Motion Picture Herald (Oct-Dec 1956)

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THIS WEEK in PRODUCTION lilt WOO d Sc * cene FROM GLOVES TO FILMS— SUCCESSFULLY . . . Started — 3 American International — Rock all Night (Sunset Prod.). Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — Man on Fire (Sol C. Siegel Prods.). United Artists — The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (RussField Prods.). . . . Completed — 5 Allied Artists — Attack of the Crab Monster (Roger Corman Prod.). Columbia — The Golden Virgin (Valiant Films). 20th Century-Fox — Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (CinemaScope; DeLuxe Color). United Artists — Last Gun in Durango (Peerless Prod.). Warner Bros. — Lafayette Escadrille. . . . Shooting — 27 Columbia — Hellcats of the Navy (Morningside Prod.); 3:10 To Yuma; The Brothers Rico (William Goetz Prod.); The Haunted; The Bridge on the River Kwai (Horizon-American); The Admirable Crichton (London Films). Independent — The Beginning of the End (Am-Par Pic.); Valerie (Hal R. Makelim Prods.); Johnny Trouble (Motion Pictures by Clarion); II Crido (Robert Alexander Prod.). Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — Action of the Tiger (BlauMeyer Prods.); This Could Be the Night; The Seventh Vow (CinemaScope); Gun Glory (CinemaScope, Metrocolor); Silk Stockings (CinemaScope, Metrocolor). Paramount — The Joker (VistaVision). RKO Radio — Escapade in Japan (Color). 20th Century-Fox — The She Devil (Regal Films); The River's Edge (Bogeaus; CinemaScope; DeLuxe Color); Island in the Sun (Zanuck; CinemaScope, DeLuxe Color); Boy on a Dolphin (55mm, CinemaScope, Color). United Artists — Mark of the Vampire (Gramercy Pics.); The Sweet Smell of Success (Hecht-HillLancaster Prods.). Universal-International — The Man of a Thousand Faces (CinemaScope). Warner Bros. — The Pajama Game (WarnerColor); The Black Scorpion (Melford-Dietz); The Story of Mankind. HOLLYWOOD BUREAU Production normally slows down around this time of year, due to the double holiday fortnight, and this year is normal in that respect. Start of three pictures combined with completion of five others to drop the over-all shooting total to a thrifty 30. Most annual dips of this kind are compensated for by an equivalent pick-up in mid-January, which will be a nice thing to have happen, from the product-shortage standpoint, if it does. Reckoning by past performance, “Man on Fire,” for MGM distribution, is the standout among the new undertakings. It is a Sol C. Siegel production, next in succession to the extremely successful “High Society,” and it stars Bing Crosby, as did that film. Others in the cast, directed by Ranald MacDougall, are Mary Fickett, Inger Stevens, Richard Eastham, Malcolm Broderick and E. G. Marshall. Russ-Field Productions, releasing through United Artists, started “The by WILLIAM R. WEAVER HOLLYWOOD: President Irving H. Levin of Am-Par Productions, the film-producing arm of American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, Inc., came out of the glove business into the motion picture industry in 1946. He was 25 years old. This was 33 years after another young man, then 29, made the same switch of careers. The other young man is Samuel Goldwyn. If the glove business turns out to have given the industry in young Levin another young Goldwyn, Hollywood would be warranted in sending an investigative mission into the glove country to find out what makes glovers great producers, and to bring back a supply. The Levin story, at this early stage suggests the glove business may have lived up to precedent. Joined Charles Kranz The Levin story begins in Chicago, where he was born, September 8, 1921, and moves smoothly through the University of Illinois and the U.S. Air Force in World War II to his induction into the glove industry, the family interest, where he wasn’t disposed to remain if he could help it. A young wife and child and a small bank balance agreed with him in his belief that he could help it, and the four of them set out for Los Angeles with Hollywood in view. Charles Kranz, one of the industry’s most favorably known sales executives, who was operating an independent film exchange on Los Angeles’ Film Row at the time and with whom the young Chicagoan entered into a partnership, thought so too. Says the young Chicagoan, this much later, “I didn’t know enough about the business to realize what we were up against. We had California rights to two old features that nobody wanted to run for money. TV hadn’t begun buying that kind of product yet. After about four weeks, when I saw the films laying there on the shelf, and my bank balance shrink Fuzzy Pink Nightgown,” starring Jane Russell (the Russ in the corporate name) with Robert Waterfield (the Field in the company title) as producer. Keenan Wynn and Ray Danton are other principals in the cast. Norman Taurog is the director. “Rock All Night,” another addition to the stream of rock-and-roll pictures, is a Sunset Production for American National release. Dick Miller and the Platters is the marquee aggregation presented. James H. Nicholson is executive producer, and Roger Corman is producer-director. ing dangerously, I gathered up some pressbooks and walked over to the Fox West Coast Theatres offices, where there were seven bookers working and not buying from us. “I said to one of them, ‘Look, why isn’t it good business for you to give us little people some business, so we won’t disappear, and so we can grow up and, some day become an important source of product for you?’ It was a childish pitch, I realize now, but for some reason — maybe just because it was so juvenile — it went over, and I came out with $16,000 worth of bookings. It took Charlie and me two days just to do the book work.” A Natural Nominee The story moves faster from that point onward. In 1949 he formed Mutual Productions, which enjoyed a satisfying experience, and in 1952 he put his ambitions and Collier Young’s together and set up Filmakers Releasing Organization and Filmakers Productions, Inc., making use in some of these operations of financial support he marshalled at a national meeting of independent-exchange owners who gathered in Chicago at his invitation to meet the pressures of the period. When ABC-PT decided to go into production, Irving H. Levin was a natural nominee for the presidency of Am-Par Corp., which needed his kind of speed, enthusiasm and initiative. He got the job. And he got the first picture “The Beginning of the End,” into production almost quicker than you can type the title and describe it as a monster melodrama in the “King Kong” tradition but without plastic monsters. It’s an exploitation attraction in the 24-sheet sense of the term, he says, and it’ll be mated with another in the same category, yet to be chosen from the many properties in hand, for selling as a package. The Kind That Sells A package like this, he says, is what the Am-Par advisory committee, composed of head men of all the major circuits in the ABC-PT setup, tells him is the kind of program that’s selling the most tickets in the greatest number of situations at this point, and is likely to be for some while. When the committee tells him differently, he says, he’ll select his stories by what they tell him then, and with this kind of counsel, he says, he thinks he sees his way clear to contributing a large amount of money-making product to the exhibitors of the United States. MOTION PICTURE HERALD, DECEMBER 22, 1956 19