Motion Picture Herald (Apr-Jun 1952)

{Continued from preceding page) Code Three, produced by William Grady, Jr. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, to be produced by Arthur Loew, Jr. Currently before the cameras are some of the most important productions on M-G-M’s schedule, including : Plymouth Adventure, Technicolor, starring Spencer Tracy, Gene Tierney, Van Johnson, produced by Dore Schary, directed by Clarence Brown. Prisoner of Zenda, Technicolor, starring Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, James Mason, produced by Pandro S. Berman, directed by Richard Thorpe. The Story of Three Loves, Technicolor, all-star cast. Tribute to a Bad Man, starring Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, produced by John Houseman, directed by Vincente Minnelli. Lili, Technicolor, starring Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Jean Pierre Aumont, produced by Edwin H. Knopf, directed by Charles Walters. I Love Melvin, Technicolor, starring Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds, to be produced by George Wells, directed by Don Weis. Time Bomb, starring Glenn Ford and Anne Vernon, to be produced by Richard Goldstone with Ted Tetzlaff directing. Rogues’ March, starring Peter Lawford, Richard Greene, Janice Rule, produced by Leon Gordon, directed by Allan Davis. Sky Full of Moon, starring Carleton Carpenter, Jan Sterling, produced by Sidney Franklin, Jr. Everything I Have Is Yours, Technicolor, starring Marge and Gower Champion, Dennis O’Keefe, Monica Lewis, produced by George Wells, directed by Robert Z. Leonard. You For Me, starring Peter Lawford, Jane Greer, Gig Young, produced by Henry Berman, directed by Don Weis. MGM Sales Talks Beffia A. i Coast MGM this week concluded the hrst of a series of five divisional sales meetings, called by Charles M. Reagan, general sales manager, at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Beside the home office group, in attendance at the meetings were district and branch ' managers and salesmen under the supervision of George A. Hickey, western sales manager. The Central Division branches, under John J. Maloney, sales manager, will meet at the Netherlands Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati May 12-14. The third session will be held at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington May 15-17 for Rudy Berger’s Southern Division. The fourth will find the Southwestern Division, under John S. Allen, and the Midwestern Division, under Burtus Bishop, Jr., congregated at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago May 19-22. The fifth and final meeting will be held at the Astor Hotel in New York for John P. Byrne’s Eastern Division May 26-28. Mr. Reagan’s home office group, which will attend all five sessions, includes E. M. Saunders, assistant general sales manager ; H. M. Richey, assistant to Mr. Reagan; Jay Eisenberg of the legal department; William B. Zoellner, short subject and newsreel sales head ; M. L. Simons, Mr. Richey’s assistant, and Dan S. Terrell, exploitation head. DE MILLE MILESTONE — From Hollywood comes word that Cecil B. De Mille, foremost individual contributor to the box office of the motion picture across four decades, is ending his corporate business activities in Cecil B. De Mille Productions, Inc. The fact that he is now 71, and has the while enjoyed success in measure with his screen performance has a bearing. But that is obviously not the determinative. He enjoys continued vigor. He may, and probably will, make some more pictures, but tor some other corporation, like Paramount maybe. It is to be remembered that he has admitted that "creation is a drug that I can not do without." So far it is a legalistic sort of Bernhardt farewell. The poignant aspect of the decision is that it is accompanied by the observation that taxations and the restrictions of business have brought Mr. De Mille to his decision. He is quoted as considering that there is no healthy opportunity for the small corporation in such a field today, that only the greatest, most strongly bulwarked business organizations can survive and hope to prosper. So, if he works, it will be for somebody else. That is a pointed, personalized expression of a progressively growing aspect of the American scene. More and more it is true that it one is to work he will be inevitably channelled into a job with "somebody else" in some ramification of some vast interest. Probably he will have to join a guild or union to do that. This we have seen in all manner of activity from the nickelodeon to the gas pump. And the end is not yet — after Big Business comes Big Government, the State — • steel for Instance. STATISTICS — The world gross on "Gone with the Wind" at last and recent accounting was $38,000,000, of which $16 million was foreign. That is about 42 percent so far from overseas, thus approaching the average ratio currently quoted at 44 percent for the American product. The other day "The Wind" had gone into its ninetyfifth week in a Paris run. Clearly while average in ratios between home and abroad, it is overwhelmingly the highest grossing picture in the annals of the industry. Striking that favourite chord of mine, "entertainment only," it is more than obvious that for those audiences overseas "The Wind" can be of basic "escapist" appeal only. On the average the Europeans are much more ardent patrons of the motion picture than we of its homeland are now. Probably the determinant is the fact that over there the motion picture for the multitudes has far, far less competifion than in the United States, and that it is, for the great majority, incomparably the best entertainment buy — in many areas the only one — even as it was once over here. Inevitably that great and essential foreign market must exert a large Influence on the output of Hollywood. In truth, of course, it long has. There has been little real consciousness among the critics, pundits and opinion makers of the real Infernational nature of the American motion picture. It is only relatively recently that our own Department of State has been aware. Most of the Government doesn't know it yet. An unhappy sequel for the struggling screen overseas comes with the obvious endeavour of some of their picture makers to make pictures in the inimitable and sleek Hollywood pattern for export to us. They are deceived by the acceptances of some of their wares among theatres serving our minority audiences, an acceptances won by their own special qualities of difference. IN TRANSIT — We have report that the Kansas-MissOuri Theatre Association Is considering holding its spring convention on a train on the way to that Hutchinson opening of "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nelly." Sounds reasonable. It carries this observer back to when the century was in its teens and he was officially connected with nineteen corporations and directors' meetings were held on the inter-office telephone, while stockholders' meetings, slightly more formal, were often held in the elevator on the way to lunch — lots of business, lots of lawyers, decisions quick, action quicker. NATURE NOTE — Out the luring window faced by this typewriter a pair of ebullient robins are planning a home high up in a sixty foot willow. It was only a handful of yesterdays, it seems, that willow was a mere whip carried in between thumb and forefinger to be planted by the spring and encouraged to reach up to the sun. Now those nestlings will be watched with opera glasses. Two decades have passed since that tree started up, and much that was so important in the years between seems less significant than it. Like as not It will be there many a decade more, home for generations of robins, and many, many of the things that happen the while will be no more important either. Perspective is vision diffracted through the Invisible grating of time, which being nothing endures. MOTION PICTURE HERALD. MAY 10, 1952 29