Variety (Sep 1946)

WedncMlay, Septemlieir 25, 1946 LITERATI 61 AuAors League of Am. Designates Subcommittee to Report on AAA Plan The heavy cannonading on thet' literary front, which was touched oft more than a week a£0 by the out- break of factional warfare in the Authors' League of America over James M. Cain's plan for an Ameri- can Authors Authorityj has tempo- rarily subsided into an in-between battle lull. Both sides climbed off the verbal barricades last week tvhen the executive council of the Authors' League voted to defer ac- tion until a subcommittee brings in its repoi^ and recommendations after exhaustive study of the AAA. ; Decision to cool: oO the hot potato was taken at last Wednesday's (18) meeting after William Pomerance, executive secretary of the Screen Writers' Guild, which 'is sponsoring the Cain plan, made a 15-minute bid for support from the 26 mem- bers of the council who were pres- ent. Unprepared to take a stand on the complex legal and financial angles: Involved in the- AAA; the council set up the special committee consisting of Elmer Rice, Authors' League p'rexy; Richard Rodgers, president of the Dramatists Guild; Christopiier LaFarge, president of the Authors Guild; Peter Lyon, vee- pee of the Radio Writers Guild; and Marc Connolly, representing the Screen Writers Guild. Meanwhile, Rene L. Kubn, who was invited by Rice to attend the council meeting as spokesman for . tlie anti-AAA faction organized into the American Writers Association, decided to boycott the proceedings because she was refused permi-ssion to be accompanied by her counsel, Louis Waldman. In lieu of attend- ing, the AWA released an eight- point blast against the Cain plan re- peating their charges tliat it would destroy literary freedom, lead to regimentation, and violate state laws. Outlook for ultimate adoption of the AAA by the council of the Authors' League seemed dimmer after last week's session. Rice, after chiding the AWA for raising the red-bogey scare, declared in an in- terview that "in my opinion,- it is extremely unlikely that the League or any of its Guilds, which have always been vigilant in protecting the freedom of writers, will adopt any plan which would entail a surr render by authors of their copy- rights, or the setting up of any ad- ministrative official or board who would have arbitrary or dictatorial powers, or that would teAd to place any restrictions upon freedom of thought or of expression, or create a monopolistic control that would deprive any authdr of his means of livelihood." Russell Crousc, in a .statement to ■Vawbiy, declared: "In my estimation It will take a very long time before tlie AAA plan can be made effective. There are some things in the plan •with which I disagree but I cannot •ee wiiere any political questions can be implicated in the issue. The sole ijuestion before the Authors' League is the plan's effect upon strengthening the status of writers. As for the American Writers Asso- ciation, the simple thing for them to nave done was to have gone to the Authors' lieague and placed their objections before the body." Although no final date has been set for the subcommittee to issue its findings, an interim report will bfe deUvered at the next council meet- ing of the Authors' League sched- uled in October. Meanwhile, the AWA, operating out of headquarters in the Devon hotel, N. Y., continued to push its campaign to enlist authors in the fight against the AAA. punng the week, additional support fcfl? the group was received from Perothy Thompson, James TruSlow Adams, Earl Sparling, Rex Beach, Dale Carnegie, Morrie Hyskind. Wil- liam L. White and Lin YuTang, John Erskine heads the outfit. Norton; Ken B. McCormick, editor- in-chief, Doubleday; John O'Con- nor, president, Grosset & Dunlap; iWilton Runyon, ad director. Double- day; Leon Shimkin, exec veepee, Simon & Schuster; and William Sloane, of William Sloane Asso- ciates. Periodical will have only world news, and will place heavy empha.sis on art. Heading early organization are William Patterson, ex-Hearstling and presis-service roan who co-pro- duced "True Glory" in .Hollywood; former ■ New Republic editor Max Ascoli; and Louis Dolivet, who founded and edited Free World fol- lowing several years as a professor of political science. Ambitious plans in the hopper have set mag's first run at 150,000 copies, plus. five overseas editions scheduled for later appearance. Overseas issues are tentatively planned for England, France, Scan- dinavian countries, China, and a gen- eral Spanish-language edition for Spain and Latin-America. One exec said if plans were successful there would be between 19 and 25 over- seas editions in a few years. ■ While sheet's editorial policy will: take a liberal slant, it's intended for straight news-review presentation. Staff at present is. composed largely of vets.The^e has been no managing editor set, but negotiations are on with several men, WarM's 1SO.M«-Copy '47 Prccm I^ewest entrant into the newsmag- teine field Will make its appearance Ec .iietime in late February or early •March of 1947. Bankrolled by Jock Whitney. Jr., Nelson Rockefeller, and Michael Straight (lattcr's family connected with the New Republic) P~oposed weekly has as its working title UN World. Although it |has sev- eral ex-New Republic staffers for its masthead, mag will not be a do- good sheet, according to its editors, hut a straight commercial venture. Company is incorporated as United Nations World Publishing Corp. Format, currently, being worked Over, now caUs for' a 64-page slick- papec book to sell at around 20 cents. ZifI-Da.viS Shifts StiufHe in executive personnel of Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. now has William B. Ziff as chairman; of the board and publisher while ' B. G; DavLs, ex-veepee, moves into Zifl's former post as proxy. Among, other changes; George Berner is advertising director, Michael .lH. Froelich, editorial direc- tor, Herbert J. Morganroth, produc- tion director,, and Harry G; Strong, circulation director. Fibber & Molly Book "The McGees Of Wistful Vista" is the tentative title of the Actionized novel Don Quinn is working on for Simon & Schuster publication. It will be developed around the Fibber McGee & Molly characters, which radio show Quinn authors and owns one^third with Jim and Marion Jordan, who play Fibber & Molly. ' Bob Hope's Book Setup The Hollywood capital-gains de- vice has entered book publishing, ac- cording to the deal the Hope Enter- prises has made with Simon & Schu.ster for publication ol Bob Hope's "So This Is Peace." It's a se- quel to Hope's "I Never Left Home," which sold 1,500,000 copies, proceeds to the war relief agencies. This one, however, is a profit proposition, hence the comedian's own corpora- tion is publishing, exploiting, etc., with S&S as selling agents, which arrangement permits Hope to exer-. cise a capital gain. Comedian is slated to appear at the N. Y. Herald Tribune authors luncheon Oct. 22 and also on the radio program, "Author Meets Critics," around the same time, which will coincide with publication of "So This Is Peace." Book has been edited by ex-J. Walter Thompson radio scripter, Carroll Carroll, who likewi.se assisted Hope on "Never Left Home." This time Carroll will share 25% in the new ''Peace" book. ; Skalsky's Q«ea|i(!fs During bis eastern vacation Sid- ney Skolsky "has aligned 22' guest columnists, all name byliners, who are writing about Hollywood. This is a switch on the usual Hol- lywood celebs, most of whom have stand-ins or ghosts turning out stuff under pseudo bylines. Instead, Dud- ley Nichols, Gene Fowler, Claude Binyon, Stephen Longstreet, James R. Cain, Sam Spewack, Mary Mc- Call, Jr., Cordon Kabn and others of that calibre are doing the guest cols. Geo. H. Lr«n Jains P»n-Air George H, Lyon, former assistant to Elmer Davis at the OWI, joined Pan-American World Airways, Mon- day (23) as a publicity and exploita^ tion exec in its Atlantic division. Hell headquarter at LaGuardia Field, N. Y. While with the OWI, Lyon served as Davis' personal rep at Gen. Eisen- hower's headquarters and prior to that w£ts assistant managing editor ot PM. Robnett vs. Dattan Libel Up A third attempt to try . the suit in which George W. Robnett, exec sec- retary of the Church League of America, is seeking $100,000 libel damages from E. P. Dutton, publish- ers, was begun last week in Chi- cago's Federal district court. Robnett is suing for alleged libel- ous statements made in the book, "Under Cover,'* authored by Arthur Derounian, whose pen name is John Hoy Carlson. N. Y. U. Course on Book Fublisbinc A course on "The Practice of Boole Publishing," with head.s oi the publishing industry appearing as guest lectures, will ' open at New York University's evening division of general education in October. Speakers include Joseph A. Brandt, president, Henry Holt & Co.; Bennett Cerf, president. Random House; ' Alan Green, of 'Green- Brodie; Meiric Dutton, formerly of the War Production Board; Hugh J. Kelly, veepee, McGraw-Hill;. J. K. Lasser; Albert R. Leventhal, veepee, Simon & Schuster; Freeman Lewis, executive veepee. Pocket Books; Storer B. Lunt, president, W. W, ■ . , 1(11 l-l'i I 1 t . ':rf: . < CHATTER Chicle Sale's son, Dick, completed a novel, "Benefit Peformance." Winehell's book publication off until spring via Simon & Schuster. Reginald Whitley, liOndon Daily Mirror drama ecUtor, gandering Hollywood studios. The Stuart Cloetes may journey to his South African farm for the Christmas holidays. Duell, Sloan & Pearce to publish heavyweight champ Joe Louis' auto- biography in January. N.' Y. Times drama ed Lewis Funke has article on I. J. Fox in current Liberty mag; Sam Terry, owner of Oxford Press, is expanding his activities in- to the book publishing field. . Random House t^:publish Eugene 0'Neill's"The Iceman Cometh" Oct. 9, day of play's N. Y. premiere. Charles Jackson's "The Fall ot Valor" getting a first print order of 50,000 from Rinehart. He authored "Lost Weekend." Bill Targ, World Pub. editor, writing a weekly book column for the new Cleveland News Book Sup- plement, titled "Manhattan Letter." Deemed daring for Cosmopolitan is its serialization of "Gentleman's Agreement," by Laura Z. Hobson, treating with anti-Semitism in the U. S. and which Simon & Schuster will publish in book form. Title has reference to the chi-chi clubs' and hotels' "gentlemen's agreement" on restricting their clientele and mem- berships. Plays on B'way 5iS Continued from page so ^ Ciypsy Lady "Gypsy Love Song" (both in orig- inal Harry B. Smith lyrics, from "Fortune Teller") drew the top re- spon.se over these with interpolated lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest. Not that the latter didn't brighten up several numbers with slick rhymsteriug; it's just that the nostalgic tunes paid a& in spades. Romany motif of "Fortune Teller" is partially sustained through .spot- ting Helena Bliss, who previously made the grade in "Norway," as the nomadic Musetta. gypsy gal with a yen for the better things in life. From here it excursions into the "Pygmalion" idiom, when the Great Alvarado (John TVers), lady-killer mountebank, is rejected by the Mar- quise (Doreen Wilson) and, for re- venge, conspires with Boris (Melville Cooper), .self-appointed king of the gypsies, to transform Musetta into a glamor girl. Idea behind the latter is to snare in marriage the young Mar- quis (Gilbert Russell) as payoff on snub by latter's sister. But it never comes off. She goes back to her gypsy lover, Sandor (George Brit- ton). Mi,<,s Bliss turns in a good job, both melodiealiy and histrionically, espe- cially in"Romany life" and "Spring- tide" duet with Russell. Joseph Mac- aulay enlivens matters with "Pifl Paff," worked up for neat comedy with aid Of Tyers, Jack Goode, Rus- sell and Miss Wilson. Britton scores with his baritoning of "Gypsy Love S6n?4" while Val. Valentinoff also,ha.'; ■his inning wilii some ballet. Cooper provides the major portion of com- edy as the gypsy king. Others turn- ing in neat jobs are GlareiWe Der- went, Patricia Simms and Edmund Dorsiiy. Choral arrangements and dance numbers are nicely paced, with lemnjfc en.semble lookers nicely sho;?«|f^ by Miles White's costum- in%^''Fads have nifty singing voices, which blend nicely. . . Lester has spared nothing in giv- ing operetta lavish production. And Wri-.?ht and Forrest haVe done a good job of direction. Sdbo.' \ SCULLY'S SCRAPBOOK l «« M > By Frank Scully ♦ * * Mammy, Fla., Sept. 22. Deer JWr.'Jolson;- And lyoii ain't heard nuthin' yet either! When the notices come tum- bling in from all parts of the world, hailing "The Jolson. Story" as the greatest picture since Fred Ott lirst mugged before a camera for Thomas Edison back in 1888, you're going to feel young enough to wish you could again run away from as happy and as holy a cantor's home as I.have eser .seen on the screen, so yo'i could join Steve Martin in burlesque all over again. ■ , , ■ You're going to cry, too, because the Dockstader minstrels, the wan- dering around Louisiana for a way to merge jazz with lullabies, the Win- ter Garden shows, the Sunday night concerts, the Warner pictures, the married life in the country, the camp tours will never be yours agaip. But you're going to'be happy, too, as you are when you are singing "April Showers," for you have here the picture everybody has been waiting 50 years for. You're formidable. Parks is epaUmt. Skolsky is terrifique. Bill Demarest is WMiantyique. Evelyn Keyes is cxquise. Scotty Beckett char- mant, Ludwig Bonath sublime, Tamara Shayne, odorabie, and the Tech- nicolor la plus belie du monde. A Mogr. Runs.'Out: of Points''- I have to use French for your performances, because under OPA. reguf lations I am allowed to praise only three pictures a year and; dope that I am, I shot my superlatives on some super-wonder mediocrities in the pa.=;t and now have to go into the black market for top quality adjectives to describe "The Jolson Story." What to me is the greatest thing about the picture is how two:arti.st? like you and Parks could merge and fuse your personalities and talents and thus create something which is neither Parks nor Jolson but a new wunderkind destined to be the marvel of the atomic era. This isn't dubbing. Something new has been added. Your yeans and Parks' 30 really mean you have four generations of know-how behind you. Well,.' years of experience poured into one magnificent Sonny Boy is what you have in "The Jolson Story." As heartwarming as is the way you and Parks get away with merger in a world where everybody is at everybody else's throat, I think the transition of the Mouse from a chatterer to a top-producer in one picture ; is even a greater thriller-diller. 1 know how he trekked around with that, story for years and how Warners couldn't see your own life-story as a picture. I k]iow, too, of the years the story spent chugging its way through tlie Columbia mill. Though Stephen Longstreet, Harry Chandler and Andrew Solt are the only writers listed, I guess half the scripticians in town had their hands on it at some time or other. I know Sidney Buchman worked plenty on it.'. 'An "'Oscar for"''Oscar? .' But lt was the old Mouse who stayed with it. from beginning to end; and he who invented the word Oscar for an Academy Award is just about ready to pocket one himself. I don't know-how you and Parks will divide yours. Maybe you'd better split Skolsky between you. If anything spills over; I'll take it. It probably will be.the second serial rights to his own tint.ype. Of course, I know in a literal, biographical sense, it is not the story of Cantor Yoelson's little boy Asa. No girl named Julie Benson.ever played in "Show Girl" for J. P. McB^oy or Florenz Ziegfeld, and certainly no gal v nanted Julie Benson ever was married to you. There is nothing in the picture either of the AI-Harry Jolson feud,' J notliing of the Goldman-Sachs collapse, nothing of the Hillcrest Wailing - Wall, nothing of racetracks, nothing of Jolson subbing for Jessel in "The Jazz Singer," notKing at all of "Sonny Boy." Some of the stuff couldn't be cleared, some of it maybe couldn't get by the Johnston office. But there's plenty of Yoelson and Jolson even so. Oddly, there isn't a moment when the picture drags as long as your voice comes over the sound track. As long as you're in love with singing and an audience, the love-interest is sweeter than haute sauterne. But when you bring in a dame, even such a beautiful and tMented dame as Evelyn Keyes, the picture drops to^the level of being merely tremendous. You know, Mr. Jolson, if you had sunft all through that picture, if you had never taken a two-year layoff and made San Fernando . Valley your home, if you had only become a canyon crooner for a "vacation," I don't think another picture would ever top "The Jolson Story." There just simply is not enough singing. Sixteen songs! What's 16? Sweet, sure, but only the beginning! Who Keeps Bad Notices? Incidentally, who sang for Scotty Beckett when he played you as a kid in Baltimore playing hookey from synagog? You didn't dub that too, did you, Mr. Jolson? And all those hick towns you toured in vaudeville, were they really in your playing time? Or are they towns where Sid Skolsky's column syndicates? Did be want to give some rag besides Varbsiy a plug for a change? And didn't we ever give you a bad notice? Seems to me I remember you beefing about some. Was that true, that scene where you as a kid find your voice is changing and can't sing, so you switch to whistling? Whether it was or not, it was smart showmanship. When you wanted to sing again and Bill Demarest wouldn't let you and you started humming to try out your voice and he ■ says "Stop arguingl" a Wd next to me bellylaughed tight through the next scene. On anotlier occasion, when they put in the first Variety insert, 1 heard him say, "Gee, Vabiety was only 10c. then." And, finally, when you were dining with your father- and mother at your. San Fernanda :home; he cracked, "The cantor is dining without his hat." I could have smacked'the little kibitzer fox noticing things like that, knowing it was dene on purpose to show the cantor was being absorbed by show biz^ When the lights went on I observed he was my own Sonny Boy. I aslted him how he got in? He grinned. (Gate-crashers, like reporters, do not have to divulge this sort of information.) I asked him how he liked it. "You know," he said, "I hate musicals, but I loved every bit of that picture. I thought the coloring and singing in the synagog was beautiful and when little Jolson got sentenced to the choir of St. Mary's Home For Boys in Washington for running away from Baltimore, and had to sing 'Ave Maria,' I laughed and cried at the same time. Does he do that to every- body?" "You Uked it?" I asked. "I thought it was magnificent. But what viss that rasping sound I heard , every once in a while?" " "Al's asthma," I said. ; • "Asthma?" he echoed. Then we both laughed and slapped each .other on the back and went out into the streets; uplifted, and not doped for a novelty. Cue: "You Made Me Love You!" I hope you haven't minded my calling you Mr. Jolson, Al. With you I can see that familiarity breeds content. But you see expept for the back of your head at fights, and recently hearing you over the transom singing your head off in the recording room of Columbia, even on Sunday morn- ings, I have never met you as a phrase goes. In an age of sound-films, television, radar, telephones, even cables and letters, I thing it's sort of silly to hold down friendship to a handshake as a basic requirements of "knowing" or "meeting" .somebody. But since :it is, I can't say I've met you. But I've heard your heart tick all through '■The Jolson Story" and, brother, from here out I'm calling you brother! Faithfully, • • • frank Sculiv