Motion Picture Herald (Jan-Feb 1940)

8 MOTION PICTURE HERALD January 13, 1940 This Week in ttie News Bioff Indicted WILLIAM BIOFF, lATSE studio union leader, on Wednesday was indicted on two counts of income tax evasion by the federal grand jury in Los Angeles. He was to be surrendered Thursday by his attorney, George M. Breslin. Concluding one phase of the investigation of several months' duration, the federal grand jurors voted a true bill charging Bioff had failed to pay proper taxes during 1936 and 1937, the latter year being a period in which he received what he described as a $100,000 loan from Joseph M. Schenck. The Government charges that Bioff should have paid $4,384 in taxes on an income of $33,573 in 1936 and $80,250 on income of $176,417 in 1937. Instead, according to Charles H. Carr, assistant United States attorney general in charge of the probe, Bioff in 1936 paid a tax of $105.92 on an asserted income of $5,710 and in 1937 paid a levy of $193.50 on an asserted income of $7,205. Maximum penalty on each count is five years in jail or $10,000 fine or both. Mr. Breslin and Michael Luddy, attorney for the Los Angeles Central Labor Council, Wednesday issued the following statement: "We have not yet seen the indictment and have no definite knowledge of its exact charges. However, we assume the indictment involves matters which were investigated several years ago by the Sacramento grand jury and by the legislative interim committee on capital and labor and lately by the local federal grand jury. Although we do not intend to try the case in any place other than the proper court we do feel that Mr. Bioff's complete innocence of any possible charge will be definitely established in due course." While Illinois' Governor Henry Horner was preparing to open hearings this week, in Springfield, on the extradition of Bioff from California to Illinois, to serve out a 17-year-old Chicago jail term, Bioff, still in Hollywood, was leading his studio unions in new attacks on the producers, charging that they were not living up to the 10 per cent wage increase recently granted to the various crafts. He was answered immediately by Joseph M. Schenck, as head of the producers' labor committee. Bioff's extradition was sought in the Illinois state capital by Thomas J, Courtney, Cook County prosecutor; it has been opposed by Senator Abraham L. Marovitz, Bioff's attorney at Springfield. The proceedings have developed into a political cause celebre, with Democratic Governor Horner under criticism from Republicans of the state and from the Chicago Daily News, a leader in the move for apprehension of Bioff. It was in the News' columns, and also in the columns of many of the country's ^papers, that Westbrook Pegler, syndicated writer, first revealed, several months ago, that Bioff had not finished a six months 1922 jail term in Chicago, though his appeal from it, which obtained his release, had been rejected. Bioff was arrested in Los Angeles, on a wired request from the Chicago authorities. He walked free for two weeks on bail, and, when the Chicago authorities did not follow with extradition proceedings, the Los Angeles police released him. The Illinois Governor, on December ' 20th, postponed hearings to this week, to allow filing of briefs by attorneys for the state and the coast labor leader. The previous delays, and this postponement caused editorial criticism, and Governor Horner filed a $250,000 libel suit against the Chicago Daily News. Bioff, who said the charge had been made to hamper his labor activities, led other studio labor leaders to a Hollywood conference on Tuesday, with Mr. Schenck and his producers' committee, after making new threats of a strike. The strike possibility was soon dispelled when the producers agreed strictly to observe jurisdictional lines as set up by the studio unions, and the wage increases. The union had claimed that, since the recently granted ten per cent wage increase, the producers were using laborers to do grips' work, grips to do gaffers' work, and that they were paying these classes lower scales. Dies' "Reds'' BUILDING up to his public pleading of Wednesday, January 3rd, before the new Congress, for funds to continue his investigation of un-American activities. Representative Martin Dies (Dem., Texas), the week before had gone to the press of America with loud charges of a Hollywood motion picture colony penetrated by Communism. The impression had been left that the Congressman would cite Hollywood "cases" in a 20-page report. That report was not made a part of Mr. Dies' formal committee report to Congress, nor has it been made public since. The underlying reason, as heard in Washington Wednesday was: Disinclination of certain members of Mr. Dies' committee to "smear" individuals without definite detailed evidence of their affiliation vvith Communist or other subversive organizations. Meanwhile, Mr. Dies still was awaiting the word of Congress that would kill or continue his investigations. It was pointed out that no public hearings had ever been held on the California situation and that at least another two months work would be necessary to develop the details of the investigators' discoveries. $ Sleuths UNCLE SAM'S minatory eye, constantly on the alert for attempted evasions of federal admission tax payments, is determined to keep down violations. This was the word from the Washington headquarters of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue this week. Indicating that "tax evasions do not pay," Commissioner Guy T. Helvering pointed out that during the past year a considerable but unspecified amount of additional admission taxes were collected and, in addition, some offenders, unnamed, were fined or imprisoned. The Washington report carried no intimation that any great difficulty is being encountered in obtaining true reports and complete tax payments from most motion picture theatres, and left the suggestion that ticket brokers and cabarets, whose activities are harder to check, are the chief offenders. Regardless, sky-rocketing admission tax collections in the last few months have caused the U. S. Treasury Department to make an upward revision of its original estimate of revenue from that source for 1939-40, from $19,200,000 to $20,500,000, as reported on page 17. The Italian Scene AMERICAN motion pictures still head the list of foreign films imported into Italy according to the official figures of the Italian Film Monopoly which reach this country via La Cinematographie Frangaise. The Italian motion picture monopoly has released figures for the 1937-38 and 1938-39 seasons. The American companies stopped distribution in Italy on December 31, 1938, and the majors have not been sending pictures since that date. Even though the second period tabulated runs up to June, 1939, six months after the American companies withdrew, it was pointed out that the American pictures listed for the 1938-39 season could have been imported before the first of the year. In the first period, from July 1, 1937 to May 30, 1938 the following foreign pictures were imported to Italy: 173 American, 25 French, 22 German, 13 English, 3 Austrian and 1 Hungarian. From July 1, 1938 to May 30, 1939 the tabulation shows 144 American, 40 French, 21 German, 16 English and 1 Spanish. Despite the Rome-Berlin axis France gained considerably and Germany lost slightly in the number of pictures brought into Italy for the recent period. Forty-four features and 96 shorts were produced in Italy in 1938 according to the Italian Library of Information.