Motion Picture Daily (Jul-Sep 1957)

4 Motion Picture Daily Wednesday, July 10, 1957 Television Today REVIEW: Band of Angels Warner Bros. Lehman Boosts 20t h-Fox Holdings fo 25,000 From 77/H DAILY Bureau WASHINGTON, July 9.-Robert Lehman bought 5,000 shares of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. common in May, bosting his holdings to 25,000 shares, according to a report by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The report covered trading by officers and directors in company stocks between May 11 and June 10. It also showed James A. Van Fleet buying 1,000 shares, boosting his total holding to 2,700. B. Gerald Cantor bought 3,500 shares of National Theatres common for a total holding of 26,000 shares, and A. M. Ahlskog bought 200 shares, to bring his total to 300. Randolph C. Wood sold 2,100 Paramount Pictures shares, dropping his total to 39,900, while Duncan G. Harris increased his holdings to 2,500 shares with a 500 share purchase. A purchase of 1,000 shares of American Broadcasting Paramount Theatres common was reported by Herbert B. Lazarus, who then held 1,500 shares. Robert H. Hinckley reported a 1,000 shares purchase in No vember 1956, his total holding at that time. Edwin Van Pelt sold 1,910 shares of Republic Pictures common in May, dropping his holding to 2,500 shares. Sam Wolf bought 800 shares of Allied Artists Pictures common for a total of 5,950 shares. G. Ralph Branton reported that in August 1955 he acquired 12,000 Allied Artists shares through the company's stock purchase plan, which gave him a total of 39,725 at that time. His wife then held 2,200 shares. L. A. Bow of 'Alice' For Benefit of CARE The Rank Organization production of "A Town Like Alice" will have its American premiere for the benefit of CARE, the international relief-assistance organization, at the Beverly Canon Theatre in Los Angeles on July 18, it was announced yesterday by Irving Sochin, general sales manager for Rank Film Distributors of America, Inc. Civic officials from Los Angeles and a number of Hollywood luminaries, including top distribution and exhibition representatives, will attend the premiere, for which tickets are also available to the public. Guild Films forms New Company Abroad Formation of a special subsidiary, Guild Television Internacional S.A., to handle the expanding foreign TV program activities of Guild Films Co., Inc., has been announced by R. R. Kaufman, president. The new company is a Panama corporation, with offices in Panama City, Mexico City, London, Rome and Dusseldorf, in addition to New York. Under the charter, Guild Internacional is empowered to produce, distribute, sell and license television programs, motion pictures, commercials, photoplays and other entertainment activities. The directors are: R. R. Kaufman, George J. DeMartini, Jane Kaufman, Arthur Gross and Sydney A. Mayers. Arthur Gross will serve as managing director of the new company. 'Lady LucW to Bow "Lady Luck," a new five-a-week audience and at-home participation show featuring actor Keefe Brasselle, makes its debut over the ABC Television Network, Monday, Sept. 30 (4:30 to 5 P.M., EDT). "Lady Luck" was created by Walt Framer, creatorproducer of "Strike It Rich" and "The Big Payoff." Who^sWhere Gordon L. Ward has joined the NARTB as a field representative. □ Henry W. Cox has been appointed national program sales manager for the ABC Television Network, effective Monday, it was announced by Eugene C. Wyatt, national sales manager for ABC-TV. Cox is leaving the post of manager of radio and television programming for General Mills, Inc., to rejoin the American Broadcasting Co. □ Betty Boucher has been promoted to head of the American Broadcasting Network Station Clearance Department. She has been with the network since 1950 when she joined the accounting department. Race relations and miscegenation just prior to and during the Civil War from Kentucky to New Orleans furnish the dramatic material for this story adapted from a novel by Robert Penn Warren and directed by Raoul Walsh, with Clark Gable and Yvonne De Carlo in the two principal roles. It's loaded with power-packed situations and comes at a time when national interest in civil rights and segregation is at a high pitch. The "angels" referred to derisively in the title are northern soldiers. Public reactions probably will be violent both north and south of the Mason and Dixon line. Miss De Carlo returns to her father's Kentucky plantation from a Cincinnati girls' school to find she is a chattel of his debt-ridden estate following his death, because her mother had been a slave. She is seized by a debtor and taken to New Orleans where she is sold to the highest bidder, Gable, planter and former slave ship captain. Gable treats her as a white woman and she gradually falls in love with him and lives with him an a plantation. The war comes. With other planters who have burned their crops, Gable becomes a fugitive from the military hangmen. Sidney Poitier, colored, who had been reared and educated by Gable, despises Miss De Carlo because she is posing as white. A northern lieutenant saves her from seizure by a northern soldier whom she has "insulted." The lieutenant takes her to a dance given by General Butler. There she meets Captain Canavan (Torin Thatcher), former divinity student, who tries to seduce her by threatening to expose her. In the swift current of events Poitier helps Gable to escape by boat. Miss De Carlo chooses to accompany him. Presumably the grim portrayal of villainy and cruelty by both the southern advocates of slavery and the northern soldiers is based on historical facts. John Twist, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts adapted the screen play from Warren's novel. Singing by negro choruses furnish the onlv relief from more than two hours of tension. Gable is impressive as the slave-owning planter who has a streak of kindness beneath a stern, power-thirsty exterior. Miss De Carlo remains convincingly imperious even after she has to accept her status as a slave girl-legitimate prey for planters, soldiers, fellow-slaves. She fights them all. They are a great pair of exploitable names in a story that will stir enormous word-of-mouth reactions and probably will become one of the important grossers of the year. Running time, 127 minutes. Adult classification. Release, July 10. James M. Jerauld One Man's TViews ^ — ^ By Pinky Herman **'^TrAHE Arlene Francis Show," new half hour across the board mornJ. ing TVariety program, will bow in Monday, Aug. 12 (10:00 ayem). . . . Sheldon Reynolds has signed Pat O'Neal and British looker Hazel Court to co-star in the forthcoming CBSituation comedy, "Dick & The Duchess." . . . Chalk up a positive hit for Pickwick Music's latest ditty, "Through The Eyes of Love," which has just been waxed on Columbia bv Doris Dav. A great lyric by Albert Beach is matched by an ear-caressing melody clefFed by Sid (Too Young) Lippman. Deejays will really latch onto this one. . . . Prexy Sig Shore of King-Shore Films on a two-week business trip to Hollywood. Veep Steve Markelson is minding the Park Avenue 'store' in Gotham. . . . Lon Clark, the Sunday Morning "WNBComedv Weeklv Man," writes all the tuneful moppet ditties which he sings on the program. . . . That dynamic young exec who purchased the stock shot libraries of Miles, Advance and Progress, respectively, has merged them with Filmvideo Releasing Corp. thus making available to motion picture and television producers, more than 5 million feet of unusually fine film to fit every need. . . . Continuing the policy of presenting filmed interviews with world leaders, "Face The Nation" this CBSundav will run off a filmed interview with Premier Huseyn Suhrawardv of Pakistan. Program previously featured interviews with Kruschev (Russia) Tito (Jugoslavia) and Nehru (India). # -fr # The colorful and entertaining panel-quizzer, "Masquerade Party," packaged by Ed Wolf Productions, which moved over to the NBChannels last March, has just signed as co-sponsor (alternate Wednesdays) the Max Factor Co. Associated Products, Inc. is the other tab-picker-upper. . . . The rapidly expanding indie TV producer, Fordel Films takes another entire building located at 1079 Nelson Ave. in the Bronx. . . . David Piel has started shooting a series of 104 animated telefilms at the Biltmore Studios in New York's lower East Side. Piel, himself a cartoonist of note, will also do the animation for the series, "Barnaby," based on the popular cartoon strip. . . .