Motion Picture Herald (May-Jun 1946)

■raifliiiniiiiiiiHiintiumHimmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiN COMPLETED COLUMBIA It's Great to Be Young MGM Mighty McGurk MONOGRAM High School Hero PARAMOUNT Where There's Life I Cover Big Town (Pine-Thomas) REPUBLIC Last Frontier Uprising SCREEN GUILD PRODUCTIONS Man from Utah (Golden Gate) 20TH CENTURYFOX My Darling Clementine STARTED COLUMBIA Dead Reckoning Big Bend Bad Men MONOGRAM Hot Money Trigger Finger PARAMOUNT Emperor Waltz RKO RADIO Riffraff Beat the Band REPUBLIC Sioux City Sue Home in Oklahoma SCREEN GUILD PRODUCTIONS Neath Canadian Skies (Golden Gate) UNIVERSAL White Tie and Tails WARNERS The Secret SHOOTING COLUMBIA Down to Earth Thrill of Brazil INDEPENDENT Here Comes Trouble (Roach) MGM Secret Heart Sea of Grass Lady in the Lake High Barbaree Beginning or the End Uncle Andy Hardy Sacred and Profane PRC Untitled Buster Crabbe RKO RADIO Katie for Congress Deadlier than the Male Nocturne Honeymoon Best Years of Our Lives (Goldwyn) Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Goldwyn) It's a Wonderful Life (Liberty) REPUBLIC That Brennan Girl Angel and the Outlaw 20TH CENTURY. FOX 13 Rue Madeleine Carnival in Costa Rica Razor's Edge UNITED ARTISTS Comedy of Murders (Chaplin) The Chase (Nero) Dishonored Lady (Stromberg) Bel Ami (Loew-Le win) Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (Award) No Trespassing (Lesser) UNITED WORLD Bella Donna (International) UNIVERSAL Magnificent Doll (Skirball Manning) Swell Guy (Hellin ger) Ramrod (Enterprise) Pirates of Monterey The Killers (Hellinger) Smash-Up (Wanger) WARNERS Cry Wolf Deception Life with Father Stallion Road Cloak and Dagger lations — the SIMPP conducts negotiations for its members and makes recommendations, but does not sign contracts — is a derivative of the War Production Board experience in which more than 2,500 labor-management committees were set up in American industries. He continues, "The motion picture is our best trade emissary to all the markets of the world. _ To illustrate, when a picture in which a leading Hollywood star drove a Ford car was released in Brazil the Ford company received such a volume of orders from that country that there could be no question about what had happened. No other medium can accomplish such a result.'' Selznick Lauds Production Code Hollywood Bureau The Production Code puts the American producer under some measure of disadvantage in certain areas of the world, such as South America, but the advantage it gives him in the American market more than offsets this, David O. Selznick said in two separate references to the instrumentality during a trade press conference at his Culver City studio last Thursday evening. First mention of the Code came in connection with a discussion of the competition between foreign films, such as the French, and American pictures in those Latin American zones where neither the French nor English language is generally understood. "Foreign producers have no Code to restrict them in their choice of -subject matter," he said, "and they therefore can present some material we cannot. This may give them some advantage in those areas." Second mention of the Code was made in reply to the question, "Do you still feel, as you were reported to some months ago, that the Code should be revised?" He said, "I was asked that in New York, too, but I have no quarrel with the Code. There's more advantage than disadvantage in it. I simply feel that any set of regulations, whether we set them up for ourselves or somebody else does, ought to be accompanied by a mechanism of some kind for keeping them up to date with the times. While it's doubtless true that essential morals don't change, still there are changes in customs and circumstances which ought to be taken into consideration. Sees No Disadvantage Asked whether he thought the adherence of American produrers to the Code would place them at a disadvantage in the domestic market if foreign films produced without Code regulation came into wide exhibition in this country, he said, "No — if foreign pictures become known for that kind of subject matter, our pictures will benefit." The foreign market, present and future, was the subject uppermost in the two-hour discussion, on record and off, of just about everything to which a producer now engaged in cutting 10 minutes out of a $5,250,000 picture is obliged to give his attention. That's the investment in "Duel in the Sun" as of June 13, he said, with an item of $750,000 for Technicolor prints and their distribution and an allocation of $1,000,000 for advertising ^nd exploitation scheduled for expenditure before the attraction goes on the screen, about next November, for pre-release exhibition at advanced prices. The ultimate financial success not only of this picture, but of all high-budget attractions, depends in extraordinary degree upon the keeping of the world's screens open to American films, he said, mentioning as most important of these screens those in the British Empire and adding, "If the loan to Britain isn't granted — and I'm not one of those who think there's no danger of its being refused — I don't like to think about what will happen to the American industry. "So long as there is world freedom of the screen," he said, "American producers have nothing to fear. Producers in other countries are improving their product tremen dously— they're doing some things even better than we commonly do them — but this is a healthy development. It will jar Hollywood out of its smug complacency, and start us doing things to widen our horizon. Such a picture as 'Henry V,' for instance, proves what a good many of us have wanted to have proved for years — that a special kind of picture can be produced for a special audience. That's progress." Producer Selznick said he is by no means opposed to the increased exhibition of British-made pictures in the United States. It's true, he said, that they do deprive some American pictures of playing time, but it is in the nature of things that it is the inferior American pictures which are deprived. Independent pictures stand to lose no more playing time than others, he said, explaining. "Some independent producers are inclined to attribute exclusion of their product from the screen to all kinds of external reasons, whereas the fact often is that their pictures just aren't good enough to command playing time. I believe no set of conditions, short of outright trade barriers set up in other countries, has ever kept a really good picture from getting its merited share of the exhibition dollar, or ever will." One More Film for U. A. Queried on his distribution plans for the future, which had been the subject of printed speculation, Producer Selznick said he was committed to deliver "Duel in the. Sun" and one more picture to United Artists, after which he would be free to make other arrangements if he chose to do so, although this would require him to sell to that company the stock he shall have bought. "Decision about that needn't be made until next year some time, though," he said, "and we'll deal with it when the time comes. What with the British loan still in the air, and nobody ready to make a guess yet about the effect of the decision in the Government suit, it would be folly to predict the conditions that will prevail a year from now, much less to decide now how to meet them." IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINIIIIINIIH MOTION PICTURE HERALD. JUNE 22, 1946 33