Universal Weekly (1932-1936)

14 UNIVERSAL WEEKLY November 5, 1932 Tom Mix Signs A New Contract for Seven More Thousands of exhibitors win be glad to hear this piece of news. Tom Mix not only will be Universal's big western star tor next year, but he will MAKE MORE PICTURES THAN HE DID LAST YEAR. Contracts have just been signed between Tom Mix and Universal, insuring Universal seven Mix pictures as compared with six the year previous. This is highly significant end an encouraging sign of the times. The Mix pictures this year went over big. There can be no doubt about it. They made money for exhibitors. There can be no doubt about that. Nothing succeeds like success. Tom Mix is more of a success right now than he has ever been in all of his years as the premier western star of the screen. Universal realizes this and realizes that exhibitors want him. That is why it demanded and secured from Tom Mix one more picture. So there will be seven Tom Mixes next year. In the meantime. Mix is rapidly recovering from three cracked ribs received when the faithful Tony stumbled down a bank during a fist fight on horseback between Tom and Duke Lee. Little things like cracked ribs do not stop Tom Mix, though. The way he can take it is nobody's business. He is going right on with the first of these seven pictures. The first one is a Peter B. Kyne magazine story entitled "Oh, Promise Me." It won't be that title when it is released, but you can bank on it. Universal will give this first one a crackerjack title. It already gave it a sHendId cast. Including Ruth Hall, William Farnum, George Hackathorne, Duke Lee, Pee Wee Holmes, William Steele, Fred Burns and Clarence Wilson. Arthur Rbsson is directing "Oh, Promise Me." Two other pictures have already been selected for next year. One is "Riders of Terror Trail," by Grant Taylor, which Jack Cunningham is now adapting and which will be directed by Armand Schaffer. The third picture will probably be "The Promised Land," by Lester llfeld. '"Air Mail" Today "Air Mail" Was In the Bag Long Before It Opened Strange thing how the film business smells out success. "Air Mail" opens today at the Mayfair Theatre in New York. No box-office figures to go on; no critics' reports — nothing — and yet there isn't a person in the moving picture business who doesn't already know that "Air Mail" is a huge success. They just smell 'em. In Africa, drums carry messages almost as fast as the telegraph. The Indians on this continent used to signal by fires from one mountain top to another, with incredible speed. They are as nothing compared to the speed with which a moving picture success can make Itself known to every producer, distributor and exhibitor in this wide land. READ The Amazing Story OF " SOS ICEBERG" The only film ever shot in Greenland and the sources of the gigantic Icebergs. This story will be told in a forthcoming issue of the UNIVERSAL WEEKLY Variety Retracts U Denies Making Films for $75,000 Denying a "Variety" report that Universal is producing four class "B" features with budgets not exceeding $75,000, R. H, Cochrane, vice-president in charge of the home office, declared: "We cannot do it and no other company can do it unless they intentionally set out to make cheaters. We haven't any such budget for any of our pictures or any such plan. Our minimum picture is around $150,000. The same is true of every other major company."