The Exhibitor (1966)

Stanley Warner Boost In Earnings Means Stock Split, Dividend Rise WILMINGTON, DEL. — Increased earn¬ ings, a planned 33/3 per cent dividend in¬ crease, and a proposed two-for-one stock split announced at the Jan. 12 stockholder meeting of Stanley Warner Corporation brought share owners to their feet in a standing “thank you” to management. Si H. Fabian, SW president, said he will recommend to the board of directors at its meeting to be held on Jan. 24 an increase in the regular dividend from 37/2 cents to 50 cents per share, payable Feb. 24, and will further recommend a two-for-one split of the common stock. Beginning with the May dividend, Fabian said, the recommended regular annual divi¬ dend rate on the new shares will be $1 per share, equivalent to $2 per share of present stock, an increase of 33/3 per cent. Consolidated profit for the first quarter of the current fiscal year, which ended Nov. 26, 1966, was up 38 per cent over the profit for the quarter ended Nov. 27, 1965. Both net profit and gross income set record highs for the quarter, he said. “Based on our operations to date,” Fabian told the share owners, “the profit for our sec¬ ond quarter, which ends Feb. 25, will also show a, favorable increase over the profit for the corresponding quarter last year. “As to our 1967 year as a whole, our pro¬ jections indicate there will be a significant profit, notwithstanding some uncertainties in the general business outlook.” Fabian, Samuel Rosen, executive vice-presi¬ dent, and Nathaniel Lapkin, first vice-president and chairman of the executive committee, were reelected to two-year terms on the sixmember board of directors, each receiving all but 50 of the 1,893,593 shares represented in person or by proxy at the meeting, approxi¬ mately 90.97 per cent of the outstanding 2,081,324 shares. Selection of Price Waterhouse & Co. as inde¬ pendent public accountants for Stanley Warner for the fiscal year ending Aug. 26 was ap¬ proved by a vote of 1,883,164 shares in favor, 9,893 opposed, and 536 present and not voting. All six directors were present, including Dr. Charles F. McKhann, chairman of the board of Chemway Corporation, which is engaged in the pharmaceutical business; W. Stewart McDonald, SW vice-president and treasurer; and David Fogelson, SW general attorney and secretary. Former Judge George Tyler Coulson pre¬ sided at the meeting. Other SW officials pres¬ ent included Charles Schwartz, general coun¬ sel; Frank J. Damis, vice-president in charge of theatres in the Philadelphia and Washing¬ ton territories; Lee Foster, treasurer, theatre division, and Lewis S. Black, city manager, SW Wilmington theatres. Fabian told the stockholders that Stanley Warner’s profit for the quarter ended Nov. 26 was $2,576,000, equivalent to $1.24 per share on the outstanding common stock. For the corresponding quarter of the prior year, the profit was $1,865,000 or 91 cents per share. In addition, Stanley Warner this year real¬ ized an extraordinary non-operating profit of $546,000, equivalent to 26 cents per share, from the sale of its Isodine gargle and anti Co-star Joan Collins presents an invitation to at¬ tend the special preview of Paramount's "Warning Shot" to Medal of Valor winner Eugene P. Fogarty as star David Janssen and Medal of Valor winner Wayne C. Haas look on. The preview is being held in honor of the 1966 recipients of the Los Angeles Police Medal of Valor. Seventeen winners and the mother of one patrolman who received it posthu¬ mously will attend. UA Fieldmen Meet NEW YORK — United Artists field repre¬ sentatives from the United States and Canada attended a series of conferences on the com¬ pany’s up-coming product held at the New York home office on Monday and Tuesday (Jan. 16 and 17). The fieldmen were to be shown advertising and publicity materials on the following pictures: Peter Brook’s “The Persecution and Assas¬ sination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade”; the Mirisch Corporation’s “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying”; the new James Bond thriller, “You Only Live Twice”; Harold Hecht’s “The Way West”; Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “The Honey Pot”; “A Fistful of Dollars”; “For A Few Dollars More”; and “Thunderbirds Are Go.” Field representatives present were Addie Addison, New Orleans; Peter Bayes, Denver; Bernard Evens, Kansas City; Don Fill, De¬ troit; Wally Heim, Chicago; Murry Lafayette, San Francisco; Nick Langston, Toronto; Max Miller, Philadelphia; Howard Pearl, Atlanta; Robert Rehme, Cincinnati; William Sholl and Peter Emmet, Beverly Hills; and Arnold Van Leer, Boston. septic and Thorexin cough medicine lines. In the November quarter last year, a net loss of $105,000 arising from the sale of marginal theatres was charged directly to earned sur¬ plus. The company operates 166 motion picture theatres and a television station, WAST-TV, Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, N.Y., and its government division is the prime contractor for space suits to be used by astronauts in the Apollo program. Pay-TV Exec Differs With Prof. On TV Future HARTFORD — Recent comments by tele¬ vision observer Dr. Roscoe L. Barrow on the state of programming have had “in-depth” response from an exponent of subscription television. Barrow, University of Cincinnati School of Law, was quoted in Allen M. Widem’s daily Hartford Times “Coast-to-Coast” column as recommending “balanced” programming on a network and national basis. Keigler E. Flake, general manager of WHCT-TV, the RKO General owned-andoperated STV project here, only such function¬ ing facility in the U. S., told Widem that Barrow’s recommendations “can and certainly ought to have further opportunity to be met by private enterprise. “To recommend further government regu¬ lation and further government committees and the more recently fashionable advisory com¬ mittee,” Flake added, “seems a way to cast off problems with the hope, not very often realized, that this will lead to some acceptable solution. “I’m wondering,” Flake went on, “if Dr. Barrow has given any consideration to the fact that subscription television, if authorized by the Federal Communications Commission to ex¬ pand beyond its test area and become a nation¬ wide business, could fill the very gaps he mentioned and a great many more he did not mention?” Barrow holds that existing regulations on standards of “balanced” programming should be changed so that the prime viewing hours would fall under separate application. The objective, apparently, is to stop restricting cultural and public affairs programming in off-hours. The country’s three major networks, understandably, have traditionally offered prime hours to their big advertisers. Moreover, Barrow wants a federal advisory committee to evaluate broadcasting in the public interest. He favors a non-commercial network service, government-subsidized. “It seems highly unreasonable and unneces¬ sary that the networks be forced to transform themselves when other forms of television could bring about a much more comprehensive solution,” Flake told Widem. “There are millions of people in this country — ‘a large minority’ — emphatically worthy of concern, who will never be watchers of com¬ mercial television except on relatively rare occasions. These people can and will be reached by subscription television; they must be if the business is to succeed.” “Sundown” Bow Set HOLLYWOOD— “Hurry Sundown,” Otto Preminger’s film based on the best selling novel, will be the first major motion picture to have a world premiere in 1967, it was announced jointly by Charles Boasberg, general sales manager of Parmount Pictures, and Eugene Klein, president of National General Theatres. “Hurry Sundown” will have its gala open¬ ing at the Chinese Theatre here on Thursday, Feb. 9. “Camelot” Premieres Set NEW YORK — “Camelot,” Jack L. Warner’s production of the musical play by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, will have its west coast premiere at Pacific’s Cinerama Dome Theatre in Hollywood on Nov. 11. Its world premiere will take place in New York Oct. 25 at the Warner. 12 MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITOR January 1 8, 1 967