Variety (Nov 1948)

VIDEO MUSIC , |>ubl)»hfid W««kly «t 1B4 West 46th Street, New Tork 1>, Ni T,< by Vaiicly, Inc. Annual BUbserlptloni $10. Singly eoj>ie», JS cent* Kntered ae neoulid ulaoa matter 0*cen^ber 22> ItOSj tit tVe ; I'oilt OTDca at New VOiIr. tf: T.V'-unaer th* net of Marub 8, 187*. VOL. 172 No. 11 NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17. 1948 j^EICfi 25 CENTS LEGITERS' $60,000, 000 MOP-UP Godfrey's N.Y. Roxy Date at 25G and % ; Presages New Trend in Vaude Dates ' -With a Eoxy theatre, N. Y., date*' at $25,000 and percentages weekly, jjiow In the works for Arthur Godfrey, CBS* No. 1 personality, fact that new vaudeville headlihers must be obtained outside the i variety field is being pointed up in Sharper focus. ' Bookers have reached the con- fslusion that inasmuch as the pau- city of playing time in vaudeville jmakes it virtually impossible to "develop new personalities, fresh talent for theatres must be ob- tained from other fields. Thus radio and films now supply the, t)ulk of personalities to the vaude- yille field, and within two or three years many bookers expect video to provide b.o. lure. •Vaude.'s inability to provide new headliners is further pointed up by the fact that radio has supplied the highest salaried names in vaude. The Roxy theatre, a little more than a year ago, gave Jack Benny and his radio troupe the record breaking salary of ,$40,000 atid percentages. Benny's first week resulted in a $44,000 take. Godfrey's salary is the second highest in the history of that house. Out of that sum, Godfrey ; will pay off a number'of his talent, discoveries which he'll take into the theatre Sky High Tele Chicago, Nov. 16. Tele reception in a plane was successfully demonstrated here Sat. (13) by United Air Lines. Two standard model table sets brought in three stations with lit- tle distortion, while the plane cir- cled Milwaukee at 6,500 feet and Chi at 2,000 feet. Pro Grid Deny TV Culprit On Gate Receipts ■Television wvill defiiiitely be^ on Hahd for the baseball and football seasons in 1949, despite reports that pro football team owners are priming to oust TV cameras from ball pai-ks as the factor most te-' sponsible for a slumping gate;; Questioned on the reports, Deal for Godfrey date late Jan- spokesmen for the pro grid teams nary or February is expected to be | denied emphatically this week that completed in the next few- days. | tele is the culprit that's knocked a There are several items to -^be j hole in their receipts. They admit- ironed out such as auxiliary talent | ted frankly that none of the N. Y. KiS' BOFF B.O. By ARTHUR BRONSON The amazing business, as well as the informal rivaU-y, of the two legit writing-producing teams of today — Richard Rodgers & Oscar I Hammerstein II and H o w a r d I Lindsay & Russel Grouse—have I been pointed up again by the re- 1 turn of the latter team to the Broadway scene, after a couple of seasons' absence, with "Life With Mother." ■ Between their writing and pro- ducing activities, the two teams are responsible to date for* well over $60,000,000 in grosses in legit alone. The Rodgers-Hammerstein duo is credited with over $40,000,- 000 of it; the Lindsay-Grouse team with over $20,000,000, What is more, this .is only a part story. The $60,000,000 figure is for boxoffice take in the U; S. only, and doesn't include grosses from their shows abroad. The figure doesn't include amounts brought in by film sale of their properties; It is also incomplete, in that various shows of the Rodgers-Hammerstein team are going strong currently in N. Y., on the road, and else- (Gontinued on page 60) on the bill and number of "talent discoveries" to be included in the package. Godfrey will pay for the acts he brings with him. , Godfrey, presently, earns around $500,000 annually as a result of his CBS activities, His Bojiy deal calls for two weeks and options. Package was originally offered to the Capi" tol theatre but deal fell through. The Godfrey talent discoveries are being packaged for presenta- tioh in other vaude theatres throughout the country, although such packages will not include Godfrey's: services. The radio con- ferencier now travels between New York and Washington in his own plane in order to keep up with his radio schedule and he'll be unable to take on any other traveling assignments. teams this year has been any good, adding that they're almost amazed at the number of patrons that do turn up at the games in view of the teams' poor showings. Spokes- men echoed the opinion of boxing promoters that the customers will come in droves as soon as the leagues can field better teams. Fact that baseball will continue to receive TV coverage was proved this week with the disclosure that Chesterfield, sponsors of the N. Y. Giants' -telecasts, has already de- cided to switch the Giant games in 1949 from WNBT (NBC), which (Contmued on page 38) . Video Evolving New Film Distrib Crop; NBC Sets Up Exchange Centers. Jolson Sings—In Spades Hollywood, Nov. 16., Columbia Pictures is making upwards of 30 different sound- tracks of ;A1 Jolson, all of wbicU obviously can't go into "Jolson Sings Aiain," sequel to "The Jol- son StoiT." < The overage: is insurance for possibly future sub.iects by or about the star, and so scored that they could be integrated, into such future filmusipals whlph might seek to recapture Jolsoniariav - Command Performance H'wood Stars Sail For England Just In Time With the longshoremen's strike efl'ectively tying up trans-Atlantic shipping in all east coast Ameri- can poi-ts, a Hollywood contingent bound for London to ■ attend the third Command Performance man- aged to sail from Halifax at mid- night (Tucs.) on the Mauretania. Group included Joan Gaulfleld and her mother, Virginia Mayo, (Continued on page 54) U. S. Preps Films For Russia But Mum On Titles Following long and arduous compromising of differences of opinion on stability of various films for exhibition in Russia, the pic- i ganization ture industry is forwarding its list of 100 films to the State Dept. in Washington this week for trans- mittal to Moscow. Soviet is to choose from the list a minimum of 20 films under terms of the, agree- ment recently negotiated by Eric Johnston. \ Sincere oivergences of views as to what would make a good and what a bad impression on the Rus-: sians has . been so strong that the Motion Picture Export Assn., which is handling the deal, is making every effort to keep the basic 100 (Continued on page til) ♦ Television industry, already re- I sponsible for innovations that have affocted all of show business, is j now bringing to the fore an entire new crop of film distributors in a move that may have telling effect on both the TV and film industries. Apparently believing thaf mo- tion pictures will constitute an in- tegral part of tele programming for years to come, NBC-TV- this .week began to set. up its own ex-,, change centers ip five key cities tff handle fititi ^.dijsjtrjifoution. , Same procpdure .is, being mulled by CBS-Ty, which recently expanded greatly" its filrii department and has already bought 52 British pic- tures for syndication to its affiliate stations. N. Y. Daily News' WPIX, is now distributing a group of Sir . Alexander Korda oldies to various V TV stations throughout the coun- try; along with its Telepix News- reel..' Entry of the TV networks and . indie stations into film distribu- tion puts them into direct competi- tion with the few ma.ior film com- panies now handling telefilms. United Artists, for one, recently established a separate telefilm de- i partment inside its own sales or- and will offer the pix SHOW BIZ AGAIN TO SPEARHEAD USO DRIVE Show businesses being lined up to play a leading role again in the USO-Veterans Hospital I this area and Loew liaison man in Showmen on Truman's Inauguration Committee Wa.shington, Nov. 16. Two film industry people were picked today to head committees having charge of President Tru- man's inauguration Jan. 20. Melvin D. Hildreth. chairman of general committee in charge, named Carter Barron, Locw's regional director in Jan. 1 Seen Earliest Date for Disking In Settlement of Musicians Ban Camp Shows campaign in New York for $800,000. James E. Sauter, head of Air Features, Inc., has been named chairman of the enter- tainment industry committee which , will spearhead- the drive to secure sufficient funds to meet the en^ tertainment and recreation needs of American's new teen-age Army and the hospitalized vets of the last tv o wars. A sor'jaio campaign wiH be un- (Coniiftued oiv page 63) Washington, as chairman of com mittee on special events. Barron, a Georgia Dem, has been active in D.C. Democratic affairs for years. Melvyn Douglas was named chairman of the motion picture committee. His wife, Helen Gaha- gan Douglas,, former actress, was just re-elected to a third term in Congress from her L.A. district. Ben Strouse, operator of WWDC here, was picked as chairman of the committeo on store exhibits. Recording manufacturers and their attorneys vary somewhat as t^ when they will have an indica- tion of the attitude of Attorney General Tom Clerk in connection with the disk-ban settlement plan. AH are generally agreed, however, that it won't be for another 10 days to two weekS; Which. means that very little is likely to happen ' in the way of new recordings until close to the first of the year, mak- ing the ban a full 12-month situa- 1 tion.;.. I Recording execs and their legal- , ites saw nothing ominous in the ' absence of Clark when James C. Petrillo, American Federation of Mu.sicians head; Milton Diamond, 'AFM attorney; Joe McConneli, ] RCA-Victor attorney, and other? 'showed up at Clark's office last Wednesday (17) in Washington and found him on his way to Florida. iThey felt that due to the election I and the resultant gathering of j President Truman's staff in Kt-y I West, Fla., the standup was one of I those things. I For days, however, the music ; business and some disk men pre- (ferred to believe the affair was a ' sluffoffl deliberately planned. Some also believed, too,; that Clark was avoiding the Issue and may with- hold an opinion on the settlement plan indefinitely due to the tact that it's not usually his place to i decide whether any sort of opera- tion is within the law before it is put into practice. It is his office's job to move after a mode of opera- tion is put iiito effecti and only if it Is in violation of a law. To de- liver ■ an opinion' on the so-called Diamond Plan would be setting a precedent. Disk men point out in answer that the trade language for what (Continued on page 53) i for sale to TV outlets as soon as it I has rounded up an adequate I library. Twentieth-Fox, while not 1 yet in the distrib business for j video, is producing films especially I for that medium and is expected j to begin its own distribution sys- ! tem within the near future. ; As for the TV industry itself, it's ' believed in some quarters that the web.s' move into the distribution picture may lay them wide open to an anti-trust case similar to that now embroiling the film industry. Both NBC and CBS have empha- sized they will sell the films only to their own affiliate stations. That means they will be control- ling production, distribution and : exhibition of these pix—and that's the basis of the Government's cur^ rent suit against the film industry. It's juist as possible, of course, that the Government may look upon telefilm distribution as more sim-' ilar to radio networking, in which (Continueci on page 53) KAYE IN MACK SENNEH BIOPIC MAPPED AT WB Hollywood, Nov. 16. Danny Kaye, in a biopic of the career of Mack Sennett, is Jei-ry Wald's next idea for the comedian at Warner Bros. The title may be "Father Goose," which nomencla- ture Gene Fowler gave the pioneer slapsticker and which Sennett own.s. Thus, any WB deal would be 100% with Sennett, sans Fowler, since the pantomimic film produ- cer insisted on owning all supple- mentary rights. -Wald favors "Slap- stick" as the title. A legitimate actor would play Sennett; Kaye would be in the rola of one of his lesser comedians wb9 (Continued on page 61)