Motion Picture Daily (Jan-Mar 1947)

Monday, February 3, 1947 Motion Picture Daily 7 Sharp Drop in Production; Total Hits 34 Hollywood, Feb. 2. — Production b'-yiropped off sharply, the shooting j/UL) g0ing down to 34 from the previous level of 41. Only two new films were started, whereas nine were completed ; the production scene folr lows : Columbia "The Corpse Came Finished : C.O.D." Started: "Broadway Baby," with Jean Porter,.John Shelton, Ruth Donnelly, Doris Colleen, Ed Gargan, Douglas Wood, Vince Barnett. Shooting: "The Lady from Shanghai," "Assigned to Treasury" (Kennedy-Buchman) , "Three Were Thoroughbreds" (Cavalier). Eagle-Lion Shooting : "Repeat Performance." M-G-M Shooting : "Song of the Thin Man," "The Hucksters," "Song of Love," "The Birds and the Bees," "Living in "a Big Way" (formerly "To Kiss and to Keep"). Monogram Finished : "Panic." . Shooting : "Tragic Symphony." Paramount Finished : "Saigon." Shooting : "Variety Girl," "Road to Rio," "Albuquerque" (Clarion), "I Walk Alone" (Wallis). RKO-Radio Finished: "Under the Tonto Rim." Started : "Tycoon," with John Wayne, Laraine Day, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Anthony Quinn, Jannes Gleason, Judith Anderson. Shooting: "Indian Summer," "If You Knew Susie." Finished : Grande." Republic "Twilight on the Rio Selznick Shooting : "The Paradine Case." 20th Century-Fox Finished : "Mother Wore Tights," "The Crimson Key" (Sol Wurtzel). Shooting: "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," "Moss Rose," "Captain from Castile," "Forever Amber," "It's Only Human." United Artists Finished: "The Other Love" (Enterprise). Shooting: "Stork Bites Man" (Comet), "Body and Soul" (Enterprise), "Heaven Only Knows" (Nebenzal), "Vendetta" (California). Universal-International Shooting : "Time Out of Mind," "Ivy" (Interwood). 'It Happened on 5 th Avenue Warners Finished: "Dark Passage." Shooting: "The Unfaithful. Valley," "The Woman in "The Unsuspected" (Curtiz). {Continued front' page 1) The veteran, quite naturally, has friends, also homeless vets, and they, too, move into the mansion with their wives and children. To complicate matters, the millionaire's daughter, fed up with finishing school, comes home to find herself suspected of stealing her own mink coat. The magnate, meanwhile, arrives in New York in search of his daughter, and before he knows what it's all about, the young lady has persuaded him to conceal his identity and join the little group of squatters, in order to learn at first hand the character and qualities of the veteran on whom his daughter has set her heart. Quick-tempered and tyrannical, he is about to give the whole show away when his daughter, in despair, appeals to her mother, the magnate's divorced wife. She, too, arrives to add to the confusion and conflict. Of conflict there is considerable, since the war veterans want to buy some property on which magnate is also bidding, the girl wants to marry the veteran, the magnate doesn't want her to, and the mother wants her daughter's happiness above all. That the right people will get the right things in the end is a foregone conclusion. Charles Ruggles, as the magnate, turns in a notable performance, and Victor Moore, playing the tramp, is inimitable. Gale Storm, in the ingenue lead, has seldom been seen to better advantage. The picture throughout is replete with deft and tender scenes, with memorable moments of warmth and charm. Four songs by Harry Revel are skillfully worked into the film's structure. Running time, 115 minutes. General audience classification. Release date not set. Thalia Bell 20th-Fox to Meet (Continued from page 1) "The Red House" (United Artists-Lesser) GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN'S Saturday Evening Post story of a New Jersey dirt-farmer mentally befogged, and of murder and mystery, is given vivid, dramatically important expression in "The Red House." Edward G. Robinson, Lon McCallister and Judith Anderson provide the commercially significant names ; Sol Lesser's production could hardly encounter box-office difficulties. Skilled hands in all departments have fashioned Chamberlain's piece into the gripping film that it is. Performances by those already named, plus Allene Roberts, Julie London and Rory Calhoun, all in well sketched characterizations, are splendid. Delmer Daves' direction of his own screenplay is unhurried, effectively so. The camera work, lighting and mood music are unusually good, lending dramatic emphasis to nearly every scene. Remarkable, too, are the settings. A Red House, although seen only briefly, is the motivating force of the plot, known only to Robinson and Miss Anderson, playing his sister, as the home of his loved one and her husband. Robinson had murdered the couple IS years ago. Miss Roberts and McCallister, who with Calhoun and Miss London round out the small farm group principally concerned, are aware of the existence of this house in the woods, and suspect that mystery is attached thereto. The story deviates a bit from its main line with some bits of romance involving McCallister and Miss London, with Roberts playing the third party. Development of the theme is taut and tense as Robinson gradually loses his mind trying to keep his secret and hold his adopted daughter, Miss Roberts, who actually was the offspring of the woman he had killed. It builds to a startling climax as Robinson, now known to be the murderer, elects to evade the police by submerging his automobile and himself in a watery grave, in an old ice house next to the Red House, into which he had placed his victims of 15 years ago. Running time, 100 minutes. Adult audience classification. Release date, Feb. 8. Gene Arneel 'Easy Come, Easy Go' ' "Deep White," Hollywood, Feb. 2 (Paramount) IN essence a characterization by Barry Fitzgerald, with Diana Lynn, Sonny Tufts, Dick Foran, Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins, John Litel and some others present in roles designed to focus attention upon the principal portrayal, this production, by Kenneth Macgowan, from a screenplay by Francis Edwards Faragoh, John McNulty and Anne Froelick, based on some sketches by McNulty, is as good or as bad, commercially speaking, as Fitzgerald is popular or not in a given exhibition area. As directed by John Farrow, it is a leisurely enactment, in Irish brogue, of a tale about a Third Avenue rooming-house keeper and sign painter whose addiction to betting on the ponies, and general improvidence, complicates the lives of his family and friends. The brogue is laid on thickly, although Fitzgerald handles it well, and the stage business in which the star is assigned to engage is a part which used to be associated automatically with what was known generically as the "Irish comic." In the tale, handled totally in light manner, Fitzgerald is forever borrowing money to bet with a bookie on some horse or other, and losing most of the time. To keep his daughter, Miss Lynn, from marrying Sonny Tufts, a returned sailor, or Dick Foran, a policeman, he stretches truth beyond the breaking point, and things go from bad to worse until, by a chain of circumstances too devious to follow with a synopsis, his daughter and a lady roomer save the family fortunes by betting on a horse that wins. It is the kind of comedy in which the individual incidents, rather than the whole, are counted upon to produce laughs. Running time, 78 minutes. General audience classification. Release date, not set. William R. Weaver pictures for 1947. The conference will be attended by all district and branch managers in the U. S., as well as sales executives and sales department heads of the home office. There will also be separate divisional meetings to discuss special problems of individual territories. Spyros P. Skouras, president, will address the meeting, giving a firsthand report of his recent visit to the company's Hollywood studios, and outlining plans for pictures scheduled for release during the year. Scheduled to attend from the home office are : Executive vice-president W. C. Michel ; treasurer Donald Henderson ; assistant treasurer and comptroller W. J. Eadie ; general counsel Otto Koegel ; general sales manager W. J. Kupper; Charles Schlaifer, director of advertising-publicity ; John Caskey, counsel ; sales manager W. C. Gehring, A. W. Smith Jr., Herman Wobber and Harry Ballance, and Jack Bloom, Edwin H. Collins, Martin Moskowitz, Peter Levathes and Jack Sichelman. District Managers District managers who will attend include : C. E. Peppiatt, Atlantic ; E. X. Callahan, Northeast; Paul S. Wilson, southeast ; Phil Longdon, Southwest; Jack H. Lorentz, Great Lakes; J. J. Grady, mideast ; M. A. Levy, Prairie ; Ward E. Scott, Midwest ; Charles L. Walker, Mountain; Bryan D. Stoner, Pacific ; Sydney Samson, Canada ; Raymond E. Moon, Eastern New York State. Branch managers who will attend include : Joseph B. Rosen, Albany ; Sam Gross, Philadelphia ; Weldon Waters, Pittsburgh ; C. G. Norris, Washington ; James M. Connolly, Boston ; William Graham, acting manager, Buffalo; Benjamin A. Simon, New Haven ; Fred R. Dodson, Atlanta; J. E. Holston, Charlotte; Mark Sheridan, New Orleans ; H. L. Beecroft, Dallas ; Tom W. Young, Memphis ; Grady L. James, sales manager, Oklahoma City ; Tom R. Gilliam, Chicago ; Joseph J. Lee, Detroit ; Joseph R. Neger, Milwaukee ; Leavitt J. Bugie, Cincinnati; J. J. Schmertz, Cleveland ; George T. Landis, Indianapolis. Others Also : Gordon F. Halloran, Des Moines ; Jack S. Cohan, Minneapolis ; Toseph E. Scott, Omaha ; George W. Fuller, Kansas City; Benjamin B. Reingold, St. Louis; V. T. Dugan, Denver; Clyde Blasius, Salt L.Tke City ; Clyde W. Eckhardt, Los Angeles : Charles F. Powers, Portland ; Toseph M. Podoloff, San Francisco ; Frank Drew, Seattle. An entire session of the meetings will be devoted to advertising plans, with Charles Schlaifer, director of advertising-publicity, presiding. It is expected that by Feb. 17 there will he ready sufficient material to place on exhibition accessories that will be available on all pictures right through the Spring. Newspaper, magazine and radio advertising plans, already approved, will be detailed. Editing Course by Hess Louis Hess, editor-in-chief of All American News Productions, is conducting a class in editing at the New Institute, Brooklyn, which has various stage and film courses.