Variety (Jul 1946)

Wednesday, July 10» 1946 PICTURES 21 New Pact Granting 25% Wage Hike Ends Hollywood Walkout in 2 Days Hollywood, July 9. Peace stepped in to end the two- day strike against Hollywood's major studios, with the producers and the union leaders agreeing to basic terms of a new wage scale. Strikers, who walked out Monday morning, walked back Wednesday morning in accordance with an agreement which •solved several jurisdictional disputes among the labor chiefs. There was picketing and a number of physical clashes during the striking, but no serious damage. New agreement provides:. (1) A 25% Increase In basic wages, with a provision that special "In- equities" will be open to negotiation. (2) Effective date of the wage agreement will be July IS. (3) Guarantee of a cumulative 38- hour week for six-hour daily em- ployes, with overtime at the rate of time and a half to start after six hours of any day; the 36-hour guar- antee to apply only to workers off production. (4) Studios will be free to hire machinists on the open market while the machinists' case is pending be- fore the National Labor Relations Board, with agreement on the part of all unions involved that there will be no work- stoppage and no "hot sets" as a result of disputes over machinists' work. Studios to accept the NLRB decision and', negotiate with whatever union is certified. (5) Contracts to be negotiated within 30 days for the crafts, under Local 1421 and the Cartoonists and Story Analysts. (0) The 25% wage increase to apply to machinists and publicists until the bargaining agents for both groups are determined by the NLRB, with the . understanding that the certified agents will negotiate con- tracts on the basis of these wage rates. (7) Contracts to be negotiated for 2-year-period, ending, Dec. 31, 1947, retroactive to Jan. 1, 1946, with the understanding that the contracts may be reopened Jan. 1, 1947, solely on the issue of wages if the cost of living as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics will have In- creased 5% or more between July 1, 1946, and Jan. 1, 1947; wage nego- tiations to be based on the amount of increase in the cost of living. Settlement of the strike was ar- ranged at a three-cornered meeting at which Herbert Sorrell, head of the Conference of Studio- Unions, and Roy M. Brewer, international re- presentative of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Em- ployes, agreed to talk it over with Byron Price, veepee of the Motion Picture Assn. The trio settled both wage and jurisdictional disputes. U-UWP S Continued from pile I — yet accept more or less under duress. Floating entirely on their own, with the Department of Justice ready to pounce on any evidence of tie-in or' combination agreements, English pix, unless exceptional, can antici- pate only minor' grosses. Blumberg, Fox 3c Co. are there- fore going to England to explain all this to Rank and talk over possible revisions of the relationship. U Prexy said Monday (8) that with the confusion prevailing on the. decree, even among attorneys, it was impos- sible to explain it to Rank via letter . or phone and so personal confabs were in order. Most Play British Pix In U. S. , " In . fl ny case," Blumberg declared, British pictures must And a place pn the American scene. The U. S. Aim industry can't go on taking $80,- 000,000 a year out of England and just say 'Thank you.' We must give the British something in return. As a matter of fact, we are getting ex- cellent cooperation on the six Rank Pictures we are distributing through Universal. We're getting good flrst- run dates from the circuits and the films are doing well at the box- office." _ William J. Heineman, UWP v.p. over sates, and Monroe Greenthal, v.p. in charge of publicity-advertis- ing, W ]ll leave for the Coast in about a week for a 10-day huddle with William Goetz, prez of International, °" marketin « and ad campaigns for .Bella Donna" and "Dark Mirror," com of which are completed. "Bella uonna ' will be UWP's first release, »r-? e9 j e< L t0 hit theatre screens aiound Christmas week. I Col's Meet I i l— Continued from pace 5 , ments for their national sales hud- dles. Had they know i in advance the legal problems the decree brought up as to next year's policy, there undoubtedly would have been a number of postponements, so that the "salesmen could have been given the final word. Bill Scully, U's distribution chief, said last week he would have liked to have pushed back the company's conclave of two weeks ago, but ar- rangements had all been set and there would have been too many disappointments. As it turned out, lawyers were still wrangling over the meaning of the decision at the time of the convention and the film peddlers were given no word, ex- cept that instructions would be forthcoming later, regarding han- dling of next season's product. '. Columbia held its initial get-to- gether about a week before the de- cision was handed down. It was marked ■ by word from sales chief Abe Montague to the men to sell nothing, pending another meeting a few weeks later; Sudden, decision to call off all selling just , before the court made its decision public led to trade speculation that Montague had a tipoff on the decree. He vehe- mently denied this, however, stat- ing it was . merely coincidence; Understood at the time to be the purpose of the suspension of selling was the pondering by Col of chang- ing from a season's program in ad- vance to the blocks-of-five system enforced on the Big Five by the original consent decree. In the interim between the two Columbia conventions, the court is- sued its decision and so Montague was still left without definite word to give his salesmen. Blocks-of- flve, if he did decide on that, may have been made illegal for the Lit- tle Three as well as the Big Five under the new decree. So Montague was forced into still another conven- tion, with the thought, undoubtedly, that the lawyers will have the tan- gle unscrambled by the Aug. 3 date. Mass Migration Continued from pace 2 for past few years, goes to Austria in August to star and direct at Salzburg Festival. Her late husband formerly staged this Festival every season, and Miss Thimig was iden- tified with project. Plans call for her to make the annual jaunt to Europe. Paulctte Goddard, when she was in England recently, made deal with Sir Alexander Korda to' return in the fall for at least one picture, arrangement calling for two star appearances. In deal closed with Korda's competitor, J. Arthur Rank, RKO several weeks ago dispatched to London Adrian Scott, producer, and Edward Dmytryk, director, to make "So Well Remembered" in Rank studios, with British cast headed by John Mills and Patricia Roc, latter a recent Hollywood vis- itor' for . appearance in. "Canyon Passage" for Walter Wanger. Rene Clair is another who recent- ly left Hollywood to cross Atlantic, to direct "Golden Silence" . for Pathe Studios in Paris, with Raimii starred. Possibility that he may re- main for a second picture. Michel Morgan, who returned from French appearances Ave months ago, plans to go back to Paris in the fall for another French film, and Bill Mar- shall, her husband, may accompany her for same film. Still another Paris traveller will be Fred Press- burger, son of Arnold, who leaves shortly for French capital on tour of inspection for his father. Elder Pressburger intends to resume French production with his CIPRA firm. Present plans of Enterprise call for a camera crew to fly to Paris for week of exteriors for "Arch of Tri- umph." Hal Wallis, too, will be Europe-bound in spring, to produce "For Her to See" for Paramount in England, If stage space is available, Wallis will remain to make "When- ever I Remember" in British cap- ital Goodson to Atlanta As Par Branch Mgr. Clyde Goodson, branch head for Paramount in New Orleans, will succeed Grpver Parsons, recently resigned to join PRC, as branch manager at Atlanta. Meantime, a successor to John Kirby as district manager at Atlanta is undecided. Kirby, who resigned, has several of- fers but is withholding choice until after- a vacation. With Paramount since 1925, Good- son was recently made branch manager at N.O. He formerly was sales manager at Atlanta. Gordon Bradley, now holding latter post, takes over the New Orleans office. SPG Fails To Get Deal in N.Y. Negotiating committee.' of Screen Publicists Guild met again with com- pany representatives yesterday (Tues.) with no progress reported. Last week SPG flatly turned down counter-proposals of the home of- fices which, in ftddltion to rejecting demands for any wage increase at. all, sought to impose conditions on dismissals. In the opinion of SPG this would leave the way wide open for discharges. ' In their official reply to SPG de- mands for a new contract, the pro- ducer-distributors held that "the right to hire and to maintain order and efficiency are among functions reserved by the company and be- longs solely to the company." Counter employer proposals listed as cause for discharges are drunk- enness, dishonesty, inefficiency, in- subordination, incapacity, incom- petency and violation of established company rules. This is taken by SPG as. giving the companies every possible- loophole when it came to firing anyone in. publicity, advertis- ing or art departments. As against demands of the Guild for severance pay running from one week's salary for service up to six months and extending to a total of one year's salary, the film com- panies countered with equivalent of one week each year up to 10 and a maximum of 12 over that many years of service. In addition, the producers want to reduce the present 70% shop to 51%, whereas SPG is demanding a 100% shop same as exists with SPG in the studios. As previously' reported, SPG originally demanded a straight 30% increase. Rathvon Outlines RKO Coordination Between Own, Indie Product at Meet Wikhire Blvd. to Rival ' Downtown LA. Show Map Hollywood, July 9. Wilshire Boulevard will rival downtown Los Angeles as a "Broad- way" first run house centre if cur- rent plans for erection of deluxe film showcases go through. As soon as materials are available, a top- drawer theatre will be constructed at Wilshire and Doheny In Beverly Hills by Paramount and Fanchon & Marco. Rodney Pantages is also talking of another deluxer set for Wilshire and Fairfax, to be built and owned in, conjunction with RKO. Strong growth of first-run busi- ness in west end of the Hollywood area has been indicated for the past few years, while ■ downtown houses have dropped off because of park- ing and transportation difficulties. Proposed Paramount house will give that company three day-and- date. theatres, and will cost in the neighborhood of $2,500,000, with the latest developments in theatre equipment and planning, serving also as a television outlet for Para- mount. . Latter presents possibility of live stage shows for audience to be tele- vized to home sets. William Pereira will design the new house, having been responsible for reconversion of the old El Capitan to present Holly- wood Paramount. . 'Blue Skies' as Special Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" will probably be sold as a special by Paramount, Final decision on a special world premiere in Chicago, as a salute to Balaban & Katz, is contingent upon working out plans to have Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and Joan Caul- field attend, together with Berlin, who stands ready to do so. B&K's State-Lake is in mind but while no tentative date for a special precm has been arrived at, it would be some time early in September. DOS, Goldwyn I mmm ^ Continued from page 3 each area and they will be selected from the product' Of all companies. Divvy of the coin will not be on the basis • of what any particular film does, but pro-rated on the percent- age of total domestic income of each, company last year. On that basis, indies fear they will get negligible sums, which they can far exceed if they get deals on just one or two of the backlog pix in the restricted countries. . Goldwyn and Selznlck claim to be taking a more altruistic attitude, al- though the backlog situation ob- viously enters into their thinking, too. They maintain that the "steam- roller policies" ' planned by the MPEA will wreak more' eventual harm than good on the American in- dustry as a whole. "Two wrongs don't make a right," is the way one of'their reps put it. Indies who decide not to share in the MPEA distribution are aiming at flat deals with local distributors in some of the. countries. There are quantities of these native business- men making offers for product in the U. S: They seem to have ways and means of delivering dollars in New York and most distrib reps don't ask too many questions, as the opera- tions appear. to be perfectly legal from the standpoint of the U. S. gov- ernment and the local governments involved. The importers obviously have tieups with local officials, which makes the deals possible. Grad Sears, United Artists dis- tribution chief,, had a series of meet- ings in Hollywood two weeks ago with, the producers releasing through his company, to discuss going along with the MPEA. Opinion was split and UA's position in regard to the Association is now clouded, since it Is dubious 1 that other majors will share profits with UA if some of its top export product is not available. Newsreels — Continued from page" 4 s be used generally by the newsreels for a year or two (lack of lab facili- ties), most of the U. S. newsreel* have been muking plans for. faster coverage, for on-the-spot camera work and for getting stories out to the exhibitor quicker. Back of this highly competitive move by newsreels is the threat of theatre television. Newsreels fully realize that only better coverage, exclusive news stories and speedier delivery of the timely newsreel to the theatre will enable them to com- pete with theatre tele. That's why they are already mapping ways and means of meeting this new threat to screen playing time. The one single way, newsreel eds admit, that they ran put new life into the reels is by going out for stories on a wide-open basts and forgetting any "Associated Press of the reels." Quite freely admitted now that thls>AP idea of joint cov- erage was a good economy move but never did the newsreels any good at the boxoffice. Every facet of such joint handling of news has been frowned on by the camera- men's: union but exchange of news stories between two and three reels continued. It became general dur- ing the war because of roto han- dling or manpower shortage. Home- offices, of course, always cottoned to the AP coverage plan and frowned on spending real coin to get the news. ■ •' How RKO is striving to maintain the correct balance between its own product and that of Its affiliate in- dependent producers to obtain the maximum return was highlighted in N. Peter Rathvon's talk to the corn* pany's 15th annual sales convention which wound up last Thursday (4) at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Only regional pow-wows were held Thursday. Speaking for the first time as president in charge of production, Rathvon explained that one of his problems in the past five months was to pick pictures, so there would be no conflict with stories or type of vehicle being turned out by the indie units, acknowledging, < his awareness of the terrific upsurge of independent' producers in the past year. RKO has adjusted itself to this decentralizing movement, Rathvon said. He cited that the company would maintain a policy of achiev- ing inventory of available pictures to provide a steady flow'of product ■ S. . Barret McCormick, company's ad-publicity chief, told the conven- tion that $6,000,000 would be spent in a vast pre-selling campaign, in ad- vertising RKO product. Mag adver- tising is the spearhead of this cam- paign but a large amount of news- paper space also will be used. Regarding "Sister Kenny," Mc- Cormick cited Gallup figures to show that -the picture" would ap- peal to infrequent theatregoers and that consequently the company would spend extra coin in farm journals and publications concen- trated in-small cities and towns. •Phil Reisman, foreign chief, re- ported that the company's foreign business had gone up 57.2% over 1945. He detailed how a plan how is in work for distribution of 16m pro- grams to millions of potential thea- tregoers in countries like Brazil, India and China. He said the com- pany would sponsor in conjunction with local Interests the building of 16m theatres in several countries under plans drawn up by John Eberson, theatre architect; Robert Wolff, RKO general manager in Great Britain, .said figures for the first six months are highly gratify- ing although ."Bells of .St. Mary's"* biz is not included. ' Although dlstribs are spending five and six times more than they- spent' a few years ago for advertis- ing, they are doing it because they find it . pays off at the boxoffice, ac- cording to Al Slndllnger, executive veepee of Audience Research (Gal- lup subsld), who spoke the final day. His criticism was that local ex- hibitors don't always support these national campaigns at the point of sale to the public. Sindlinger said that his organiza- tion found that the public is eager to see new players, but they often do not readily associate faces with names, and that the local theatre can help this by reminding the public about roles these new players had In previous films. He felt that this is sure to add to the players' mar- quee value and.thus benefit the ex- hib. UA Must Find Another N Y. House for 'Henry' With "Henry V" continuing to garner heavy grosses at the City Center, N. Y., United Artists is faced with problem of finding a suitable moveover house for the J. Arthur Rank Technicolor'special in Septem- ber. City Center is available only until the end of August, since ballet season is scheduled .to start Sept. 2. UA, in its search for a suitable, moveover house, is seeking a lim- ited-seater in which to continue the l\vo-a-('ay roadshow policy.^ There is no int.. .ion now of going into reg- ular, runs. Truman-ATA Continued from pace 4 thohy Hyde, deputy director of OWMR; Arch Mercey. OWMR mo- tion picture chief, and others. Representing 'ATA, in addition to Fabian, were Robert Coyne, ATA exec director; R. B. Wilby, Atlanta exhib and chairman of the ATA prb- gram committee; J. Edward Shugrue, public relations director, and Arthur L. Mayer, public relations counsel. Fabian outlined contributions made during the war by exhibs and told of the progress of ATA to date. "ATA's effort," he. said, "repre- sents an attempt to unite the indus- try in a continuation.of cooperation extended to the Government in its wartime information program." Wilby laid down the law on the kind of pix that would be acceptable to the theatres. He pointed out that Aim houses are primarily to sell en- tertainment arid cater to audiences with all types of viewpoints. There- fore, he explained, the films must be non-controversial and must not con- ' tain any propaganda. He emphasized the necessity for brevity if an official film is to get wide circulation. Cabinet officials and reps of the other U. S. agencies and departments stressed the impor- tance of further assistance from the film industry in peacetime.