Motion Picture Daily (Apr-Jun 1950)

2 Motion Picture Daily Monday, May 1, 1950 Personal Mention Tradewise . . . By SHERWIN KAN E AW. SCHWALBERG, Para• mount Film Distributing president, left here Friday for New Orleans and is due back today. • John P. Byrne, M-G-M Eastern sales manager, returned here from New Haven at the weekend. Paul J. Richrath, his home office assistant, has returned here from Boston. • John B. McCullouoh, director of conservation for the Motion Picture Association of America, will leave here today for a two-week tour of the mid-West. • Loke Wan Tho, operator of 36 theatres and several newspapers in Malaya, is in New York from Singapore on a honeymoon trip. • Emanuel D. Silverstone, 20th Century-Fox International vice-president, left here yesterday by plane for a tour of Latin America. • Leslie Wthelan, 20th Century-Fox International advertising-publicity director, has returned here from a tour of Europe. • William Thomas, producer, will arrive here Wednesday from the Coast. • Warren Logan of Samuel Goldwyn Productions publicity department here, has joined the Lynn Farnol office. • Joan Harrison, producer and writer, will return here today by plane from the Coast. Services for Rosenblatt Boston, April 30. — Over 350 attended funeral services for the late Harry Rosenblatt, branch manager for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at New Haven. Managers of all distribution offices here attended with representatives of all leading circuits. Representing the M-G-M home office were John P. Byrne, Eastern division sales manager, and Morris N. Wolf of the public relations department. E. G. Abbott, 85 Portland, Ore., April 30. — E. G. Abbott, 85, one of the Northwest's earliest motion picture exhibitors, died at Memorial Hospital, Sedro Wooley, Wash., according to word reaching here. A daughter, Mrs. Emma Abbott Ridgeway, who manages Abbott Theatres, survives. Sidney Kandel Dies Funeral services were held here on Friday for Sidney Kandel, 43, vicepresident of Bonded Film Storage, New York, who died suddenly Thursday night from a heart attack. Sam Shain's Father Dies Jacob G. Shain, father of Sam Shain, 20th Century-Fox exhibitor relations director, died Friday in Boston. THE action of the House Ways and Means Committee in voting last week to limit Federal admission tax relief to a reduction of only one-half of the 20 per cent wartime excise was a keen disappointment to the entire motion picture industry. It should be no less a disappointment to the millions and millions of theatre patrons who have written letters to their representatives and signed petitions for the complete elimination of the tax. Levied in wartime, the industry shouldered the burden of the 20 per cent tax, on top of all other increased corporate and individual taxes, without complaint. In the immediate postwar years, with business still at comfortable levels, the industry made no organized protest against continuation of the wartime tax. It was not until five years after the end of the war that the industry, confronted with deteriorating economic conditions, and new forms of competition, came to the realization that it could no longer accept without protest a Federal excise that was further aggravating its troubled business scene and delaying the day of its recovery. That the industry was correct in its conclusion that theatre attendance was being depressed to a serious degree by continuance of a 20 per cent Federal premium upon every theatre ticket purchased, was demonstrated by the millions of signers of petitions and the other millions of letter writers asking repeal of the Federal tax. People who are not disturbed by that financial penalty placed upon their entertainment do not bother to sign petitions and write letters to their Congressmen, no matter how urgently they are requested to do so. And people who write and sign protests are people who have not been able to buy motion picture entertainment, because of the tax, as often as they would have liked in the past, and who fear they will not be able to afford it as often in the future if the tax is not eliminated. • The industry realizes that the House Ways and Means Committee is under Administration direction to hold excise tax reductions within specified limits and, if it exceeds those limits. to propose new sources of taxation revenue to compensate for the loss of the old. But regardless of that, there is no justification for continuing to penalize an industry that has paid more than its share without complaint when the need was great. There is no justification for continuing the wartime tax burden to the point where it so cripples the industry that diminishing returns defeat the purpose of the tax. If new revenues must be produced, let the writers of tax legislation look to the television field for them, where entertainment in competition with taxburdened industries is purveyed tax-free. This industry is well aware, also, of the nation's vital need to avert inflation. Taxation of the overburdened is not the answer to that. There are many procedures far more sound, not the least of which is a well-ordered economy in government. This industry is well advised to continue -unabated its demand for complete elimination of the wartime excise. Let the fight be continued, but with renewed vigor, in the House Ways and Means Committee before formal tax legislation is reported out. Let it be directed, too, to the Senate Finance Committee and thereafter to the joint conference committee which will have to agree on the legislation to be put before Congress. There still is time and this well may be a fight for life. • • Bill Cunningham, writing in the Boston Herald about the United Cerebral Palsy Associations' $5,000,000 campaign next month, which is being aided by the industry, said: "I have just seen the Cerebral Palsy trailer, made by the motion picture industry, featuring Alan Ladd and Bill Demarest. It will go into all the newsreels starting May 7. Hy Fine of the Metropolitan Theatre is New England chairman of the motion picture division, and he tells me this trailer will be shown in 'most theatres in the U. S.' "I don't know why the 'most' shouldn't be 'all.' That trailer does things to the heart." Exhibitors, the trailer will be at your theatres next week. See it. You will wonder, as did Cunningham, why any theatre should be unwilling to show it. Newsreel Parade DRES I D EN T TRUMAN's ■* speech on Communism and the student riots in New York are current newsreel highlights. Other items include sports and fashions. Complete contents follozv : MOVIETONE NEWS, No. 35— President Truman declares U. S. Reds are n«t a major threat. Students riot in New/ CEx. Israel marks independence. ParaciQtio"?"Mental Health Week." Sports: Boston marathon race. Shooting-the-rapids. NEWS OF THE DAY, No. 269— Student riots in New York ; Paris youth also riot. John Maragon convicted. Frank Costello testifies. Independence Day in Israel celebrated. Navy parachuting graduation. London zoo scene. PARAMOUNT NEWS, No. 72-Independence Day in Israel. TJ. S. labor behind palsy drive. New coiffure fashions. President Truman defends program to detect disloyal persons in government. Graduation day for parachute riggors. TELENEWS DIGEST, No. 17-A— Israel: two years of freedom. Washington: Owtu Lattimore defended. John Maragon guilty. Red River floods. Spring maneuvers in Norway. Racing. News storv of the past; event in World War II. UNIVERSAL NEWSREELS, No. 347Germans escape from Russian zone in flight to freedom. Parachute jumping. Strength test for Army crates. Speedboat racing. Cat mother's _ litter of baby rabbits. France : women cigar smokers. WARNER PATHE NEWS, No. 74^-Air Secretary Finletter, Stuart Symington and John^Foster Dulles sworn in. John Maragon found guilty. President Truman speaks on Communism. King George with scouts. Flying saucers in Paris. One-dress wardrobe. Surf sailing. Motor cycling. Pinanski Appoints Drive Committee Appointments of an executive committee and chairmen of newsreel and trade press committees which will round out his organization for the industry's participation in the U. S. Savings Bond Drive have been completed by Sam Pinanski, national drive chairman. In addition to Pinanski, who is president of the Theatre Owners of America, the executive committee will include : Gael Sullivan, TOA executive vicepresident ; Trueman Rembusch, president, Allied States Association ; Wilbur Snaper, president, Allied of New Jersey ; Carter Barron, Loew's Eastern division theatre manager, Washington; H. V. (Rotus) Harvey, president. Independent Theatre Owners of Northern California ; Herman Robbins, president, National Screen, and Mitchell Wolfson, Wometco Theatres. Edmund Reek, Movietone News, will head the newsreel committee and Variety editor Abel Green will be chairman of the trade press committee. Greater N. Y. Fund Post to J. R. Vogel Joseph R. Vogel, vice-president of Loew's, has been named by Robert Dowling, head of the Greater New York Fund drive, as chairman of the amusement division, which includes the motion picture, legitimate theatre, sports and other fields of the amusement business. MOTION PICTURE DAILY, Martin Quigley, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher; Sherwin Kane, Editor; Terry Ramsaye, Consulting Editor. Published daily, except Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, by Quigley Publishing Company, Inc., 1270 Sixth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, New York 20, N. Y. Telephone Circle 7-3100. Cable address: "Quigpubco, New York." Martin Quigley, President; Red Kann, Vice-President; Martin Quigley, Jr., Vice-President; Theo. J. Sullivan, Vice-President and Treasurer; Leo J. Brady, Secretary; James P. Cunningham, News Editor; Herbert V. Fecke, Advertising Manager; Gus H. Fausel, Production Manager. Hollywood Bureau, Yucca-Vine Building, William R. Weaver, Editor. Chicago Bureau, 225 North Michigan Avenue, Editorial and Advertising; Harry Toler, Advertising Representative; Jimmy Ascher, Editorial Representative. Washington, J. A. Otten, National Press Club, Washington, D. C. 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