Motion Picture Daily (Jul-Sep 1939)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Alert, MOTION PICTURE M.P.P.D.A. OF AMERICA, 28 WEST 44TH ST. , NEW YORK, N . Y. (6 COPIES) Industry First in VOL. 46. 7 NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 1939 TEN CENTS AFA Charged With Ignoring Film Houses Trial Hears That SAG's Aid Was Spurned Principals and chorus girls in film houses with stage presentations are, in the main, members of the Screen Actors Guild and could easily have been organized by American Federation of Artists, according to testimony of S.A.G. officials at the trial of the American Federation of Actors by Associated Actors and Artistes of America, the parent body. The A.F.A. has withdrawn from the hearings which may be concluded today. Offered Aid to AFA Florence Marston, eastern representative of the S.A.G., testified that she was convinced that a large majority of performers in New York City were S.A.G. members and that she had offered her cooperation to Ralph Whitehead, A.F.A. executive secretary, but that no contracts had resulted. Kenneth Thomson, S.A.G. executive secretary, testified about conditions on the West Coast where night clubs were organized with S.A.G. aid. Contracts were obtained at the Earl Carroll in Hollywood after Thomson sent telegrams to all senior members of the (Continued on page 7) 400 WB Theatres In UA Picture Deal A deal for the exhibition of all pictures released by United Artists for the next two years by the entire Warner Theatre circuit was completed yesterday between Harry Gold, vice-president of United Artists, and Clayton Bond and Edward Hinchy, executive film buyers for the Warner circuit of 400 theatres. The completion of the deal was announced yesterday to the board of directors of United Artists by Murray Silverstone, chief of world wide operations, who described it as the largest ever concluded between the company and the Warner circuit. Present at the U. A. board meeting were Mary Pickford, Silverstone, Charles Schwartz, representing Charles Chaplin ; Capt. Dennis O'Brien, representing Douglas Fairbanks ; James Roosevelt, representing Samuel Goldwyn, and Emanuel Silverstone, representing Alexander Korda. Equity Will Accept Existing Minimums; Urges Code Reform Actors Equity will not ask for increased minimums from legitimate stage producers when negotiations open next month with the League of New York Theatres, it was authoritatively learned yesterday. However, reforms in the working of the ticket brokers' code may be sought and unless they are granted, Equity will revert to its previous policy of making contracts with individual producers instead of with the league, it was further reported. The present contract expires on Sept. 1. It is a one-year agreement which provides that Equity would not seek more favorable working conditions if the producers made an honest effort to enforce the ticket code. Unless Equity is satisfied that the code will work better in the future, the contract will not be renewed in the Fall. Alfred Harding, editor of Equity, has just completed a two-month survey of the field and will present a detailed report to Philip Loeb, committee chairman, this week. Although the contents of the report have not been revealed, it is understood that several basic changes in the enforcement of the code will be recommended. Equity regards the ticket price as a matter of concern to the union. Although box-office prices do not directly affect salaries, it is felt that if theatre-going is made easier, employment may increase. Meanwhile, the league has had its preliminary meetings with the brokers and opposition is still strong from that source. TRADE TO MARK GOLDEN JUBILEE Local Drives Scheduled October 1 Promotion Plans Completed to 7; Plans for observance of the industry's golden jubilee during a period beginning early in August and culminating in a 50th anniversary week celebration Oct 1 to 7 were completed yesterday at a meeting of major company advertising and publicity directors, foreign department publicity managers and M.P.P.D.A. officials. The observance will be primarily in the form of local drives for increased theatre attendance aided by nationally coordinated publicity and promotional campaigns. There will be no paid staff handling the campaign and no drive for funds among either exhibitors or distribution companies. Participation in the observance will be entirely voluntary. The national committee which will develop a wide variety of observance campaigns for exhibitor use is headed by Kenneth Clark, M. P. P. D. A. publicity manager. Members of the committee, all of whom are volunteering their services, include Lester Thompson of the Advertising Advisory Council of the M. P. P. D. A. ; Joel Swensen of the M. P. P. D. A. press department ; Harry Goldberg, Warners advertising manager ; William Ferguson, M-G-M exploitation manager; Ben Grimm, RKO exploitation manager, and Lou Pollock, Universal eastern advertising and publicity manager. A national press book for exhibitor use will be prepared under the supervision of Swensen with the several advertising, (Continued on page 2) First Short Wave Broadcast Monday Industry's short wave broadcasts to foreign countries will be established on both CBS and NBC beginning next Monday when the first regular broadcast over CBS is scheduled. Experimental broadcasts in connection with an NBC short wave film program were initiated about two weeks ago and since have been made a regular feature of that network's short wave programs. The programs will be of 15 minutes each and will change weekly. They will be repeated during each week in six different languages, namely, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Most will go on the air in the early afternoon so as to be received in European countries at convenient early evening hours. Material for the programs will be put into script form by Kenneth Clark, M.P.P.D.A. publicity head, from information on individual pic(Continued on page 7) RKO Demands $3, 000, 000 Tax Assessments Slash A $3,000,000 reduction in the assessed valuations of six RKO theatres in Manhattan was sought by the company from the tri-departmental city tax board yesterday. The theatres were assessed by the city at $19,684,000. Houses involved are the Palace, 58th St., Alhambra, Coliseum, Colonial and 95th St. Louis Nizer, attorney for RKO, based the plea for the reductions on the ground that the decline of vaudeville has made a large part of each theatre obsolete, such as the stage, dressing rooms, trap doors underneath the stage, ceiling equipment for changing sets and other portions of the buildings. He asserted that in the _ 58th St. alone there was 406,000 cubic feet of space in disuse since the house went on a straight film policy. Nizer argued that the replacement costs of the buildings represented their true values and that these should be computed with allowance for the obsolete space. Witnesses for the company included Leslie E. Thompson, A. N. Gitterman and A. Reoch of the RKO theatre department, Thomas W. Lamb, architect, and Joseph W. Garry, contractor. Code Is Accepted By Broadcasters Atlantic City, July 11. — The National Association of Broadcasters, by a 128 to 24 vote, today accepted a code to govern program policies. The code is considerably less strict than as originally designed, and, according to responsible opinion, "it is not as strict as the code imposed by the networks on their own program standards. Standards of business practice will be acted upon tomorrow afternoon and will undoubtedly be subjected to much more debate and argument than the code itself. These standards may possibly put more teeth in ' the code, although the strength of the teeth is mitigated because they are taking the form of a resolution and not a code. The N.A.B. board of directors will (Continued on page 8)