Ten Biggest Money-Makers of 1933-34" inevitably will let loose and for the wonderment its conclusions will create. . . . T What price beauty now sounds like a pretty good and unanswerable question where the winner — Will Rogers — is concerned. He came out as head man, topping the sweet, the curvacious and the sexy as represented by Janet Gaynor, Mae West and Joan Crawford, as well as the decorative and competent Norma Shearer and the late, lamented Marie Dressier. He ran ahead of the manly, as symbolized by Clark Gable and Wally Beery and sent the national crooning menace, typified by Bing Crosby, down to defeat along with the others. That leaves Shirley Temple, the remaining member of the victorious ten, the only one from whom Will probably will escape professional darts of envy. . . . T Interesting as all of this is and complimentary as it is to the publishing ingenuity of Big Brother Herald, this outpost finds itself particularly intrigued by what happened to all the others from the eleventh rating down the line to the 192nd which marked finis to the poll. For instance, to pick out some highlights only with this roving spotlight, Jimmy Cagney, Lionel Barrymore, Marion Davies, Buck Jones, Freddie March, Kay Francis, Bob Montgomery, Bill Powell and Lee Tracy are the eight names immediately ahead of Garbo, who ended at seventythree per cent. Immediately ahead of them, in turn, are Katharine Hepburn, Joe E. Brown, Claudette Colbert, Jean Harlow, Eddie Cantor, Dick Powell, George Arliss, Warner Baxter and Wheeler and Woolsey. . . . ▼ Ken Maynard is two per cent up on Eddie Robinson, who necks and necks it with Myrna Loy at fifty-one per cent, while, in the grouping from forty-nine per cent — nobody earned fifty — to ten appeared fifty players, including eight co-starring combinations and these names : Spencer Tracy, Ruby Keeler, Four Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, James Dunn, Al Jolson, Richard Dix, Dick Powell-Ruby Keeler, George Raft, Irene Dunne, Zasu Pitts, Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, Johnny YVeismuller, John Boles, Jackie Cooper, Sylvia Sidney, Jack Holt, Dolores Del Rio, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Ruggles, John Barrymore, Charles Farrell, John Wayne, Jack Oakie, Claudette ColbertClark Gable, Constance Bennett (nineteen per cent), Slim Summerville, Clara Bow, Richard Barthelmess, Janet Gaynor-Charles Farrell, Paul Muni, Lilian Harvey, Barbara Stanwyck, Leslie Howard (surprising), Tim McCoy, Marie DressierWallace Beery, Warren William, Tom Keene, Sally Eilers, Ronald Colman, May Robson, Charles Laughton, Lew Ayres, Helen Hayes (hold on!), Zasu Pitts-Slim Summerville, Burns and Allen, Dick PowellGinger Rogers, Alice Faye, William Powell-Myrna Loy. T From ten per cent sliding to three, but princely in salary bulk regardless, are thirty-one Universal Gains 2 on Big Board High Low Columbia Pictures, vtc 3854 38 Consolidated Film Industries 35i 35i Consolidated Film Industries, pfd 1754 17}4 Eastman Kodak 114^6 114 Fox Film "A" 1354 1356 Loew's, Inc 35lA 34J4 Loew's Inc., pfd 104 104 Paramount Publix, cts 33i 356 Pathe Exchange V/g 1 Pathe Exchange "A" 14 135^ RKO 134 1*6 Universal Pictures, pfd 35 35 Warner Bros 4fg 454 Net Close Change Sales 3m 3% vVi 114 1354 35 104 3% VA 13Vs 35 454 + 'A >A 54 +2 700 100 900 1,000 600 7,900 500 4,900 600 600 4,700 1.000 2,900 Technicolor Up 1% on Curb as Sales Soar Technicolor Net High Low Close Change Sales . 1454 13 1454 +1VS 6,000 Most Bonds Drop or Stay Unchanged High Low Close General Theatre Equipment 6s '40 954 &7A &7A General Theatre Equipment 6s '40, ctf 854 854 &SA Keith B. F. 6s '46 6454 64 64 Loew's 6s '41, ww deb rights 1045-6 104 104 Paramount Broadway 554s '51 4254 42 42 Paramount F. L. 6s '47 59 5854 5854 Paramount Publix 554s '50 59 58 58 Pathe 7s '37, ww 9956 9956 9956 Warner Bros. 6s '39, wd 5954 5854 5854 Net Change 54 + 54 54 54 54 Sales 9 10 9 3 16 20 10 1 30 men and women, many of them starred and featured regularly by producing judgment which now may find it wise to readjust values. Note, but also get, some of these : Boris Karloff, Guy Kibbee, Miriam Hopkins, Anna Sten, Tom Mix, Richard Arlen, Harold Lloyd, Franchot Tone, Maurice Chevalier, Lanny Ross, Pat O'Brien, Bette Davis, Hoot Gibson, Fay Wray, Carole Lombard, Jan Kiepura, Cary Grant, Edmund Lowe, Claire Trevor, Buster Crabbe, Mary Pickford, Jimmy Durante, Rudy Vallee, Ralph Bellamy, Frances Dee, Doug Fairbanks, Jr., Jean Parker, Max Baer, Edna May Oliver, Gene Raymond and Gloria Stuart. The story goes further. Orbs may distend and no wonder over the monickers — alphabetic, this time — which make up the three per centers : Bruce Cabot, Walter Connolly, Frankie Darro, Madge Evans, Glenda Farrell, Walter Huston, Hal LeRoy, Paul Lukas, Chester Morris, Marion Nixon Warner Oland, Claude Rains, Bob Steele, Diana Wynyard and Loretta Young. And the two per centers, telling a story all their own : Robert Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Ruth Chatterton, Stuart Erwin, Victor Jory, Otto Kruger, Elissa Landi. Baby Leroy, Victor McLaglen, Joel McCrea, Adolphe Menjou, Jack Pearl, Luis Trenker, Evelyn Venable, H. B. Warner and Robert Young. Carrying the unmasking to finality and complete debunking, forty-three others earned the dubious honor of one per cent, no more, no less. Here goes on them : Judith Allen, Roscoe Ates, Rex Bell, Joan Bennett, Alice Brady, El Brendel, George Brent, Mary Brian, Clice Brook, Kitty Carlisle, Mary Carlisle, Leo Carrillo, Nancy Carroll, Henrietta Crosman, Andy Devine, Cliff Edwards, Douglas Fairbanks, Sidney Fox, William Gargan, Wynne Gibson, James Gleason, Neil Hamilton, Phil Harris, Charlotte Henry, Hugh Herbert, Edw. Everett Horton, Jack Hoxie, Pert Kelton, Francis Lederer, Jeanette MacDonald, Herbert Marshall, Frank McHugh, Jean Muir, Herbert Mundin, Ramon Novarro, "Pat" Paterson, Roger Pryor, Chic Sale, Ann Sothern, Ned Sparks, Lewis Stone, Kent Taylor and Dorothea Wieck. That's all there is, except to point out that Hollywood and its employers might do worse than forgetting each other and each other's empires sufficiently long to heed what the theatre industry now tells them. The social implications herein and their bearing on the coast's elite are something else again. You can't tell where all this might go. If right, supported by the might of these percentages, holds forth it would mean Constance Bennett at nineteen per cent giving up her sceptre to the Four Marx Men at forty-three. Hollywood has been cannonaded on flimsier excuse. . . . KANN Korda Signs Directors London, Nov. 29. — Alexander Korda, production head of London Films, has just signed two more directors— Rene Clair to direct "Sir Tristram Goes West" and Anthony Asquith to do "The Reign of King George V."