Motion Picture Herald (Nov-Dec 1944)

71 INDEPENDENT PRODUCERS SCHEDULE 196 FEATURES Production Trend Matches Increases in Grosses; i Income Tax a Factor by WILLIAM R. WEAVER Holh-uvoJ Ed r for In close coincidence with the wartime increase in grosses, independent production has risen to an all-time high, with 71 concerns in this categor> committed to deliver 196 features to exhibitors, an undeterminable number < of them during the 1944-45 season. The rise in grosses, giving birth to the Holh-wood colloquialism that "no picture can lose money in this market," is a principal reason among several accounting for the now twovear-old trend which has witnessed producers, directors, writers, players, even exhibitors, forming corporations of their own and setting out to make pictures. Other reasons include such superficially unrelated matters as taxes, bank credit, artists' love of autonomy and pride of achievement. The tax situation, to state it as simply as do some of the people who have formed their own corporations,is simply this: Income from a picture produced independently accrues over a period of years instead of in a lump sum. And there's a difference between the tax rate that runs on capital gains and that which runs on ^ala^ies. Not even the Treasury Department frowns upon a person who shapes his plans accordingly. Bank Credits Related to Increase in Grosses The matter of bank credits relates directly to the increase in grosses, a barometer of expectancy which has eased materially the conditions ijnder which banking institutions are disposed to make fimds available to producers. The variations in banker attitude toward motion picture loans have coincided always with the ebb and flow of coin through the ticket wickets. There is nothing new, of course, about the love of the artist for autonomy, except that nowadays he can give that love expression. Time was when a producer, director or player had to do his work the way he was told to do it or else. So he followed instructions or quit. Xow he has another alternative. If he's a person of established talent, and sometimes even if he isn't, he can whip up a company of his own, or of his backer's, and be his own boss or a reasonable facsimile thereof. And if he does a fair job of it he can wind up with as much money or more for his trouble, which is no trouble at all but a pleasure. Nothing Xew About Artist's Pride of Achievement Neither is there anything new about the artist's pride of achievement, although it's had considerably less billing over the years than the thing called artistic temperament. Pride of achievement most commonly afflicts producers, although directors run a close second, and consists of resenting the fact that the head of the studio is given a share or all of the credit for work which the producer, or director, considers to have been his own. A producer, for instance, who receives an Academv Award for fNDEPENDENT ACCENT IS ON COMEDIES Following the production pattern of the major compaRles, Hollywood's 71 independent producers are concentrating on comedies, melodramas, romances and dramas in their 1944-45 schedules. Of the 196 features in release, in work or preparing for the camera, 107 fall Into the following categories: Comedies 22 Melodramas and action pictures 21 Romances 18 Dramas 18 War backgrounds or themes II Westerns 9 Musicals 7 Cartoon feature ("Three Cabalieros") I In addition to these, 89 are tantatively scheduled, for which the independents hav6 not yet announced titles or details. a picture made by him for a major studio, must of necessity hear it referred to often by the name of the company or the company's production chief. Similarly, a director who believes he saved a producer's picture is in for hearing the production referred to some of the time as a triumph for the producer. Ditto players, writers and so on. Must Take Into Account Element of Risk The producer, or other professional, who finds himself disposed to form his own company must take into consideration, naturally, theelement of risk which is represented by the chance that his production effort may turn out to be a cluck and net him less return than the salary he might have received for making the same film for a producer. But the amount of money involved in this risk, in these times when top-bracket salaries are taxed as they are, is relatively small, and it simply is not in the nature of the professional artist to fear that his production will be lacking in artistic merit, which is what he has to sell to an employer and will still have, he believes, if the picture of his own making lays a goose egg. Around to the point of forming his own corporation, which any attorney can attend to in the twinkle of a legal eye, the professional inspired to go in for independence is confronted with a choice of several kinds of deals to make. In the simplest form of independent production deal, which is also the rarest, the professional turning independent producer arranges with a distributor for release of a picture or pictures he has in mind and then proceeds to make that picture or those pictures with his own money, getting it back from the distributor when and as the distributor gets it from the exhibitor who gets it from the consumer. More often, the professional turning independent producer varies this procedure by go ing to a bank, after he has arranged his releasing arrangeinent, and persuades the bank to lend him the money he needs to finance production. In a variation of this, he goes to one or more individuals for the money, instead of to a bank, and it is a circumstance of pertinence to the present trend that there are more willing individuals of this kind on hand just now (they are colloquially called "angels") than for many years. Another common variation of the deal finds the distributor playing two roles, the natural one of distributor and that of the backer or partial backer of the independent producer. One Independent Makes Product for Another A somewhat less common arrangement, such as prevails in the case of Ripley-Monter Productions and Vanguard Films, consists of one independent producer making product for another independent producer who has a releasing deal with a distributor. In variations of this plan, financing comes from any one or more or all of the interested parties, or from outside, the standards of practical bargaining governing this aspect of the transactions. In an essentially dififerent type of setup, seldom undertaken prior to the present trend of grosses, a man with confidence in his ability foregoes the matter of obtaining a releasing deal until he has completed his picture, then shops around for one. W. R. Frank, the Minneapolis circuit operator who produced "Enemy of Woman" which Monogram distributed, is a disciple of this type of procedure. It is to be noted in a discussion of independent production that not all professionals who set out to produce independently wind up that way. Sometimes a major company, having made a releasing deal with' independent producer for a piece of pro|^ct, decides, at some point in the progress ofcprpduction, to revise the arrangement and supply full financing, thus nullifying the ^ighificancSe of the "independent" appellation. '^^ ' Field for Producers Recently Widened For several years the principal source of encouragement for persons wishing to enter independent production lias been United Artists, which draws its supj»y of product from independent producers exclusively. Latterly RKO Radio has veered toward a wider reliance upon independent production sources than formerly. PRC and Monogram are increasingly available for releas^'deals, and it may be said that doors of most companies are not hermetically sealed against an independent producer whose proposition is sufficiently studded with marquee nam^s or values. The following list of independents functioning in Hollywood at this time includes all producers of that category, varying in degrees of independence from those making pictures without definite release arrangements to those producing practically as' subsidiaries of major companies. Abbott-Herbert Corp., formed by George Abbott, F. Hugh Herbert -and Sol Siegel, is to make "Kiss and Tell" and "For Keeps." No distribution channel has been announced. Action Pictxjres, of which William David is president, has made one Cinecolor Western titled (Continued on page 32) MOTION PICTURE HERALD, ' lOVEMBER II, 1944 29