Motion Picture Daily (Apr-Jun 1953)

6 Motion Picture Daily Wednesday, May 20, 1953 FLY "THE CHICAGO EXECUTIVE Leaving New York at 5 p.m. daily — arriving Chicago at 7:15 p.m. * Club-like atmosphere * Pipe and cigar smoking permitted * Wonderful steak dinner "Ar Special market and message services Return service on "The New York Executive" at 5 p.m. daily. Also, 11 other DC-6 flights "round the clock" between New York and Chicago. UNITED AIR LINES COMPARE THE FARE AND YOU'LL GO Br AIR Reviews "Houdini" ( Stableford Wide-Screen ) (Paramount) Hollywood, May 19 THE professional career and personal life of the late Harry Houdini make up one of the most fascinating chapters in the book of show business and, as handled here with deep understanding and great skill, one of the brightest pictures of the year. Also one of the most exploitable. For the young folks who are the 1953 ticket-buying majority the film gives exhibitors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, as Houdini and Mrs. Houdini, to talk about. For their elders, to whom Houdini and the great days of vaudeville are fondly unforgettable, the film holds the rich reward its title promises. The vast public that follows magic and legerdemain — far vaster now than when Houdini was its idol — is certain to attend in force. In addition to all of which, the picture is of the kind that generates word-of-mouth renown as it runs. Big grosses appear guaranteed. George Pal's production of the Houdini story is a triumph in showmanliness. It was a subject easy to go wrong on — by overworking the magician phase, the romantic equation, the after-life theories, any single aspect of the many-sided performer — but he stuck wisely and tenaciously to the theatrical side, as if realizing cannily that he had one of the most theatrical of all theatrical subjects in hand. He kept his picture and his players moving steadily forward at a brisk pace with no time out for stopping and thinking. And he gave over the direction of the picture to the veteran and versatile George Marshall, a showman who knew his show business inside and out away back when Houdini was at the peak of his career. Neither Pal nor Marshall made any mistakes. The screenplay by Philip Yordan, from a book by Harold Kellock, is a swift and concise presentation of principal facts and incidents in the Houdini career. It introduces him first as combination wild-man and magician in a dime museum in New York, where he meets Miss Leigh, whom he's to marry later, and it follows him from there through a Coney Island engagement and another at Tony Pastor's to his first withdrawal from show business to take a job in a lock factory. After a short time in that work he gets back into show business and on his way to the fame that carried him around the world. It is a story to see, not one to synopsize. Color by Technicolor and performances by Sig Ruman, Connie Gilchrist, Torin Thatcher, Angela Clarke, Malcolm Lee Beggs and others add importantly to the over-all success of a fine production. Running time, 106 minutes. General audience classification. For July release. William R. Weaver The Screen The foregoing was written after a screening at the Paramount studio in Hollywood on a big Stableford screen (1.66-to-l aspect ratio) imported from England and utilized in the studio's experimentation with various technilogical devices and theories. It looked great there and undoubtedly will look the same anywhere else. WRW 44 Column South ( Universal-International ) CLARITY along the story line might have made a lot of difference, beneficially, for the commercial destiny of this color in Technicolor production, which otherwise — with stars Audie Murphy and Joan Evans leading the way — gives a colorful picturization of events in and around a fort in New Mexico in 1861. The Civil War is about ready to break out and the cavalrymen on duty at the fort are about equally divided in their feelings about the North and the South. Murphy plays a cavalryman loyal to the Union and Miss Evans is a daughter of 01' Mississip'. Their romance is never a very important part of the story, although it serves the boy-meets-girl requirement in routine fashion. The film is full of fighting, with bows and arrows, muskets, dynamite and fists. Some of the fighting gets pretty hard to make out much of the time as to whether the Union, the Confederacy or the Indians are the "goodies" or the "baddies" or innocent by-standers (although the Indians seem to have the latter disastrous distinction). The script by William. Sackheim, who also is credited with the story, has Murphy portraying a cocky lieutenant of cavalry who is the intimate and understanding friend of a Navajo chief whose tribe is falsely accused of a murder committed by a white man whose guilt Murphy beats him into confessing. Miss Evans, only feminine member of the cast, is the sister of a cavalry captain, played by Robert Sterling. Ray Collins plays a U. S. brigadier general who cooks up deep trouble for the cavalry, the Indians and all concerned by way of preparing a way (never very clearly outlined) for the South to "cut the Union's life line" when the brewing war boils over. It takes a lot of ridin', shootin' and explainin' to iron out the assorted confusions to the satisfaction of the director (Frederick de Cordova) at least, else he would have kept going. Running time 84 minutes. General audience classification. June release. Anderson Circuit for Sale Buffalo, May 19. — Because his wife's illness necessitates his living in a different climate, Wally Anderson has listed his circuit of six small town theatres for sale, it is reported here. In the Anderson circuit are houses in Addison, Sandy Lake, Marionville and Friendship, all in New York, and Eldred and. M't. Jewett, Pa. SMPTE to Meet The next meeting of the Atlantic Coast section of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers will be held tomorrow evening at 7 :30 in studio TV No. 1 of American Broadcasting. The program, reports acting chairman Emerson Yorke, will be devoted to the technical essentials required for television production. National Pre-Selling \X/HILE Kirk Douglas was on lo* cation in Galilee making "The Juggler Kid" he was invited to dinner by I Ibrahim Abdul Abed, the head of the village council of Tamra, an Arabian village located on the slope of a hill, reports Ruth Harbert in the June issue of Good Housekeeping. Having dinner Arabian fashion with five sheiks is quite an experience, and makes good reading. • "Survivors Watch the Titanic Go Down Again" is the caption given to the most famous of all maritime disasters, in Life's current issue. Preview of "Titanic" was shown to 11 of the disaster's survivors. Forty-one years ago a Mrs. Aks was on her way to America in third class aboard the Titanic. When the liner hit an iceberg, she ran on deck with her 10-month-old baby, Frank. He was torn from her arms and thrown into a lifeboat; later she was pushed into another. Four days later, aboard the Carpathia, which picked up most of the survivors, Mrs. Aks found her baby in the arms of another woman, who was hysterically claiming him for her own. A couple of weeks ago, with ten other survivors, Mrs. Aks, with her son Frank, now 41, saw a preview of the movie, "Titanic." Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb star in "Titanic," which will have its premiere at the Roxy here. • CompanionApproved-Movies listed in the June issue of Woman's Home companion are : "The President's Ladv," "Dream Wife," "Shane," "Call Me Madam" and "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T." • During the filming of "Mogamba" in Kenya, East Africa, Ava Gardner tried hard to learn the native language but found it difficult. The only member of the cast to become fluent was Clark Gable, reports Look's current issue. Three-and-one-half pages of full color and black-and-white pictures taken during the filming of Mogamba on location are displayed under the title, "Glamour in Africa." Also in the issue is a page ad on "Scared Stiff." e A front cover in full color on "Melba," UA technicolor production, appeared in Pictorial Review May 17. It was done by the caricaturist Jacques Kapralik and portrays Patrice Munsel, John Justin, Alec Clunes and Robert Morley. • "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," "Bright Road," "Desert Rats," "Trouble Along the Way," "Glory at Sea," and "The Desert Song" are reviewed by Ed Miller in the June issue of Seventeen. • Bill Boley of Buchanan & Co. says "national magazines have helped the Cerebral Palsy drive by reaching 245 million readers with informative facts about this devastating illness." • "Julius Caesar" and "All I Desire" are reviewed in McCall's "Goes-tothe-Mozncs" in the June issue. Walter Haas