Motion Picture Daily (Oct-Dec 1955)

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Television Today Tuesday, December 27, 1955 Passing in Review NO WELL-INTENTIONED MISANTHROPE could possibly have escaped the spirit of Christmas last week as it poured forth from the nation's television industry as from a horn of plenty. The celebrants ranged from Tony Martin to Rin Tin Tin, from Topper to Highway Patrol and from Sergeant Friday to Long John Silver. ATCC-TV's The Vise featured a story called "Gift from Heaven," which had nothing at all to do with Christmas really, being about a man whose wife was intrigued by his best friend. The most successful of the holiday offerings were CBS-TV's jolly Christmas party with the Barnum & Bailey Circus (December 16) and NBC-TV's "Christmas Till Closing," a Goodyear presentation (December 18) starring Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn and lampooning the kind of commercialization of Christmas which so many of TV's situation comedies inevitably suggested. Also last week NBC-TV's Today offered a daily segment devoted to visiting churches of various denominations throughout the country, listening in on the choirs and having a word or two from the local pastors. These remotes were informative, interesting and handled with laudable simplicity and taste. CBS-TV's Ford Star Jubilee Saturday night (December 18) came up with its first miss, "I Hear America Singing," after a succession of three solid hits, which still is pretty good. The same network's Omnibus the next afternoon offered a couple of conclusive reasons why Oscar Wilde's "Salome" is done so infrequently: it's practically unactable as drama and even in an intelligent production, the verse comes across as flyweight imagery. Eartha Kitt, no great shakes as an actress, did, however, contribute a dance of the seven veils that was a lulu. NBC-TV's Steve Allen presided over one of his top shows Tuesday night, comprising an interview with author Walter Lord, a skit satirizing various cliches used in films to denote passing of time, and the master's on-screen contribution of a half -pint of blood to the Red Cross. Elsewhere in the week: as her grandmother, and Louise Piatt, as a spinsterish cleaning woman. Arthur Penn directed and Fred Coe, of course, was producer. PLAYWRIGHTS '56: "The Waiting Place," NBC-TV, 1 Hour, 9:30 P.M., EST, Tuesday, December 20, 1955. Live, from New York. For Pontiac. Playwrights '56 turned out another superior show the other night, this time hardly more than a dramatic mood. Tad Mosel's "The Waiting Place," although quite reminiscent of Carson McCullers' "Member of the Wedding," told its story of a young girl's growing up with humor, imagination and a certain amount of originality, at the same time providing Kim Stanley with a role that was challenging, to say the least. As the lonely teen-ager on the brink of maturity, Miss Stanley performed with vitality and honesty. If her manner and style more than a little suggest those of Julie Harris, Janice Rule and Geraldine Page, it should be attributed to a similarity in quality among our finest young actresses who these days have a particular affinity for inarticulate pain. Providing good support to Miss Stanley were Frank Overton, as her understandably baffled father; Dorrit Kelton, 'PREVIEW your picture Cinemascope ★ STEREOPHONIC SOUND ★ WIDE SCREEN ★ CONTINUOUS INTERLOCK PROJECTION ★ IE and 35 mm MAGNETIC TAPE ★ CUTTING and EDITING ROOMS SERVICE DAV AND NIGHT PREVIEW THEATRE, INC. 1400 Broodwoy, New Yoifc, N, Y. • CI 6-0865 MGM PARADE, ABC-TV, '/2 Hour, 8:30 P.M., EST, Wednesday, December 21, 1955. Film. For American Tobacco (alternating with General Foods). MGM's assorted bon-bons this time were wrapped in Christmas foil. Lead-off item was a brief excerpt from "Meet Me in St. Louis," with Judy Garland singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" to a juvenile Margaret O'Brien, followed by an extensively cut version of MGM's 1938 release, "A Christmas Carol," starring Reginald Owen, and concluded by a clip from the current "Kismet," with Ann Blyth and Vic Damone singing "Stranger in Paradise." The clips looked like what they were, but the "Christmas Carol" was surprisingly good, considering it had been cut to an approximate 20-minute running time from the original 60 minutes. With George Murphy as genial host, Leo the Lion did not intrude too noisily. SCREEN DIRECTORS PLAYHOUSE: "The Silent Partner," NBC -TV, i/2 Hour, 8 P.M., EST, Wednesday, December 21, 1955. Film. For Eastman Kodak Co. Director George Marshall, whose theatrical motion picture credits include some of the screen's top comedies, was more than a little handicapped in the script for his contribution to this series. "The Silent Partner," starring three great screen veterans — Buster Keaton, Zasu Pitts and Joe E. Brown — has some good moments but they are random. The story is a sentimental and slapstick vignette about a former silent screen star, Keaton, who, in the course of a current Academy Award ceremony, is rediscovered by his former director, Brown. Most of the action takes place in a fairly lively lunch room, and includes several extensive slices from a simulated, old silent film comedy. Had "The Silent Partner" a more clearly defined point of view, to emphasize either the present situation or the one of the past, it might well have been one of the series' best. To add authenticity to the Academy proceedings— seen via the lunchroom TV screen — Bob Hope makes a special guest appearance as master of ceremonies. THE MILLIONAIRE: "The Story of Wilbur Gerrold." CBS -TV, «/2 Hour, 9 P.M., EST, Wednesday, December 21, 1955. Film. For Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company. Rhys Williams offers the role of embittered, unwillingly pensioned and impecunious former college professor, for whom Christmas is anything but joyful. In keeping with the season, this number of the series has a Christmas "message." It reaches a bit into the bag of cliches, but manages to come through reasonably well, if the viewer is willing to accept the thematic possibility that a check for $1,000,000 (tax-free) could land in one's lap. Williams, reduced to the paying but disturbing job of a department store Santa Claus, finds himself drawn to the spirit of the season despite himself, and when Motion Picture Daily the million arrives, is able to cast a couple of miracles in the shape of bringing a couple of soldiers home from Japan for Christmas leave. Marvin Miller, Cheerio Meredith, Michael Bryant and Evelynne Eaton are satisfactorily cast. It's a Don Fedderson production. FATHER KNOWS BEST. NBC-TV, Vz Hour, 8:30 P.M., EST, Wednesday, December 21, 1955. Film. For Scott Paper Company. There is a quality of naturalness about Robert Young's performance as the "Father" in this successful series which has a good deal to do with the result. He has also able support from Jane Wyatt as his wife, and from Elinor Donohue, Billy Gray and Lauren Chapin as their children. Again, of course, geared to the Christmas season, Father decides his family cares too little about the old-fashioned verities connected with Christmas, and compels them to accompany him into the hills for a real Christmas tree. A snowstorm strands them and they come upon a cabin, whose occupant, Wallace Ford, brings them a notion of what Christmas might mean. When the forest ranger arrives to take in the usurping Ford, Young persuades the ranger to cover the situation for the benefit of the youngsters. It's all good fun, well handled, capably produced and seasonably entertaining. William D. Russell was the director of the Rodney Young production for Screen Gems. FILM COMMERCIALS FOR FILMS MADE ON LOCATION OVERSEAS Some of that world-wide "location" atmosphere that's been adding authenticity, to say nothing of certain style and class, to an increasing number of theatrical motion pictures recently, soon will be showing up on the nations TV screens. The importance of television as an advertising promotion medium for feature films has shaped a new trend among American producers working on location in Europe. At hand last week were reports of at least three such producers who had actually added shooting days to production schedules in order to make advertising and promotion footage — not to be confused with "trailers" or "clips" in the usual sense. The trend is reported to have begun earlier this year when Sheldon Reynolds added several extra shooting days to his feature-length "Foreign Intrigue" to film special footage with Robert Mitchum in Sweden, Vienna and on the Riviera for ultimate TV consumption. In addition, Mr. Reynolds put together a special 10 minute TV -slanted news subject detailing how the piano theme of the Intrigue TV series was expanded, orchestrated and recorded in Paris for the feature. Currently in France producing and directing "Ambassador's Daughter," Norman Krasna has followed a similar procedure, filming eight TV commercials (one-minute spots and 20-second station breaks) with his stars Olivia De Havilland, John Forsythe and Myrna Loy. Mr. Krasna also plans an eight-minute featurette on the film. In Rome, director King Vidor is preparing a so-called "prestige" short subject on the historical scope of his production of Paramount's "War and Peace." There is an interesting sidelight to the business. By law in several European countries, notably France and Italy, a short subject must be played with a feature film, receiving automatically three to seven per cent of the main feature's gross. American producers who release a short subject, appropriately dubbed with a language track, as a package with their main feature, can thus take a share of the full gross. In most cases, this is enough to cover the costs of the featurettes and even to produce a profit. s