Motion Picture Daily (Apr-June 1956)

uesday, April 17, 1956 Motion Picture Daily SARTB REVIEWS: (Continued from page 1) lent show ever staged by the indusy. Displays, including the latest in nprovement and design of electronic juipment, cover 35,000 square feet : space in Exhibition Hall, where savy equipment manufactured by 31 wnpanies is on exhibit. Spokesmen predicted that WNBQ's love to color, made yesterday, will icrease the demand for color receiv:s and, as production increases, reuce the price. About 15 per cent ? the nation's 35,000 to 50,000 presit color sets are believed to be in le Chicago area. RCA to Aid Other Manufacturers Radio Corporation of America exects to produce 200,000 sets this ;ar and a major mail order house cently offered a color receiver at 595. Additionally, RCA has anxinced that it will share with other )lor-TV receiver makers information mcerning the RCA production proisses. General Electric Co. will enter the )lor TV receiver market in the last alf of this year, it was announced y Herbert Riegelman, department ;neral manager. Although technical stalls of the GE color sets were with;ld, both table and console models ill be marketed, it was reported. Color sets will be manufactured at lectronics Park in Syracuse, N. Y., here preparation of production lines is been in progress for some time, entative plans call for introduction color receivers together with the impany's 1957 line of black and hite receivers at the June Furniture !arket in Chicago. How many color ts GE will produce this year de3nds entirely on the market, Riegelan said. 4,3 j Closed Circuit Firm Expanding John R. Howland, general sales anager of Dage Television Division, hompson Products, Inc., Michigan ity, Ind., manufacturers of closed rcuit TV equipment, disclosed, that j iey are expanding sales efforts to in! ude the yet untapped foreign mar! :ts. Howland said industrial appli| itions of closed circuit TV in Eu'pe, Africa and South America have ready begun to follow the lead set i American companies. loover to London LONDON, April 16. -George oover, Variety Club's Internationa] lief barker, is scheduled to visit ondon early next month. He will 2 entertained privately at luncheon f the crew of the British Tent on lay 3 and will fly to New York mediately thereafter to prepare for >e Variety international convention. et 'Brave One' Simultaneous world premieres in i foreign capitals are being set up r June by RKO for King Bros.' Hie Brave One." Already set are ondon, Paris and Mexico City. Conmed dates are expected shortly for msterdam, Rome and Madrid. Toy Tiger Universal Exhibitors who may feel that they've been giving their patrons an overdose of sex, violence, murder and bloodshed should find "Toy Tiger" a welcome relief. This is the type of fairy tale that Hans Christian Andersen or Grimm might have written if they were banging away at their typewriters today. It's a light, whimsical, pleasing— and at times hilarious— piece of entertainment that is devoid of social problems, international crises or economic significance. It was designed to amuse, period, and it does that very well. Jeff Chandler, Laraine Day and Tim Hovey are the central characters, although the pivot is young Hovey, that seven-year-old youngster who scored quite a hit in "The Private War of Major Benson." Miss Day portrays an executive of a New York advertising agency. The staff doesn't know that she is a widow and has a little boy in a boarding school in upstate New York. When Miss Day assigns her art director, Chandler, to locate a certain artist whose work is desired by a client, Chandler has to go to the area in which the boarding school is located. And thereby hangs the story. Young Hovey, never having known a father, has invented some wild tales about his fancied dad whom the lad has described as a big game hunter, much to the envy of his classmates. When the boy is pressed as to the whereabouts of his father by a skeptical student, Hovey makes the mistake of saying that his father is arriving that day. The whole school turns up at the bus station. Hovey, therefore, has to acquire a fictitious dad and he lights on Chandler, who, eventually, goes along with the gag, not knowing that the boy is the son of his boss. That's the situation. And, as is to be expected, there are complications resulting in the disclosure of the boy's mother's identity, the development of the romance and the happy ending. The picture is loaded with laughs stemming from situations that are a bit unbelievable, but it doesn't matter. The whole thing was built for wholesome, family entertainment and it achieves its purpose. In a print by Technicolor, the picture was produced by Howard Christie and directed by Jerry Hopper from a screenplay by Ted Sherdman based on a story by Frederick Kohner and Marcella Burke. Others in the cast are Cecil Kellaway, Richard Haydn and David Janssen. Running time, 88 minutes. General classification. For July release. AL STEEN Quincannon, Frontier Scout Bel-Air — United Artists It is only natural to associate Tony Martin with a musical, but his fans will hear nary a note from his melodious voice in this yarn about the expansion of the West. However, action fans should find it to their liking, provided they are not too critical. One of the big selling angles is the camera work and the color by DeLuxe which capture the grandeur and splendor of the Utah desert with vivid realism. As Quincannon, Martin resigns from the army after the massacre of General Custer and his men, only to return to the service to help the garrison at Fort Smith to recover stolen weapons. Peggy Castle handles the romantic interest capably, but the more convincing roles are enacted by John Bromfield, as an army lieutenant, and John Doucette, as a sergeant, who join Martin in the scouting job. John Higgins and Don Martin wrote the screenplay which tells of the Indians attacking a wagon train bound for the fort and carrying off 800 repeating rifles. Since it was a secret shipment, the army's under cover work is threatened. Martin, as the scout, is asked to take the job of investigating the matter and recovering the weapons. He and his partners succeed in destroying the weapons before the Indians have a chance to use them and arrest a Fort Smith captain for his part in selling the weapons to the Indians. Martin, as a reward, is reinstated in the Army, promoted to the rank of major and wins the love of Miss Castle. Produced by Howard W. Koch and directed by Lesley Selander, the picture also features John Smith, Ron Randell, Morris Ankrum, Peter Mamakos and Ed Hashim. Aubrey Schenck was the executive producer. Running time, 83 minutes. General classification. Release date not set. JACK EDEN Barry ( Continued from page 1 ) fornia for television production at the M-G-M studios and that he will make his headquarters here. Barry will report directly to Loew. Barry, prior to joining the William Morris Agency, was vice-president in charge of radio and television programming for the National Broadcasting Co. Previously, he was in a similar capacity at the American Broadcasting Co. A native of Newton, Mass., he started his career in the advertising department of the Boston "Globe." TV Interest in WB (Continued from page 1 ) in the negotiation state. He stated that the high interest evinced by WGN, Storer Broadcasting Co., Lever Brothers and the big agencies may produce the first actual sales as early as tomorrow. The lot of 754 pictures has been broken down into 13 groups of 52 pictures each. A sales division comprising 15 top account men will sell national accounts in all key cities. According to present plans, 26 pictures have been allocated for network sale, with an additional 52 pictures earmarked for national sale to large firms. Some deals may also be worked out with national advertisers on a. spot basis. 52-Film Packages Planning not to go into all-ornothing deals, Rich said sales will be made to stations on the basis of packages of 52 at a time. Calling the market one of greatest flexibility, negotiations, he said, will be carried out according to circumstances, station conditions and the market. All films will be identified with the Warner Brothers name. Promotional plans call for a kit containing newspaper mats, slides for on-the-air promotion and one-minute trailers. Air date has been set as July 1, 1956. Six hundred negatives have already been cleared. As for the "Popeye" series, on which they purchased all merchandising rights last Thursday, Rich said information on all shorts will be forthcoming in New York next week. 'Carousel* London Premiere Set for TV LONDON, April 16.-"Carousel" is to have a gala premiere at 20th Century-Fox's Carlton Theatre here tomorrow. Fox officials claim that it will be the "first, true, full-scale television premiere ever mounted by a film company." It is the first occasion, they say, when a film company has planned its premiere in conjunction with BBC's Television Service and to fit into the latter's program. The proceedings will be filmed by the BBC and broadcast later in the evening, with excerpts from the film and an interview with Shirley Jones, who is flying in from New York specially for the occasion.