Motion Picture Daily (Jan-Mar 1951)

Motion Picture Daily Tuesday, January 9, 1951 Personal Mention SPYROS P. SKOURAS, president of 20th Century-Fox, is slated to fly to the Coast tonight from New York and join Al Lichtman, 20th Century-Fox vice-president, who arrived there from New York over the weekend for studio conferences. • Harold Citron, general manager of North Coast Theatres, is in San Francisco from Los Angeles, where he was joined yesterday by Sherrill C. Corwin, president, for a week long conference with district manager Graham KlSLINGBURY. • Mrs. Dorothy Silverstone, wife of Murray Silverstone, president of 20th Century-Fox International Corp., is due to arrive in Boston tomorrow from here to promote "The Magnetic Tide." Charles E. Kurtzman, Loew's northeastern division manager, has been named general chairman of the Boston Gridiron Club selection committee for the Swede Nelson Award for sportsmanship. • Leon J. Bamberger, RKO Radio sales promotion manager, has accepted an invitation to speak at the annual convention of the Allied Theatre Owners of Texas, to be held at the Adolphus Hotel, Dallas, Jan. 29-30. • Stanley D. Kane, executive counsel for North Central Allied, has been renamed city attorney for the village of Golden Valley, a suburb of Minneapolis. Pat Somerset, assistant executive secretary of the Screen Actors Guild, has been named by Governor Earl Warren of California a member of the State Advisory Council. • Howard Strickling, M-G-M studio publicity head, is expected to arrive here from the Coast tomorrow for a brief stay. • Sam Shain, director of exhibitordistributor relations for 20th CenturyFox, left yesterday on a business trip to Omaha. e Al Horwits, Universal-International studio publicity director, is scheduled to arrive here from the Coast today for a two-week stay. • George J. Schaefer, Stanley Kramer Productions sales chief, returned to New York yesterday from the Coast. • Louis B. Mayer, M-G-M vicepresident in charge of studio activities, is due here from the Coast tomorrow. © Jules Lapidus, Warner Brothers Eastern and Canadian sales manager, has left for Boston from here. • Edward Dryhurst, producer, is scheduled to fly from London to Hollywood tomorrow. Insider's Outlook By RED KANN THIS looks like the week of decision for COMPO. The final answer, whatever it may be, cannot be put off indefinitely, for every new delay continues to gnaw at whatever vitals the Council of Motion Picture Organizations may call its own. The situation is far from happy. The original fanfare and enthusiastic bursts which tore the ozone apart 'way back there in Chicago When it was determined to proceed with one organization representing the whole industry since then have turned into shadowy echoes of an enthusiastic past. COMPO was fine then — so fine, so much needed and so worthwhile that everyone wanted it. There was a goose that really hung high, but what it has laid so far is hardly a golden egg. ■ For it's different now. Or at any rate, it's different with TOA, that influential exhibitor association without which COMPO can get along if its limp doesn't get it down. TOA insists COMPO has been out of bounds. For instance, that wire to the National Production Authority on new theatres, which COMPO now wishes had never been filed. ■ There is this to be said, nevertheless : The dispute facing COMPO is a family squabble. It developed internally and not by external pressures so that there is neither face nor reputation jeopardized insofar as the outside facade is concerned. The internal situation, having to do with regional representation for as many TOA units as may want it and limitation of COMPO activities to public relations on a national level, is not an insurmountable one. If TOA has its way, the reluctant-dragon attitude attributed to most of its units in the field might give way to a condition perhaps best described as a limited enthusiasm. While limited, it would be a gain over the indifference, and even suspicion, which now prevails. Fighting valiantly to keep COMPO a going outfit, Ned E. Depinet is known to lean with partial favor, at least, toward the TOA position. This, in all probability, is predicated on his understanding of the heed which the top kicks in TOA must give to the attitude of their member units, never overlooking the jealousy and the zeal with which the leaders in the field guard their territorial autonomy. Attributed to Depinet, too, is another impression, if not a full conviction. It is this : That the closer the field gets to COMPO and the more familiar it becomes with its objectives and its workings the greater the opportunity for COMPO to sell itself. ■ The position of TOA's bitter critics needs no detailed explanation at so late a date. They talk about bad faith and effort to sabotage a setup into which TOA voluntarily entered with eyes wide open. They ask very pointed questions dealing with TOA's ability to hold its affiliates in line. They speculate if the opposition to COMPO voiced by the TOA directors in Houston was not a thinly veiled challenge to the national officers who now understand better the wisdom in listening more attentively to the rank-and-file — the big fish in the little ponds. B All of this backwash possibly may bring air and light into a complex situation. But it solves nothing. Nor will anything be solved unless the men who meet here in New York on Thursday and Friday want it solved ■ If COMPO cannot be constituted, or re-constituted, on a basis of unavoidable compromise which the realities of circumstances indicate, the end of this week will mark the end of COMPO. The corpse may remain suspended in some sort of official limbo, but that will be all. The solution, pat as it may sound and pat as undoubtedly it is, revolves around one dominant theme : How seriously is COMPO wanted and to what limit is the executive board prepared to go in order to consolidate conflicting viewpoints ? B Provided the 10 charter groups are genuinely in earnest, the issue can be resolved and it ought to be. Outrage may have to give way to mere anger. Demand may have to give way to something less. Compromise is common and happens all the time. This looks like a time when it might be best for it to happen again. If by compromise COMPO can come out of its present miasma with its fundamental and original purposes untarnished and a future assured, let compromise prevail. 6 Finished, 5 Are Started on Coast Hollywood, Jan. 8. — The production tally held its own last week, going down only one point, for a total of 23 pictures in work. Five new pictures were started while six were completed. Started were: "I Was an American Spy," Allied Artists ; "Man for Hire," Lippert; "The Dakota Kid," Republic; "Ma and Pa Kettle at the County Fair," Universal-Int'l ; "Tomorrow Is Another Day," Warner Bros. Completed were : "Sirocco," Columbia ; "The Man from Planet X" (Mid-Century Prod. ) ; "A Wonderful Life" (Protestant Film Commission), Independent; "Francis Goes to the Races," "Cattle Drive," and "Little Egypt," Universal-Int'l. Kohn Heads 'Cyrano9 Road Show Unit Howard E. Kohn II has been appointed road show manager of the "Cyrano de Bergerac" unit of Stanley Kramer Productions, working under the general supervision of Myer P. Beck, Eastern publicity and advertising director for Kramer. Kohn joined the Kramer organization last June as educational director for "Cyrano," at which time he set up the educational campaign now current. NEW YORK THEATRES RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL Rockefeller Center RUDYARD KIPLING'S Li KIM Errol FLYNN Dean STOCK WELL Color by TECHNICOLOR A METRO-GOLDWYNMAYER PICTURE and THE MUSIC HALL'S GREAT CHRISTMAS STAGE SHOW Plrimount presents ^ — and Orcii. ftrruil ' OJorbr | Technicolor | ALAN LP Midnight Ftotvf* Nightly ml M M Jl I I nP \ i?//J tJJi'K 1T1 ?rv t£a»\_/w CtHTURT-rOX "PlVOLI ^L. X^i> BROADWAY AT 49lh ST. HOWARD HUGHES'praductic, 1/endetta MOTION PICTURE DAILY. Martin Quigley, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher; Sherwin Kane, Editor; Terry Ramsaye, Consulting Editor. 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