Motion Picture Daily (Apr-Jun 1951)

Tuesday, June 19, 1951 Motion Picture Daily 15 Review "Peking Express" (Hal B. 1 1 'all is — Paramount) Hollywood, June 18 T 7 SING Joseph Cotten, Corinne Calvet and Edmund Gwenn as top names ^ to draw with, and all-out melodrama as his medium, producer Hal B. Wallis herewith throws a Sunday punch at the Red Chinese in particular and all Communists and Communism in general. Packing his picture with violence, multiple murder, torture and treason, he tells a tale of organized brigandry and inhumanity of man to man in and near the Shanghai of 1950, giving his characters, the while ample dialogue in which to state the case for Communism and the stronger case against it. Produced on the grand scale and directed without kid gloves by William Dieterle, it's a whoppingproduction job. The story opens with the arrival of Cotten, a surgeon in the official employ of the United Nations, arriving in Shanghai en route to Peking where, it turns out later, he is to operate on the leader of the Nationalist Chinese underground. Aboard the train to Peking he meets Miss Calvet, a sweetheart he forsook in 1945 on suspicion of moral laxity, and learns she is believed by the Communist authorities to be a loose woman possibly engaged in espionage. Also on the train are Gwenn, as a Catholic priest, Benson Fong, a Communist civilian soldier and newspaper man, Marvin Miller, a Communist official, and Li Kiu, his wife. Fong outrages the white passengers, and Miller attempts to assassinate his wife, as the train rolls along its troubled way to a point where cut-throats in the service of Miller, who turns out to be a Communist engaged in doublecrossing the Communist regime in a dozen bloodthirsty ways, waylay the train, mow down its armed defenders, and take the white party prisoner. Holding the whites as hostages, for ransom in the male cases and for favors in the case of Miss Calvet, he commits a series of killings and other violences, but is murdered finally by the wife he tried to kill. Cotten escapes with Miss Calvet on the train to Peking after a running battle in which Gwenn is killed. It's a more complicated and actionful story than a synopsis can convey adequately, and the melodramatic stops are pulled all the way out. It is outspoken 'and violent throughout. The script is by John Meredith Lucas, from a story by Harry Hervey. Running time, 85 minutes. General audience classification. For August release. William R. Weaver Seven Now in Work At 20th-Fox Studio Hollywood, June 18.— With the start of production of "Marriage Broker," Thelma Ritter-Jeanne Crain starrer, seven pictures are now before the cameras at 20th CenturyFox. Others in work are "Viva Zapata," on location at Del Rio, Tex., with Marlon Brando and Jean Peters in the leading roles, and "Lydia Bailey," with Dale Robertson and Anne Francis in the leads. In various stages of shooting are "A Wac In His Life," starring June Haver, William Lundigan and Frank Fay; "The Desert Fox," starring James Mason as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel; the science-fiction film, "The Day the Earth Stood Still," starring Michael Rennie, and the George Jessel production of "Golden Girl," story of Lotta Crabtree, starring Mitzi Gaynor. WB Cleveland Staff Reduced Cleveland, June 18. — The local Warner theatre department, headed by Nat Wolf, zone manager, has been cut to the bone, leaving only Wolf, district managers Dick Wright and Frank Harpster, bookers Joe Weinstein and Dave Yellen and secretaries Malva Rosenblatt and Hinda Saul. Robert W. Knepton, contact manager, goes to Pittsburgh ; J. Knox Strachen, publicity director will also manage the Allen Theatre succeeding Howard Higley, transferred to the Variety Theatre. John Bidwell, manager of the Vogue will assist Strachan at the Allen and Edward Miller goes to the Vogue. Miller has been manager of the Hippodrome which Herbert Scheftel and Alfred G. Burger will take over on July 8. Al Stern, advertising artist ; Larry Greenberg, booker ; D. Leonard Halper, maintenance engineer ; Robert Cox, Robert Giles, Clarence Leroy, sound engineers and the back room secretarial force are out. Film Clips for TV 'Frogmen' Promotion Twentieth Century-Fox will mark its first use of film clips in its New York video advertising with a major television time-buy on every TV stattion in the Metropolitan area to herald the world premiere of "The Frogmen" at the Roxy Theatre on June 29. Clips from the film showing its undersea sequences will be featured in the TV trailers, which will blanket New York City and the adjacent area for a radius of 150 miles on every TV outlet beginning several days before the world premiere. Israel, Westrex Deal Westrex Corp. has announced closing of a deal with Yehoshua Brandstatter, president of Israel Motion Picture Studios, Ltd., Tel Aviv, for Western Electric and Westrex studio recording equipment. Brandstatter was in New York last month to negotiate the deal. Virginia Exhibitors Convention Today Richmond, June 18.— The Virginia Motion Picture Theatres Association summer meeting and convention will be held at the Jefferson Hotel, Richmond, tomorrow and Wednesday. The business sessions will be confined to one day. Jack Groh, chairman of the committee on arrangements, has announced a schedule which includes, tomorrow, a closed business session ; discussions on film practices, advertising, television, drive-ins, and the Newport News tax fight, and guest speakers. There will also be a luncheon, cocktail party, and dinner-dance. Wednesday morning there will be a preview of an outstanding film at the Westover Theatre, and in the afternoon that theatre and the Richmond drive-ins will be open to all exhibitors. File Denial in Kravetz-UA Suit Counsel for Arthur Krim, Robert Benjamin, Matthew Fox, Seymour Peyser, United Artists and the Walter Heller Co. has filed in U.S. District Court here a general denial of charges made by Max Kravetz in connection with the latter's counter suit for $616,550 claimed for damages which was filed last March against Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Paul V. McNutt, Frank McNamee, et al. Kravetz charged a conspiracy among the defendants obstructed and destroyed the furtherance of his partnership with McNutt and McNamee, formerly board chairman and president, respectively, of UA. Kravetz was secretary of the company before the stock option take-over by the KrimBenjamin-Fox group. Expect Special Panel For Talent Salaries Washington, June 18. — The new Salary Stabilization Board may set up a special panel to decide salary questions for the film industry and other "talent" industries. The Board, whose members are to be named by Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston within the week, will govern salary workers, as distinct from wage earners. All the film talent employes come under the salary category. So far, the industry has been allowed to continue its traditional salary policy under a special ruling. Average Attendance (Continued from page 1) 701,252 at the end of 1948 and 3,351,778,000 admissions for the entire year. Based on the July 1, 1948 population estimate of 146,045,000, per capita admissions averaged 23. Of the $1,566,000,000 of receipts reported by the indoor theatres $1,209,000,000 was derived from admissions and fees, $85,815,000 from sales of merchandise, $16,276,000 from concession rentals, and $254,877,000 of state, local and federal admission, sales and other excise taxes. Census said the average admission price, including taxes, was 44 cents, with a_ range of from 30 cents in Mississippi to 56 cents in California. Taxes for the U. S. as a whole averaged 7.6 cents per admission. Schertz to Hyperion Jack Schertz, formerly account executive for Starlane Productions, was named vice-president in charge of national television sales and distribution for Hyperion Films, Inc. National Pre-Selling unpWO Tickets for Broadway," 1 RKO Radio's first bigtime musical in several years, is getting publicity breaks in the magazines through interest in Janet Leigh. The front cover of Quick magazine last week featured the star and she will get a similar break on the cover of Life for June 25. Life is carrying a story, and Redbook had a lengthy biography. Look magazine will have her picture for a cover in their mid-August issue, and Parade is set to devote a cover and story to the young artist. Holiday magazine is doing a piece about her travels, and Esquire will carry a series of pictures by the same photographer who did the Life cover. • Redbook magazine for July, on the newsstands June 27, will feature a cover and story on Esther Williams under the title "Earthbound Mermaid." The four-color cover should attract her fans and make new ones, while the story of the girl who didn't want to go in the films, and preferred to swim, makes excellent reading. Additionally, the July Redbook names "Captain Horatio Hornblower" as the Picture-of-the-Month, and editor Florence Somers says, "This film is the perfect answer to the criticism that 'movies are not as good as they used to be' for it is as fine a romantic adventure film as you'll ever find." • "Kon Tiki" the RKO. Radio adventure film which is now in. its third month at the Sutton theatre in New York, will be published as at book condensation in ten of the world editions of Reader's Digest, beginning with the U. S. and Canadian editions in July; the Australian and English editions in August, and the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Swiss and Japanese issues in September. The domestic circulation alone is in excess of 2,000,000 copies. • A concentrated round of national and local New York radio and television appearances to "plug" 20th Century-Fox's "On the Riviera" will be made by Sylvia Fine, who wrote the words and music of the hit tunes, sung by husband Danny Kaye in the Technicolor film. Three weeks of daily guest spots on top popularity radio and TV programs will herald the new film to more than 65,000,000 listeners and viewers from coast-to-coast. In the first week, Miss Fine was the guest celebrity on the Nancy Craig program, NBC-TV; Cholly Knickerbocker, ABC; What's My Line, CBS-TV; Strike It Rich, CBS-TV and WCBS, Family Circle, ABC, and Okey Mother, Dumont-TV. Additionally, she will appear on popular disc jockey shows. • Paramount has completed a national tieup with Whitman's Candy for the promotion of Bing Crosby's forthcoming film, "Here Comes the Groom." Bing will be featured in full-page, fourcolor ads in Life and the Saturday Evening Post, as well as in 18,000 fullcolor dealer displays. Paramount's fieldmen have been alerted for the tieup. Walter Brooks