Motion Picture Daily (Jan-Mar 1947)

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6 Motion Picture Daily Wednesday, January 29, 1947 Workers in Britain Ask Quota Change London, Jan. 28.— The Film Industry Employes Council has issued a memorandum recommending abolition of the distributors' quota and division of the exhibitors' quota into categories for first features, second features and short subjects. The group further recommends that the three large British circuits be reduced in size, that state-owned theatres be established, that a new council be established with broader powers than the present Cinematograph Films Council, that there be a government film bank for financing production and also a government distribution organization. In the quota laws, it is suggested, minimum labor cost clauses should be established for both features and short subjects, equalling four-fifths of the total labor production costs paid to British subjects. FIEC also calls for the establishment of fair trading arrangements between the distributors and producers of short subjects and for special taxes on the box-office receipts of foreign films shown in this country. Butterfield Parent Company Elects Detroit, Jan. 28. — At a meeting of the board of directors of Bijou Theatrical Enterprises, holding company of W. S. Butterfield Theatres, the following officers were elected today: Lawrence E. Gordon, president ; William A. Ruble, vice-president; Olive M. Cox, secretary, and George S. Berger, treasurer. Gordon was trustee of the Butterfield estate and former secretary of the company. Ruble is with the Merchants Trust Co. at Lansing. Gordon succeeds the late E. C. Beatty. Laurence Ginsberg Dies on the Coast Hollywood, Jan. 28. — Laurence Robert Ginsberg, 31, nephew of Paramount vice-president Henry Ginsberg, and a partner of the Mulcahy-Ginsberg Publicity Agency, here, died last night of a heart ailment. Other survivors include his mother, Mrs. Edith Ginsberg, and uncles Leonard and Dr. Charles Ginsberg of New York. Marcus Benn, Exhibitor Philadelphia, Jan. 28. — Marcus A. Benn, pioneer exhibitor, died on Jan. 23 at his home, here. Benn opened the Belmont Theatre, now the Benson, in 1909 and then built a circuit of theatres and remained active in the industry until his retirement last year when he sold out to Stanley-Warners. Review Mr. Exhibitor: Investigate I Filmack's NEW Prevue Trailer Service before signing any trailer contracts. Write, wire or phone Filmack 1327 Wabash, Chicago 5, III. and i receive full details. "Bedelia" (Eagle-Lion-PRC) JV/f A.RGARET LOCKWOOD, who knocked 'em off right and left in "The ci Wl5ked Lady," continues pretty and murderous in this British-made him based on a popular novel by Vera Caspary, who also wrote "Laura." She dabbles m husbands and poison— the husbands who take out large life insurance policies in her name, and the poison to remove them for collection purposes. On the printed page, these adventures may have had more than the celluloid shows. _ "Bedelia" ranges from fair to middling to good, never remaining constant in any of these brackets. Its opening sequences are talkative and stretched beyond their own dramatic good. Toward the middle stretches, matters improve and tension steps up as the net closes in on Miss Lockwood, who is successfully thwarted in executing murder on Husband No. 4, who is Ian Hunter. _ It is the suspicions of the insurance company that launches the investigation. Miss Lockwood, it appears, had a habit of disappearing without visible trace after each marriage and each death. Barry K. Barnes is assigned and eventually succeeds in running truth into its lair. Meanwhile, Miss Lockwood is trying her wiles and her sex on Hunter, who resists the temptations and determines to turn her in. The film ends on a note of justice, the poisoner giving herself up to the police. Best performances are delivered by Barnes and Hunter. Miss Lockwood comes in a lagging third although she has the principal role. She may fill the eye, but she lacks dramatic strength, at least in this role. It could be that the characterization is more responsible than the actress. But whatever the cause, there is an air of unbelievability and lack of conviction in the Lockwood performance. Lance Comfort's direction ranges from perfunctory to punchy, but generally is uneven. I. G. Goldsmith produced for General Film Distributors, the film having been originally reviewed from London in Motion Picture Daily of June 24, 1946. Running time 81 minutes. Adult classification. Release date Feb. 1. , Red Kann Production Off Slightly As Seven Are Finished Hollywood, Jan. 28. — Production has slackened slightly, the shooting index dropping to 41. Seven films were completed, whereas only two new ones went before cameras ; the production scene follows : Columbia Finished: "The Crime Doctor's Vacation." Shooting : "The Corpse Came C.O.D.," "Assigned to Treasury" (Kennedy-Buchman), "Three Were Thoroughbreds" (Cavalier), "The Lady from Shanghai." Eagle-Lion Shooting: "Repeat Performance." M-G-M Started: "Song of the Thin Man," with William Powell, Myrna Loy, Keenan Wynn. Shooting : "The Hucksters," "Song of Love," "The Birds and the Bees," "To Kiss and to Keep." Monogram Finished: "Land of the Lawless," "Black Gold." Shooting : "Tragic Symphony," "Panic." Paramount Shooting : "Variety Girl," "Road to Rio," "Albuquerque" (Clarion), "Saigon," "I Walk Alone" (Wallis). RKO Radio Shooting : "Indian Summer," "Un der the Tonto Rim," "If You Knew Susie." Republic Finished: "Bells of San Angelo." Shooting: "Twilight on the Rio Grande." Selznick Shooting : "The Paradine Case." 20th Century-Fox Shooting: "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," "Moss Rose," "Captain from Castile," "Forever Amber," "Mother Wore Tights," "It's Only Human," "The Crimson Key" (Wurtzel). United Artists Finished: "Copacabana" (Beacon). Shooting: "Stork Bites Man" (Comet), "Body and Soul" (Enterprise), "Heaven Only Knows" (Nebenzal), "Vendetta" (California), "The Other Love" (Enterprise). Universal-International Finished: "Buck Privates Come Home." Shooting : "Time Out of Mind," "Ivy" (Interwood). Warners Finished: "Night Unto Night." Started: "The Unsuspected" (Michael Curtiz Productions), with Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield, Michael North, Constance Bennett, Marguerite Chapman, Hurd Hatfield. Shooting: "The Unfaithful," "Dark Passage," "Deep Valley," "The Woman in White." Thwart Daylight Time Repeal in St. Louis St. Louis, Jan. 28. — The issue of daylight saving time hit another snag yesterday when the city counselor's office ruled that charter provisions make it impossible to include a planned vote on repeal of the "fast-time" ordinance. Exhibitors have been pushing the vote by distributing petitions to put the question to the spring election. Sales for Selznick To be Set by Reiner Hollywood, Jan. 28.— Manny Reiner, general sales manager in Latin America for the Selznick Releasing Organization, has arrived here to confer with David O. Selznick and studio officials. On Feb. 5 he will go on to Mexico City to set up a sales organization and arrange for Mexican distribution of Selznick pictures. "Duel in the Sun" will have, Mexico City premiere in May, probably open in Buenos Aires™-.,, lune, and other South American cities later. Reiner will go to Buenos Aires immediately on completion of his organizational work in the Mexican capital, and will cover several other Latin-American countries before returning to New York. On the trip he will coordinate provisional publicity and distributional plans for Selznick films that were worked out on a six months' tour of Mexico, the West Indies and Central and South America, last summer and fall. ( Advance promotional plans for "Duel" south of the border call for a spearhead publicity campaign under direction of Alfred Katz, who has been retained by Selznick to begin an intensive around-the-circuit publicity campaign within the next fortight. Field men have been engaged to arrange openings in key cities. " 'Duel in the Sun' and other Selznick pictures will each be sold on the basis of individual merit," said Reiner. Video Row (Continued fronu page 1) Alan B. Du Mont countered the claim with the declaration that the CBS system is "totally inadequate." Both were questioned by FCC Commissioner Charles Denny. Goldmark stated that the Remington Rand Co. is satisfied with the development of CBS color video and will begin the manufacture of color image orthicon cameras immediately upon approval of the CBS petition. Du Mont said the CBS system at present actually represents no improvement of the network's color video as it was in 1939. The hearings shift to Princeton, N. J., today . for demonstrations by RCA and Philco. Cross examinations of the proponents and opponents of color television will be made at further sessions in Washington Feb. 10. Chattanooga Rites For Grace Moore Chattanooga, Jan. 28.— A funeral service for Grace Moore, opera and motion picture star, who was killed in an airplane crash in Copenhagen last Sunday, will be held here, with burial in the Moore family plot, according to tentative plans announced by the family. A memorial service for Grace Moore will be held at the Riverside Church, Manhattan, tomorrow at 3-30 P. M. Moritz Hilder Dead Moritz Hilder, 81, one of the founders of the Goldwyn Picture Corp., died at his home here last Saturday! Hilder was with Goldwyn from 1917 to 1924 when the company became part of M-G-M.