Motion Picture Herald (May-Jun 1936)

May 9, 19 3 6 MOTION PICTURE HERALD (7 MGM CONVENTION OPENS MONDAY Cowdin's new ownership and management, now is considering a continuance of his producing career. United Artists denied a report that he was going with that company. In any event he will produce for 1936-37. Leichter & Hoffberg-Beaumont Pictures Mitchell Leichter will participate in 1936-37 activities through a new enterprise in which Jack H. Hoffberg will be associated, producing eight Conway Tearle and six Margaret Morris features, and distributing in the United States through various states right exchanges, and in Europe through Guaranteed Pictures. Mr. Leichter has returned to Hollywood to start production of the first feature. The Tearle productions will be action melodramas with musical backgrounds, and those starring Miss Morris will be straight action. Lloyd Productions Harold Lloyd's company is searching for material for the comedian, who was in New York to make a distribution deal. Mentone Productions Next season's Mentone operations will be conducted from a new home office at the RKO Building in Rockefeller Center, the company having moved from the Knickerbocker Building at Times Square. Mercury Fanchon Royer will produce six features in 1936-37 for Mercury Film Laboratory interests, delivery starting in August. Sam Katzman is understood to be set to produce two features next season for Mercury, starting with "Parole," featuring Eddie Nugent and Lucille Lund, from a screenplay by Al Martin, with direction by Robert F. Hill. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Al Lichtman will probably preside at the annual Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer sales convention, opening May 11th at the Palmer House in Chicago, where sales and production and home office executives will hear the details of 1936-37 program and policies, embracing 51 features. The convention will last four days. With some 40 out of the announced 49 features already completed this season, the company now is engaged in unprecedented production activities that have necessitated the withdrawal of all studio guest visiting privileges. The new season's plans in Culver City are well in hand, the company having re-signed J. Walter Ruben, director ; Stuart Erwin, actor ; John Barrymore, actor, re-signed to a long term agreement ; Ray Bolger, dancer ; May Robson, actress ; Albert Persoff, assistant to Lawrence Weingarten ; Spencer Tracy, actor ; Edmund Lowe, actor ; George S. Kaufman, S. N. Behrman, William Slavens McNutt, and J. Ainsworth Morgan, all writers ; William Anthony McGuire, director, writer and producer ; Seymour Felix, dance director ; Al Lewin, associate producer ; Franz Waxman, musical director and conductor. In addition, new contracts have been given to Eleanor Powell, for "Born to Dance" and "Great Guns" ; Robert Taylor, to appear with Greta Garbo in "Camille," her first on her return from Sweden ; Joseph Calleia, Edmund Lowe and Edith Atwater, players ; M'aurine Watkins, writer, assigned to "Libeled Lady" ; Rupert Santley, to write an original ; Joseph Santley, director ; Winifred Shotter, player ; Sam Marx, associate producer ; Jerry Mayer, brother of Louis B. Mayer, as business executive of the John M. Stahl unit; Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, to write a story for the Marx brothers, and Natalie Jarson, Billie Burke and Jeanette MacDonald, actresses. Extensive plans for producer Harry Rapf already embrace four stories : "One Man Came TRADE CONFERENCES RESUME ON MONDAY The meetings between the large distributors— except Warner Brothers — and exhibitors of the country, as represented by the Motion Picture Theatre Owners of America, to establish fair trade practices and the machinery for creating harmonious relations, will be resumed in New York immediately following the weekend, when Edward L. Kuykendall's MPTOA committee returns to New York to determine the individual attitudes of the distributors on the ten-point platform offered by the exhibitors as a solution to unfair trade practices. The meetings will be held individually with each distributor, and follow a joint conference three weeks ago at which the entire matter was placed by Mr. Kuykendall's committee before the majors. Home," "Troubadour Trouble," "Yellowstone or Bust" and 'We Went to College." Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's British-made features will be released in the United States, when a new unit is launched shortly in London. Four already are set for production : "Silas Marner," "Wind and the Rain," "The Yank at Oxford" and "Rage in Heaven," all in charge of Ben Goetz, who returned last week to New York from a study of the situation in England. He will confer at the home office with Louis B. Mayer, production general in California, who is making the trip for the purpose. MGM also will build a film laboratory in London, to handle both outside work and release prints of product from Hollywood for United Kingdom distribution. Metro's foreign sales department in New York has been enlarged considerably. Arthur M. Loew, in charge, is now in South America. Nor has the company progressed on 1936-37 features product plans alone, much attention having already been given to the short subject program. Inspired by the reception of "Sequoia," feature released last year, MGM will have a series of short subjects based on wild animal life, Vance Hoyt, naturalist, having competed the story for the first. A new comedy team, Patsy Kelly and Lyda Roberti, will appear in Hal Roach two-reelers, and Carey Wilson, writer and speaker, will write "Side Streets of Hollywood," a new series for which he will also act as commentator. Jack Chertok will produce the first, "The Extra." Another new MGM short subject series will be "Milestones of the Theatre," starting witli "The Bard of Avon," about Shakespeare. Mr. Roach again will make 12 "Our Gang" comedies. Robert Benchley is set for a series, too, and, in addition, the company also announces a new Benchlev film, "How to Cure a Cold" ; a one-reel musical, "Song of the Plains"; and a new Ted Healy release, with Peter Smith narrating. Metro's 1936-37 short subject program will be approximately the same, numerically, as this season, when 93 single and two-reel films will be distributed. It is possible that some will be made in the east. Louis B. Mayer's party arrived in New York this week from the Culver City studio prepara tory to attending the Chicago sales convention, at which a total of 250 will attend from the home office, studio and branch offices in the field, including division and branch managers, salesmen and chief bookers. All sessions will be held at the Palmer House. Accompanying Mr. Mayer eastward, and continuing with him to Chicago, were Al Lichtman, Howard Strickling and Howard Dietz. The convention will have special significance in connection with the presentation of William F. Rodgers, formerly eastern sales manager, as the new general sales manager, succeeding the late Felix F. Feist. Also, Thomas Connors and Edward M. Saunders will be officially installed as eastern and western sales managers, respectively. National Film National Film Company has been launched in production by Lawrence W. Fox, Jr., who resigned as a vice president and voting trustee of Standard Capital Company, controlled by the J. Cheever Cowdin interests which now own Universal. Mr. Fox, however, will continue as a director of Standard. The new National company will arrange preliminary financing for "meritorious film enterprises and aid in their development from the initial stages." Offices will be established at first in New York, Hollywood and London, Mr. Fox sailing for England for that purpose on Friday, and also to study the motion picture situation while there. National Pictures Stuart Paton has started production on the new National Pictures' "Wings Over San Antonio," at San Antonio, in Texas, and interiors will be done at Universal's studio in California. Nuovo Mondo Pictures Joseph Brandt's new Nuovo Mondo Pictures has set 40 Italian talkers for release in 1936-37, 19 of which have already been selected, under a direct arrangement with Benito Mussolini's government at Rome. Mr. Brandt, working from headquarters at 1270 Sixth Avenue in Rockefeller Center, New York, has been establishing branches at Los Angeles and San Francisco, and has established a distribution channel in New England through Academy. He will be represented in Chicago and Philadelphia, too, followed by the establishment of similar arrangements in Detroit and Cleveland, all through existing independent exchanges. Pan-American-Hoffman M. H. Hoffman, Junior, president of the new Pan-American Studios, at Miami, announced a budget of $4,500,000 on 30 features to be produced in Florida for 1936-37 release. The company is reputedly spending $600,000 erecting studio buildings, actual filming starting June 1st, and backed by Florida capital. Paramount The annual sales convention will be held June 5th, at a place to be determined, and to be followed by three regional conventions, with a likely schedule of 65 features, the same as this year, and 113 short subjects. John Edward Otterson, president, returned to the home office at Times Square this week from a series of new-product conferences with studio and home office heads at Hollywood, where the management decided that henceforth "A" pictures will be budgeted at $500,000 and "B" films at $200,000 or less. Attending the conferences in California with Mr. Otterson were Adolph Zukor, chairman of the board; Watterson Rothacker, William Le Baron and Russell Holman. Mr. Zukor returned to New York two weeks ago and left for Hollywood again this week. "With the exception of four productions, but