Motion Picture Daily (Jan-Mar 1947)

2 Motion Picture Daily Monday, February 3, 1947 Personal Mention JACK L. WARNER, vice-president and executive producer of Warners, is aboard the Queen Elisabeth, which is scheduled to dock in New York today. • Morris Goodman, former Republic foreign manager and until recently Motion Picture Export Association representative in Berlin, is now in Paris where he will remain until Feb. 7 before returning to the U. S. • Arnold Stoltz, PRC special sales representative, is expected to return to his office here in about a week following an emergency appendectomy at West Side Hospital last Thursday. • Richard Morgan of the Paramount home office legal department left New York for the Coast yesterday, accompanied by George A. Smith, Western division sales manager. • Loyal Haight, assistant manager of Paramount Theatres Service Corp., left New York for Detroit at the weekend, accompanied by Eugene Street. • Joseph H. Moskowitz, 20th Century-Fox vice-president and the studio's Eastern representative, left New York for the Coast at the weekend. • Donald Hyde, vice-president of United States Pictures, is due to arrive today from the Coast. He will remain in New York two weeks. • Donald Mack, Filmack executive, and Mrs. Mack, are parents of their first child, Gary Allen, who made Irving Mack a grandpappy. • Charles Einfeld, president of Enterprise Productions, left New York for Hollywood on Eriday. He will return in about four weeks. • Charles J. Feldman, Universal Western division sales manager, left here Friday on a trip to the Midwest and the Coast. • Earle Sweigert, Paramount MidEastern division sales manager, is in Washington from New York. • Claude F. Lee, Paramount public relations director, is due in New York tomorrow from Washington. Bonita W RATHER, shortly. Granville and Jack producer, will be married Sam Boverman of the Paramount home office legal staff is in New Orleans. • Austin Keough, Paramount vicepresident, is in Florida from New York. • David Rose will sail from New York for England on Wednesday. Dane Clark will arrive in New York this week from the Coast. Tradewise By SHERWIN KANE A BRAM MYERS, chairman and general counsel of Allied States, gave a pessimistic report to his board of directors at a meeting in Washington last Friday on the chances for success of such an organization as the motion picture forum, proposed by the Motion Picture Theatre Owners of America as a medium for discussing exhibition and distribution problems with the hope of solving at least some of them. Mr. Myers' asserted in his report that the distributors are in no mood at this time to make concessions to exhibition. It was his conviction, apparently, that no relief may be expected from an agency of industry conciliation until the Supreme Court has finally resolved current industry litigation. He asked that the Allied board consider the subject at a later meeting. His report enumerated several distribution practices as evidence of vindictiveness toward exhibitors which, presumably, were to prove his contention that "the time is not ripe" for a rapprochement between exhibition and distribution. • Unless the whole idea of the proposed motion picture forum has been laid before the industry ineptly, there is not a single grievance charged against distributors in Mr. Myers' report to his board of directors that could not properly be made the subject of discussion within a'n industry forum and a serious effort made to obtain relief in the event a fair appraisal of the grievance indicated that relief was warranted. There is a good deal of support for Mr. Myers' view that the usefulness of a conciliation agency will be markedly limited until current industry litigation has been decided by the Supreme Court. The MPf OA, sponsor of the proposed forum, shares that view with Mr. Myers. Fred Wehrenberg, MPTOA president, explained that the meeting of independent exhibitor organizations which has been called for March 10 and 11 in New York will be concerned only with the preliminaries of organization. There is, apparently, no plan or wish to have the forum begin to function at that time. Meetings subsequent to that one will need to be held with distribution representatives, and months may elapse thereafter before an agreement could be reached on the makeup of the forum and the area of its interests. The wisdom of an immediate start is clearly indicated. It would seem shortsighted, in view of such considerations. for Allied to decline the invitation to attend the March meeting in New York to help lay the groundwork for the study and possible solution of the problems besetting exhibition, some of them named by Mr. Myers in his report. One of the consequences of such a course, in fact, would be to place in the hands of Allied's critics some not inconsequential evidence to support the often-heard charge that Allied does not wish to see industry problems solved. • • The many analyses in recent weeks of the phenomenon of stable grosses and declining theatre attendance, prevailing in the industry now, have not placed proper emphasis upon the part played by increased admission scales in bringing about that result, according to some observers of the trend. The analysts have pointed out the obvious — that the gross level is maintained despite a decline in attendance because admission prices are higher than they were a year ago. The usual conclusion is that customers are "shopping" for their entertainment or that the drawing power of the general run of pictures has declined. ■ Some trade observers point out that the shoppers for entertainment are customers, not nontheatre goers. They may shop by rejecting one or more pictures in favor of what they regard as their best choice available, but most of them end up in some theatre, regardless. Therefore, these observers see little effect exerted by shoppers on over-all theatre attendance, certainly less on that than on the gross of individual pictures. They believe, rather, that the higher admission scales are actually keeping people from theatres, particularly young people and their "dates," whose motion picture money comes from small weekly allowances or spare-time earnings. They conclude from this that attendance,' as well as gross, would equal or exceed last year's if admission scales had remained the same. Perhaps they are right. Certainly, when the cost of entertainment ranges from 50 cents to $2.40 per person, it is beginning to shed its claim to being "mass entertainment." News reel Parade D OLAND'S election, the war in I Indo-China, aviation tragedies and Franklin D. Roosevelt's birthday get the spotlight in current neivsreels, which also contain miscellaneous sports and human interest items; full contents folloiv : MOVIETONE NEWS, No. 45— U. Si mediation attempts in China. Polish ell brings U. S. protest. Aviation tragedies: Dutch Airlines, Copenhagen; passenger transport, London. Maj. Howie of St. Lo battle is honored. Pilgrimage to the Ganges. King of Laos. Teachers cured of double vision. Sports: sled racing, rodeo. NEWS OF THE DAY, No. 243— World spotlight on Poland's first postwar election. French return Laos territory as peace move in Indo-China. Air tragedies: Copenhagen. Croydon. Princess sets precedent. Most beautiful legs. Sled racing. PARAMOUNT NEWS, No. 46— From Denmark: goodwill gymnasts. Polish vote challenged. The nation remembers Franklin D. Roosevelt. France returns province in Indo-China. Controversy grows over air safety. RICO PATHE NEWS, No. 48— In memoriam of F.D.R. DeGaspari. Italian premier, returns. Poland's disputed election. German youths learn Democracy. Radar used to reduce plane toll." Jet-planes vault Alps. UNIVERSAL NEWSREEL, No. 9-First pictures of Polish election. Grace Moore and Crown Prince of Sweden die in air crash. Severest winter in years brings added suffering to Europe's hungry and homeless. Oriental kingdom returned to Indo-China. Breath-taking ski thrills at D'ubuque. Ia. Auto races on beach at Daytona. Clear Up Claims in Fox Theatres Case Skouras Theatres Corp. and United Artists Theatres have settled, finally, all claims against them rising out of the bankruptcy in 1944 of Fox Theatres and the reorganization of its subsidiary, Metropolitan Playhouses, with payment of $250,000 to trustees of Fox Theatres and its creditors. Offer of the settlement was made by UA Theatres and Skouras, Robert Aronstein, attorney for the trustees and certain creditors then filed application for approval with the New York District Court and on Friday Federal Judge John C. Knox, after a hearing, granted the application. In 1935 Skouras and UA Theatres acquired all class A stock of the reorganized Metropolitan circuit for $150,000, in a deal approved by the court. Many legal skirmishes followed and subsequently the UA and Skouras companies brought that figure up an additional $850,000. All Film Companies Now Signed by SPG All 12 distributors here are now signed with the Screen Publicists Guild under its new terms. Producers Releasing, which had recognized the SPG as bargaining agent last July, finally closed a contract on Friday while Republic also renewed its pact. MOTION PICTURE DAILY, Martin Quigley, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher; Sherwm Kane, Editor; Martin Quigley, Jr., Associate Editor. 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