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Motion Picture Daily
Tuesday, March 22, 191
Film Company Dividends $1,314,000 in February
From THE DAILY Bureau
WASHINGTON, March 21. Motion picture companies paid $1,314,000 in cash dividends in February, the Commerce Department reports. A year ago, they paid $1,725,000. For the first two months of the year, dividends paid bv firms in the industry' totalled $3,081,000 compared with $3,513,000 in the same period of 1959.
In the economy as a whole, publicly reporting corporations paid dividends of $420 million in February, up about 9 per cent from February, 1959. Most of the increase is attributed to the finance, utility, and chemical industries, but almost all other lines registered limited gains.
Skouras Will Address Texas Drive-In Meet
Special to THE DAILY DALLAS, March 21.— Spyros Skouras, 20th Century-Fox president, will address the ninth annual convention of the Texas Drive-in Theatre Owners Ass'n. next February, it was announced by Tim Ferguson, president.
The board of the Texas group will convene here April 12 at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel. At that time they will select the date, place and convention of the 1961 meetings.
Fox Plans Drive to Rebuild Attendance
(Continued from page 1) two years. Copies are being sent to exhibitors everywhere.
Announcing issuance of the special Dynamo edition yesterday, Alex Harrison, general sales manager, said he had been "deluged" by letters from exhibitors all over the country indicating their uncertainty as to the future of the industry.
"Exhibition, as our customers," Harrison said, "is the decisive link between production and distribution and the public. After reading this information-packed manual every exhibitor will know as much about 20th's production status as any officer of the company, here in New York or at the studio."
Harrison added that die exhibitors "have a right to know where they stand."
Calls It 'Design for Perpetuity'
In his message, called "Design for Perpetuity," Skouras admits that the goal of pre-TV patronage "is no small undertaking in these times" especially in light of the diminished audience of the previous decade.
"But," he adds, "I am convinced diat it will be a success in every sense of the word, if there is a continuously working unit among the three branches of our industry: production, distribution and exhibition. There is no alternative, for unless we work together as a team we will need
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lessly, but seriously jeopardize the future of our industry."
"Therefore, 1960 and the decade it inaugurates are a challenge, but, also, they present new opportunities for exaltation of a great industry," he adds.
Skouras pledges to exhibitors that 2()th-Fox will discharge its "responsibilities to exhibition through a longrange program and that it will "spon
Buddy Adler Charles Einfeld
sor new advancements about which more will be said in the not distant future."
Skouras then presents a resume of the product planned for 1960 and states that Fox will release 52 features, 30 of which will come from the studio. There will be one "blockbuster" each month and one "family trade" type pictures each month.
Promise of extensive advertising, publicity and exploitation expenditure is also made by Skouras. This will employ all media.
Promotion for Big and Small Films
The 20th-Fox head also pledges that promotion activity will not be confined to "block-busters." The company, he states, "will get solidly behind every release on a scale commensurate with its patronage potential."
Skouras says he is "very enthusiastic, very optimistic and very excited with what I know that our studio will deliver to our sales personnel, to exhibitors and to the public and with the merchandising plans we have in operation."
In another article in Dynamo Buddy Adler, production head, discusses the product line-up for 1960 and says he believes it "constitutes a program of individually outstanding mass entertainments that, properly exploited and sold to their vast audience potential, will meet with mutual profit and public satisfaction every test and make 1960 for their exhibitors throughout the world their most successful year."
'Nothing for Granted,' Says Harrison
Harrison writes that the 20th-Fox merchandising policy is to "take nothing for granted." Each feature release will be given individual treatment, first on a national basis and subsequently on the local level. He asserts that in today's market "there is no place for isolation of film salesmanship and showmanship," that they are an "indispensible and inseparable combination."
In another article Charles Einfeld, vice-president, compliments the com
pany's merchandising organizatit diroughout the U.S. and Canada ! well as abroad. "It is a predominant ! young group," he says, "led, as g ought to be, by well-seasoned expei ' whose thinking is every bit as ene-! getic as that of the youngest man <it the staff."
Expressing pride in the group; "unbeatable combination of ma* power and know-how" he says "tlj kind of a force does not have '< make speeches, lower the boom on i competition, or wash the industry dirty linen in public."
Voices Besolve for Next Decade
A general article on future pla 1 points out that Fox is celebrating i 45th anniversary this year and w strive in the next decade "to mal history anew."
Company trends for 1960 are list< as follows:
Investment of greater monies television exploitation of product, bo | nationally and locally.
Spending of more money on oi l door advertising in line with IJ nationwide increase in pleasure a|ii mobile ownership.
Acceleration of family parrona; through films of this specific appe;,
Development of new talent in ;f segments of picture-making.
Outlining plans beyond 19i Dynamo lists the following:
Speeded-up research for furuV! advancements in the physical sere image.
Perfection of Eidophor (theatre T system) with a trade demonstrati "in the not distant future."
Further streamlining of distributi and merchandising facilities and pi cedures.
Further company diversification.
The special "exhibitors report" being distributed also to leading nev papers, syndicates and financial pap<| throughout the nation.
The Dynamo is prepared and edit by 20th-Fox home office executi\ Roger Ferri.
MCA Sales, Earnings Set New High in 195*
Sales and net earnings of Mui Corp. of America for 1959 set n records, it was announced by J C. Stein, chairman of the board. A cording to the annual report issui to stockholders, net earnings in 19 were $5,186,066, compared to $< 328,442 in 1958.
Stein said that the net earnin of the company for 1959 represent an increase of about 20 per ce over 1958. Gross income increased $57,786,616 in 1959 as compared $48,429,749 in 1958.
After preferred dividends, the r earnings in 1959 were $1.28 p share on 3,995,735 outstandi shares, as compared with $1.18 p share on 3,595,735 outstandi shares in 1958. Adjusted for t same number of shares outstandi in 1959, net earnings per share 1958 were $1.06.
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