Motion Picture Daily (Jan-Mar 1957)

2 Motion Picture Daily Wednesday, January 23, 1 j' PERSONAL MENTION LOUIS ASTOR, Columbia Pictures sales executive, left here yesterday for a three-week business trip to the Midwest and Coast. Al Fisher, United Artists assistant exploitation manager, is in Kansas City from New York. • Alex Cherniavsky, concert impresario for African Consolidated Theatres, South Africa, will arrive in New York today from Johannesburg. • Audie Murphy and Claude Dauphin have left here for the Coast, en route to Saigon, Viet Nam, for the filming of "The Quiet American." • Martin Friedman, special sales representative for Artists-Producers Associates, has returned to New York from Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Don Sharpe, independent producer, will return to New York from London today via B.O.A.C. Cathy O'Domiell Slated As Breakfast Speaker HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 22 Cathy O'Donnell will be keynote speaker at the sixth annual Motion Picture Industry Communion Breakfast, Feb. 3, at the Hollywood Palladium, general chairman Douglas Bridges has announced. Lawrence Welk, Gil Lamb, Myron Floren and the Lennon sisters will head the entertainment program. Breakfast music will be furnished by Muzy Marcellino and his orchestra. Christensen Rites Today HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 22 Masonic funeral services will be held here tomorrow morning, at Gates, Kingsley and Gates mortuary chapel, for Victor J. Christensen, 57, assistant studio manager of 20th Century-Fox, who died Sunday of a heart attack. He was with the studio for 25 years. His widow and three children survive. TJ-I Cameraman Dies CHICAGO, Jan. 22-Floyd Traynham, 60, Universal-International newsreel cameraman here since the inception of the newsreel more than 25 years ago, died suddenly of a heart attack Monday night while covering a large Chicago grainery fire. He is survived by his wife and son. Harrison Predicts Industry's '57 Business 'Greatest Ever' By LESTER DINOFF The motion picture industry's business in the domestic market in 1957 will be the "greatest ever experienced" due to the line-up of top product which the distribution companies are releasing. This is the opinion of "bullish" Alex Harrison, ■ Alex Harrison general sales manager for 20th " CenturyFox , who has been conducting a series of national sales conferences in recent weeks. Harrison, who has already held sales meetings with his field people in Canada a n d Atlanta, will meet with 20th-Fox's Eastern sales division in Philadelphia today to set merchandising and promotional plans for an expanded product lineup of more than 50 pictures this year. The distribution executive yesterday pointed out that "business at the box office has picked up considerably. The visual drop-off in grosses following the New Year holiday period did not take place. This can only be attributed to the top product which my company and the other companies are offering. These films are ones which the public wants." Sees 'Turning Point' "The confidence of 20th CenturyFox in the future of the industry can and is being expressed in our policy to release a picture a week in 1957." Harrison declared. "I feel that the continued good business trend is a good omen and it may be the turning point in the industry," he added. "With the box office showing strength, we should all capitalize on it by letting the public know at the local level, by merchandising, advertising promotion, direct contact and word-of-mouth what our industry has to offer entertainment wise," Harrison said. "All branches of the industry could establish a top public relations campaign which could spread like wildfire and help attain the stature we once enjoyed," he said. West on 'South Pacific' George Skouras, president of Magna Theatres, accompanied by A. E. Bolengier, vice-president and treasurer, and Irving Cohen of Rheinheimer and Cohen, attorneys for Rodgers & Hammerstein, left here last night for the Coast to finalize production plans for "South Pacific" with Buddy Adler and Sid Rogell at the 20th CenturyFox studio. Am-Par's First Feature To Bow in New Orleans NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 22 "The Beginning of the End," the first film of Am-Par Productions, wholly-owned subsidiary of American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, will have its world premiere early in June at the downtown Chicago Theatre, with saturation bookings throughout Illinois and Indiana accompanying, Jerry Zigmond, chairman of the Am-Par advisory committee, disclosed at the group's first meeting which convened here yesterday at the Roosevelt Hotel. Zigmond said plans for a nationwide grass-roots exploitation plan to promote all Am-Par productions has been worked out. Quebec Censor Board To Make Cuts in 'Doll' TORONTO, Jan. 22. Warner Brothers' release "Baby Doll" will be cut by the Quebec board of censors before it is released to theatres in that province, it has been reported here. The film will not be available for showing until it has gone through what Quebec censor board chairman Alex Gagnon has described as "reconstruction." The controversial picture has been passed in the provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan but rejected in Alberta and New Brunswick. A spokesman at the Warner Bros, home office in New York, when informed of the Quebec board's action yesterday, made the following statement: "We will sue any theatre that cuts the picture. No theare has a legal right to cut the film— only Newtown Productions." (Newtown is Elia Kazan's firm which produced "Baby Doll.") Name Stern, Dollinger Allied Meet Delegates The membership of Allied Theatre Owners of New Jersey has appointed president Sidney Stern and Irving Dollinger as the unit's delegates at next week's Allied States Association drive-in convention in Cincinnati, it was reported yesterday. Stern, Dollinger and Wilbur Snaper, who will also attend the convention, will report back to the ATONJ memat its February meeting. ..JEWS ii ii i' \ ii i r Entertain Japanese Today Columbia Pictures International; day will entertain the entire dele tion here from Japan for the i\ Japanese Film Week at a luncheon the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. Lacy 1 Kastner, president of Columbia Intnational, will head the host confj gent. Among those attending will ' Jun Tsuchiya, consul-general ' Japan, and top executives of the N1 tion Picture Association of Ameri Brynner, Litvak Form Co. Actor Yul Brynner and producer rector Anatole Litvak have annount plans for formation of a company; which they will be partners for ij production of two films to be mf in Europe in 1957 and 1958. Litv will meet with the star in New York' early February to complete arranj ments with one of the major releasi' companies for distribution of the t films. Bergman To Aid 'Paris' Publicity and promotion for I forthcoming Warner Bros, relea "Paris Does Strange Things," whii> stars Ingrid Bergman, were discuss by the star with company executiy here on her weekend visit. Miss Bei man conferred with Robert S. Tfj linger, Warner vice-president, and ( Golden, advertising manager, on I cooperation in promoting the Mar release. ■ SDG Award to King Vidor Screen Directors Guild D. W. Gr fith Award for distinguished achiev ment in direction will be present to King Vidor at the SDG annu awards dinner to be held in Holl wood on Feb. 2. Vidor directed "W and Peace." I Showplace ot the Cast FOR YOUR SCREENINGS • Three Channel interlock projection • 16, 171/2 & 35 mm tape interlock • 16 mm interlock projection CUTTING & STORAGE ROOMS E Mtnr v fI'v. Quigley . Editor-in-Cluef Land Publisher; Sherwin Kane, Editor; James D. Ivers, Managing Editor; Richard Gertner, News Editor; Floyd E. 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