Motion Picture Herald (May-Jun 1944)

ON THE HOLLYWOOD THE swing, in full tide, is away from war pictures in bulk. The swing, make no mistake, is not away from war pictures of quality. It is easily apparent to anyone who keeps his schnozzle reasonably close to Hollywood earth that the over-all drift is clearly in the direction of greater discrimination in story selectivity. The more astute the judgment, the less hazardous the guess and the greater the possibility something of merit will emerge. Even at that good material can go wrong, too, for no one can compound an all-occasion success formula. Nevertheless, the total pattern holding forth now has distinct markings. They won't show up in theatres for months, but they are: 1. No known evidences and no known intentions about eliminating films dealing with war. 2. All known evidences and intentions about making fewer on the war, but making them more potent and more varied by drawing upon source material of substance. Now that The Struggle is in its third year, the rampages and the excitements, as well as the enthusiasms of the early days, have died off. With them have gone much of the claptrap and the opportunism which converted cowpunchers into Nazis, beachcombers into Japs and Middle Europeans into German spies all for sweet box office's sake. The shakedown cruise is ended, and the course steadier. While there always will be side tours in a business marked by different and differing approaches, it is quite the safe conclusion to draw Hollywood is much more serious in that portion of its job which concerns war films. A One-Way Road THIS agility could only travel along one proper highway. There could be no walking out on responsibility to nation and public. The war had to be covered dramatically as well as factually. To deny this for a clean sweep of honeysuckle and moonlight, in the dead center of national crisis, would have found the industry shadow-boxing. Honeysuckle and moonlight are doing all right. More and more of both are imprinting themselves on the production pattern, and that's all right, too. For this industry does best — always has — when its salad pleases all varieties of palates. Now the demand is more sharply outlined in the vein of musicals and lighter themes. It is an ascendancy and it means war films are receding but not retiring. Indicating the future is a recent product analysis in the Herald which calculated 93 features completed, 50 then in production and 37 then about to be launched. Of this total of 180, only 45 were war stories or stories with war pre-empting the background. The Hollywood Victory Committee went surveying on its own and concluded 386 features were produced in calendar 1943. Thirty-eight were out-and-out war themes, 70 were backgrounded in war, 30 dealt with spies and saboteurs, but 258 dealt with other matters entirely. These are production figures, which frequently are apart from release figures. Not all of the productions tallied by the HVC, therefore, have reached the market. But the significance of these two sets of statistics resides largely in the times ahead and the shape they may be expected to assume. Yet there is another part to this. It deals MARCH by RED KANN with the very immediate past. Its principals are non-war and war films and the question before the house : What's been happening in the last four months ? For an answer, the trail led easily to the Picture Grosses Department of the Herald from January 1 to April 29 : Key city runs have played 50 different attractions in that period. Thirty-five bore not at all on the war or so slightly they cannot, with propriety, be dubbed war films. That leaves 15 in the war groove. Over-all performance of the non-war group averaged out at 113.36 per cent, over-all performance of the war group at 111.97. Says the Scoreboard THESE figures admittedly are pretty pat. They are the consequences of simple addition and division. It can be argued 35 attractions will drag down the average, but operating against this is the fact the range, percentage-wise, starts at the top with 149.5 for "The Song of Bernadette" and travels thereafter down the line to embrace only three attractions reported under parity. These happen to be "Whistling in Brooklyn," "Happy Land" and "The Bridge of San Luis Rey." ' On the other hand, the 15 pictures comprising the war group had a couple which dipped under parity, too. These are "The Purple Heart" and "Cry Havoc." Additional first run returns, developing subsequent to Herald reporting, may have changed their status. It is extremely interesting, moreover, to note that "Bernadette" at 149.5 — and the leader in both classifications — has as its runner-up "Destination Tokyo" at 136.6; that "The Gang's All Here" rates third at 132.2 per cent, "Thousands Cheer" fourth at 129.8 and "Passage to Marseille" fifth at 127.8. Maybe this becomes an unwitting drumheading of the issue, yet the point is not what the non-war group is doing, because it is widely known to be doing well, but what the war cycle is doing. Some Answers UNG HO" did an over-all first run I -g performance of 125.7 per cent; "A VJ Guy Named Joe," 120.9; "The Fighting Seabees," 119.4; "North Star," 115.8; "Lifeboat," 109.3; "Up in Arms," 108; "Tender Comrade," 106.7; "Corvette K-225," 106.1; "Song of Russia," 105.6; "Northern Pursuit," 101 ; and "In Our Time," 100.5. The. answers, thus, are several. One is that the public, as usual, will support handsomely the attractions it wants to see. In the supporting, there is plenty of room for good war films, just as there always has been room for good any type of films. Another is that the Independent Theatre Owners of Southern California and Arizona stand in the bold relief of a unique experience when they credit attendance decline in the past few weeks "to the ever increasing numbers of war pictures released during the past year." It simply is not so. There have been fewer, not more. There have been more non-war than war in national release. The non-war division is clicking and it is clicking louder because there are more of them than war. But there are mountains around the valleys in the Southern California territory. This can make for a form of isolationism which makes matters different here. A lot of things are. Paramount 's Net j Profit for 1943 j Is $16,140,821 1 i Earnings of Paramount Pictures, Inc., for the] fiscal year ending January 1, 1944, totaled $16, 140,821 after deducting all charges including inter est, taxes, depreciation and $2,000,000 additiona reserve provided for contingencies, according to thi [ annual report of the company issued this week bjj Barney Balaban, president. These earnings include $1,556,000 representing Paramount's net interest as a stockholder in the' combined undistributed net earnings for the yeai! of partially owned non-consolidated companies. | Earnings for the fiscal year 1942 on the same;i basis were $14,631,650, including _ $1,506,214 sharoj of undistributed earnings of partially owned non-, consolidated companies. The amount earned per common share for 1943 on the basis of combined consolidated earnings and share of undistributed earnings of partially j owned non-consolidated companies was $4.30 as compared with $4.74 for the year 1942. There] were 3,752,136 common shares outstanding on Jan-.j uary 1, 1944, as compared with 2,933,717 common] shares on January 2, 1943. Assets $66,137,600 The consolidated balance sheet shows that cash on January 1, 1944, amounted to $22,656,222. Of,| this amount $857,376 was in foreign countries ! other than Canada, principally in Great Britain. Total current assets were $66,137,600 and current j liabilities $23,831,997, leaving a net working capital of $42,305,603. On January 2, 1943, the company had outstanding $20,332,700 of four per cent debentures due 1956. Prior to July 14, 1943, these debentures were retired in full, $698,000' by purchase and ; $19,634,700 by redemption at 103 per cent and ac { crued interest. Funds for this purpose were pro 1 vided by a $15,000,000 new borrowing at interest rates ranging from 1% per cent to three per cent annually, the balance being provided out of cur I rent funds. Through prepayments out of current funds the new borrowing was reduced to $10, ] 000. 000 on January 1, 1944. This amount is pay ? able $1,000,000 annually during the years 1949 | through 1958, and in addition by annual sinking J fund payments commencing on May 15, 1944. This debt has been reduced to $8,000,000 by additional 1 prepayments which have been c ompleted since January 1, 1944. During the year the interest bearing indebted j ness of the company and its consolidated subsidiaries was reduced by approximately $13,000,000. After giving effect to this reduction, on January jj 1, 1944, the total funded debt due after one year amounted to $18,037,362. c Preferred Stock Called In All of the company's cumulative convertible six per cent first preferred stock, par value $100 per share, of which 121,451 shares were outstanding on January 2, 1943, was called for redemption in 1 1943. Prior to the redemption dates 116,917 shares were converted into common stock, at the rate of A seven shares of common stock for each share of first preferred stock, and the remaining 4,534 shares were redeemed in part on April 1 at par and the balance on May 10 at par plus accrued dividend. \ The company now has only common stock outstanding. t< The board of directors of Paramount Pictures, Inc., last week announced payment of the regular , quarterly dividend of 40 cents per share, payable July 1 to all stockholders of record as of June 12, 1944. CBS Declares Dividend A cash dividend of 40 cents per share on the present Class A and Class B stock of $2.50 par value, was declared last week by the board of directors of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. The dividend is payable June 2, 1944, to stockholders of record at the close of business May 19, 1944. 16 MOTION PICTURE HERALD, MAY 13, 1944