Motion Picture Daily (Jan-Mar 1951)

2 Motion Picture Daily Thursday, March 1, 1951 Personal Mention XT ATE J. BLUMBERG, president of Universal Pictures, accompanied by Mrs. Blumberg, will leave New York today aboard the S.S. / '///cania for a six-week business trip to Europe. Leo F. Samuels, assistant to William B. Levy, worldwide sales supervisor of Walt Disney Productions, and Irving Ludwig have returned here from a Midwest tour of RKO Pictures branches. • H. Russell Gaus. Oklahoma City M-G-M manager, planed back to his headquarters yesterday after a threeday visit here. • Leonard Hirsch, home office assistant to Rudy Berger, M-G-M Southern sales manager, has returned here from Washington. • E. K. O'Shea, vice-president of Paramount Film Distributing Corp., is due to return here today from Detroit. Howard LeSieur, Eagle Lion Classics advertising-publicity director, is in Washington today from New York. • Seymour Roman of Columbia's pressbook department announces the birth of a son, Howard Lewis. ■ • Bob Newhook, publicist -for Loew 's Boston Theatres, has married Elaine Gaetani, secretary to E. M. Loew. • Virginia Morris of Paramount's advertising department is celebrating a birthday today. NTS to Meet (Continued from page 1) March 10-11, at the Brown Palace Hotel, will be attended by managers and salesmen from Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Omaha, Des Moines, Milwaukee and Minneapolis. Company executives from New York attending both meetings will include in addition to Green, J. W. Servies, manager of purchasing ; J. E. Currie, drive-in department manager, and W. J. Turnbull, sales promotion manager. Others attending will be H. D. Epting, air conditioning department manager, and J. S. Goshorn, theatre seating department manager. Expect Buying Rush (Continued from page 1) ing had been thoroughly checked and found to be in plentiful quantities to meet anticipated demands. He also pointed out that there had been no "scare buying" and said he felt reasonably certain that exhibitors had not hoarded extra supplies fearing a shortage. Nor is a delay in deliveries expected, it was learned. 59 Drive ins Set For the Northwest Portland, Ore., Feb. 28.— The drive-in theatre season has already opened in many spots in the Pacific Northwest, with the advent of semi-summer weather. Some 32 drive-ins will be in service in the Portland trade area, and some 27 in the Seattle area, with additional potentialities in the offing. UA-Finance Du Pont Film Maps Company's Growth Du Pont's feature-length Technicolor film of the company's rise since its founding in 1802 until the present was screened for the press at the Paris Theatre here. Produced by jack Chertok and directed by William Thiele at the Apex Film Studios in Hollywood, the picture is a colorful and interesting account that covers the administrations of 10 du Pont presidents, from the founder to Walter S. Carpenter, present board chairman, and Crawford H. Greenewalt, present head of the company. The picture will not have theatrical distribution but will be shown in some 80' localities, primarily for employes. Barred from Phila. (Continued from page 1) $6,750,000 suit against National Theatres, Fox West Coast theatres and others, said that his questioning of Skouras is to show that the major companies have divided up exhibition areas on a national basis. He said that there is little likelihood of distribution companies becoming involved in the present suit, but that United Artists Theatre Circuit, headed by George Skouras, may become a defendant. Skouras testified, Alioto said, that for the first there months after he became president of UATC, succeeding Joseph Schenck, he received no salary from the company but was reimbursed from an income pool set up by George, Spyros and Charles Skouras. As Charles Skouras testified in San Francisco, the Skouras brothers had for many years shared their earnings and profits from the motion picture industry on a pooled basis. Alioto said that Skouras has promised to make the pool document, which was discontinued in December, 1950, available in Los Angeles next week. The deposition will continue tomorrow at the offices of Milton Weisman, Skouras's attorney. When a Motion Picture Daily reporter called there yesterday he was refused admittance and was told by a Weisman ■ office attendant that no meeting was underway and that neither Skouras, Alioto or James Mulvey, Samuel Goldwyn Productions president who attended, were in the offices. Vote Republic Dividend A dividend of 25 cents per share on preferred stock payable April 2 to stockholders of record on March 12, was declared by the board of direci tors of Republic Pictures. (Continued from page 1) he was informed that the Chicago firm's loans would be made only on pictures whose subject-matter measured up to certain standards. Equally significant in the qualifying for Heller loans will be the stature of applying producers, Goldsmith indicated. United Artists itself will not engage in production financing, Goldsmith said, adding that if the contrary were the case independent producers would "run from the company." UA producers, he explained, prefer to have the company concern itself solely with distribution and attendant promotional activities since under such an arrangement a "democratic equality" prevails among all who make pictures for the company's release. Goldsmith's report that UA would not finance producers conflicted with previous trade reports that indicated the company would make funds available to producers. Krim could not be reached yesterday for comment. With the take-over of UA management control by the Arthur KrimRobert Benjamin-Matthew Fox group, financing problems dissolved for UA producers, Goldsmith said, explaining that the Bank of America and other film-financing institutions made known at once that they were ready to provide first money on UA contracts up to 60 per cent of a picture's budget. At the same time, he said, second money sources also indicated a willingness to enter into picture financing arrangements. In many cases providers of second money themselves borrow from banks the funds which they turn over to producers. Goldsmith, a producer in England for 14 years prior to coming to the U. S. two years ago, described the revitalization of UA as "somethinglike a miracle." Sorely disappointed, as he put it, over the way his product was being handled at UA prior to the take-over of the new management, Goldsmith said he now has "the great est confidence" in the company. This confidence, he added, he has proven by delivering his latest production, "The Scarf," and by taking steps to release his next, "The Gardenia," through UA. The latter will be from a new novel to be published soon by the producer's wife, Vera Caspary. When he and Miss Caspary, the producer's partner in Gloria Films, came to New York four weeks ago as the Krim-Benjamin-Fox take-over of UA was about to be finalized, Goldsmith was "deeply worried" about whether the investment they had made in "The Scarf" would be virtually lost under UA as it had been constituted. Present at yesterday's interview with Goldsmith were Myer Beck, whom the producer has appointed special promotion representative for "The Scarf," and David E. (Skip) Weshner, Gloria Films' sales manager. Weshner paid tribute to the UA sales force for the extent to which it achieved results in the months preceding the new management take-over despite the handicaps that hampered company salesmen. IVEJVS in Brief . . Hollywood, Feb. 28.— M-G-M will become the first studio to turn out a three-color feature using its own process and laboratory if its technicians complete preparations in time for start of the shooting on "Constable Pedley," scheduled for mid-April, a M-G-M spokesman confirmed today. • Hollywood, Feb. 28.— Arch Oboler has announced formation of Arch Oboler Productions to make two or three independent productions annually. • Chicago, Feb. 28. — Films set for next week's Phonevision test are : "Wild Harvest," Paramount, released in 1947; "Framed," Columbia, 1947; "The Little Foxes," (Goldwyn) RKO, 1941 ; "Caged Fury," Paramount, 1948; "Sahara," Columbia, 1943; "Back to Battan," RKO, 1945, and "The Reluctant Dragon," RKO, 1941. • Hollywood, Feb. 28.— Ellis Arnall, Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers president, said that he will decide tomorrow whether to call a membership meet:ng during his present visit here, as originally planned, or merely continue meeting with individual members. He began individual conferences on Monday. • Hollywood, Feb. 28.— Paramount's "Sunset Boulevard" tonight was acclaimed as the best Hollywood produced picture of 1950 by the Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association, in its annual presentation of the "Golden Globe Awards." • Will Baltin, executive secretary and treasurer of the Television Broadcasters Association, is resigning to join Screen Gems, Columbia Pictures' television department in an executive capacity. • Kansas City, Feb. 28. — Ernest J. Amoneno, owner of the Aladdin Theatre here, died Monday night. Brother of Mayer Dies in Hollywood Hollywood, Feb. 28. — Rudolph W. Mayer, 63, brother of Louis B. Mayer, M-G-M production vice-president, died here last night at the Gaylord Apartments. Death was said to be from a hear attack suffered when fire broke out in his hotel. Goldsmith reported that 3,300 bookings have been set for his "Three Husbands," which will open at the Palace Theatre here on March 8. Canton Assigned to "Fury" Arthur Canton has been named special United Artists field representative, under Mori Krushen, exploitation head, for the engagement of Robert Stillman's "Sound of Fury" in Syracuse. The picture will open at the Midtown Theatre there on March 8. tin Quigley, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher; Sherwin Kane, Editor; Terry Ramsaye, Consulting Editor. Published daily, except Saturdays, Publishing Company, Inc., 1270 Sixth Avenue, Rockefeller Center. New York 20, N. Y. Telephone Circle 7-310O. Cable address: "Quigpubco, MOTION PICTURE DAILY. Marti: Sundays and holidays, by Quigley Publishing Lompa-. New York." Martin Ouigley, 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. 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