Variety (Mar 1949)

VIDEO MUSIC PuhUahea W«efc|y at 154 Wegt 4eth Street, New Ybrk W tl, T., by Variety, Inc. Annua] «abacrll>tion; tit;- Slnkl* eo|it«9, M eiinta, ISuterad a» «e6pnd cl»s« matter December 22,'l»OS, at th* Post Office at New York, N. T., uhder tbii act «f March *, U7». ooFi:BiGU'r, 1010, ttt vakijety, inc. aiiL bights rksesved VOL. 174 No. 3 NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY. MARCH 30, 1949 PRICE 25 CENTS BUMOSE BLUES STALKS VIDEO MOST FILM COS. TO TOP '48 PROHTS N. Y.'s Tele-Calessen Now New York has a tele-cates- sen. Video Cafe, which had been operating as a restaurant for two months without TV, reopened Thursday (24) featuring corned beef and pastrami sandwiches and a 27rby-36-inch projection screen. „ The W«st 46th street eatery was inspired by boom in daytime tele. ' Ample support for the industry- i wide belief that the panic is over i for the U, S. film business came I through tliis week in a series of j earnings disclosures which dra-; matically piled up the evidence, i From the looks of things now, most | of the majors will show higlier i profits in fiscal '49 than they did j in '48. If the trend holds, the total j .net for the present year should be | the third largest in the history of j tl\e industry, substantially better- i ing the estimated $60,000,000' earned in 1948-. Mayer Renewal At M-G Calls For Pay, Bonus Slash Louis B. Mayer will renew his ticket with Metro for another five BIBLE BIZ HELPS THAW OUT FINN FILM COIN Bibles are putting the heat un- der U, S. film companies' frozen coin in Finland. Holy Testaments, printed in the tiny Baltic country and sold in America, have: served to thaw all the Yank picture re- ceipts that have been in deep freeze there since the end of the war, In addition, companies are operating on a completely, liquid basis currently via the Sterno-izing provided by the Bibles. Deal is only one of dozens of odd methods the film firms are using Neither Storm Nor Rain— Corpus Christi, March 29. Bandleader Floyd Tillman flew, waded for five hours and rode 120 miles in a taxicab to keep a date here. Tillman cracked up his private plane on a little intercoastal canal island, enroute from Houston. Be waded shallow water until a tug- boat picked him up and took' him to. Sargent. There he caught the cab. , Changing clothes, which he had brought along in the cab, he ar- rived only a few minutes late for his engagement at a local nilei'y spot. ■.. His band; which made the trip by bus, was waiting for him. .xxty^^f x«A *\r, I - - ij p x IIICLIJUUB LIIC 1111*1 lllllli^. aiC UCtlllg Current 'sales receipts, as evi-1 years as the result of an agreement unlea.sli monies blocked Overseas deneedwby figuDfes on grosses, are ! reached by the studio chief with sticking to a level established last I prexy Nicliolas M. Schenck at the "year. These gi'osses are some 7''<; ! latter's Miami Beach home two lower than the near^peak returns i weeks ago. Mayer's new deal, registered in 1947 following the i liowever, it's understood, will call 'decline from the 1946 ali-time | for a considerable cutJaJliS-pres- high. . But bigger gravy in the | enl salary and bonus, way of net profits is showing up, Production chief's current pact execs widely indicate, because the j is due to expire next Aug. 31' That full benefit of production cost re^ i it would be renewed was indicated are at last taking adjustments hold. AH the companies have now liquidated that costly product turned out in '46 whqn the sky was the limit on the amount of coin which could be spent on a picture. In some instances, these films failed to pay off at the boxoffice and the losses which had to be written off have held down the n_«.„L nii./.mlinA Of net, Process, however, now seems; ndroll l/laCipilHC Ul to be ending as evidenced by re- ports just aired. Metro, for instance, which came . (Continued on page 55) at the sessions of Metro sales execs on the Coast in February, when Mayer announced his health was never bette/' and that he expected "to continue as head of the studio as long as Mr, Schenck remains at the liead of our company." Agreement with Schenck (Continued on page'55) on Doubling Too Tough, Performers Find Out Legit Held Best For Video-Tony Miner TV 9 Pnlliinia Ink KAHN A V d.rUUUme JOD. The harsh discipline of the legitimate theatre is the best | schooling for television. Both j fi'om the performer standpoint as; ! well as the producer and director. T>,.„*„., ^. X 1 , I That's a fairly conglomerate and I Performers are finding that tele-- .o„,ing opinion in the new me-; vision is ;i fuUtime job and Uiose jjiu„, Producers, directors, per-1 mat have been doubling from the-' formers—at least those who have ! atres into radio and video are flnd^ ljeen in tlVe theatre—are finding ; by shortages of dollar exchange. Surprising amounts of currency are being received in this country via Yankee ingenuity in finding paths that pay o!t. AH the methods are legal, since- any remittance rc" quires a license from the govern- ment concerned, although the ex- tent of some of tlie ingenuity ex- liibited is undoubtedly a surprise to many foreign officials. American firms have become partners in literally dozens of busi- nesses from lumber to tlie Bibles as result of eflorts to convert frozen currencies into dollars. In many other cases, wliere it is ab- solutely impossible to get money out, the Yank companies have be- come owners of local real estate and industries of every description. Bible deal is probably the most unusual. It is believed to have te- sulted in thawing of about $250,000 to date. Oddly enough, it was not one that the U. S. industry thought up, but one that came to it in the (Continued on page 46) Seen 50% Public Acceptance Will Be Keynlitr of 'Good Taste' Via TV Disturbed at the steadily-grow- ing demands of state and certain municipality censors to set them- selves up as television program arbiters, TV broadcasters feel tlie time has arrived to put tlielr own house in order. . .. .... Networks and.station operators realize that it's only the newness of their medium that has kept the blUenoses from butting in so far. As a result, they are launching a concerted drive to eliminate any taint of censorable material^ from shows that might provide a pretext for outside meddling. Most of the industry officials be- lieve that TV is stiU too new for the formulation of any standard code of ethics—that they've hardly scratched the surface of program- ming techniques, and so any code >ng^ the strain too groat The toll of performers in video IS already impressive. For exam- ple, Arthur Godfrey had to bow .out of his recent date at the Capi- tol, N. Y„ when he found he couldn't keep up the pace between •theatres, radio and TV. Milton Berle similarly found him.self au- ditioning for a nervous breakdown w flitting between radio and video, and took a month off to retrieve J»»s breath. Paul Winchell also learned that working the Bigelow Ballantine Now Has Yanks, A's and Phillies Philadelphia, March 29. Ballantine's Ale, already signed to sporisoi- the 1M. Y. Yankees this year oh television, also bought rights this week to botli tlie Phila- delphia Phillies and Athletics games, v/hich will be carried lo- Broadway stage, but more recent-i cally over Philly TV stations. With Jy a top producer and director for j three major league clubs, Ballan- CBS television, lend.s his voice em- tine's thus becomes the heaviest tliat out to their increasing satis- faction. Wortliington (Tony) Miner, a former name director for the phatically to that opinion, "Theatre bacliground is so im- portant in tele because of the ne- pessitv of a sustained perform- ance." Miner points up. But in i radio and pictures, he adds, be-1 tele baseball bankroUer Agency for the brewery firm is J. Walter Thompson. television-showrihrjani pickens ^l^^^^. Srm\nLsTi!ln'i ' airshow ,s well as Radio City Mu- '^^■^""'^'"S^^ doS'M SIC Hall was instrumental m .set- , , „ „ -pHni Tn Die- t'ng a pace he couldn't maintain. ^>l,'!.'Vr^^^f woit in takes" hei He quit the Music Hall. i Phil Silvers, who bowed out of slre.s^.l-.. ..ct„rtin' the Arrow siiow last week, will ^ Pr»c'"<'C'--d';-et|o> oi Studio Stick to his leeit chores in "High i One," one ol TV'.s. first prestige Button Shoes'- inasmuch as i j programs, and more recent y asso- ]vorking bo?S displayS^he couldn" ' ttMt flo justice to them. , rated "The Goldbergs, Minei be- The strain is especially gi-eat on 1 lieves it is so . much easier for a (Continued on page 55) t (Continued on page 34) Giving Self Away isill Todman, producer ot the brace of CBS giveaways, "Win- ner Take All" and "Hit the Jackpot," was crossing the street la.st week; his arms laden with giveaway pots and pans which he was carrying into the Columbia studio, Tod- man dropped one as Goodman Ace was passing. Cracked Ace: "Pardon me. Bill, but you just dropped your script." Radio Set Sales oOtfIn 1; Offset by TV Washington. March 29. A considerable decline in radio set produittion with an-oft'setting increase In television receiver out- put was forecast for 1949 yester- day (28) by the Commerce Dept. The agency said that a maximum : . - - , , , worthless of 10,000,000 radio sets, a drop of "P f ow '^-^^^ dy wTth slate 50% from 1948, is all that may 'a"„/local boards in Pennsylvania be expected, but estimated t;hat ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ shove- video sales may bring the do lar , legislation that would give volume to the $1,200,000,000 figure ■ ihem jurisdiction OVfer .tele SllOWS, , (Continued on page 21 Oscared 'Buttons* Top 1948 Commercial Tune With 3,000,000 Disks Hollywood, March 29. "Buttons and Bows," acclaithed by the iilm indu.<;try as the Best Original Song in the 1948 Academy Award contest, put songwriters Ray Evans and Jay Living.ston, at the top of the music ladder in more I ways than one. Together with their i Oscars from theAcademy, tuhe- I smiths have $24,000 each; thus far i from the novelty ditty plus the • knowledgti that their song was the j top-hit commercial number of the I year, their second in ■ a couple of ', years. It sold approximately 3,- j 000,000 irecords -— half of them Dinah Shore's Columbia version which turned out to be a smashing comeback disk for thfe ehii-p—^arid 650,000 sheet copies. Nir II I r J n £*ii it was also a great personal .1. lieart. rUna Denetll! triumph for the writers, for the chore was their first opportunity to do more than menial music stints at Paramount, and they won the chance only because one of those routine jobs turned out to be the smash hit "To Each mi Own*" Evans and Livingston have been Paramount three-and-one-lialf They canie on the lot at achieved last year. Department based its forecast ^ of reduced receiver sales to filling i of radio set demand, reduced busi-' ness in console units becau.se of the record player "confusion," and ' a falling oft' in radio sales "in one : geographi- area after another as, television becomes available." i In a report by James B. Forman ' and Charles P. Redick of the Of- ' fice of Domestic Commerce on the efl'ect of television and FM on the radio industry, the department said that if the manufacturers at- tain their objective. of producing 2,000,000 video sets this year, dol- lar income from this product will "quite possibly" exceed the retail value of radio sets."This would be a remarkable acliievement for the-industry in its fourth year of (Continued on page 46) Benny to Disk April 10 Air Show So HeCanM.C. Hollywood. March 29. For first time in hi's 17 years on the air Jack Benny will broadcast a show on a record. He cuts the April 10 program tonight (Tues.) i so be can be in N. Y. April 6 to | at' emcee the Heart Fund gala at the j years. Copacabana niteiy. j ?200 a weelt apiece and were given ' t .. ...sit u>4 *u„ the job of turning out tunes bear- Barbara Stanwyck will be the , yji^g Paramount films guest on the transcribed show.: as a means of grabbing extra bal- Benny will spend 10 days in N. Y. v (Continued o» page 55)