Variety (September 1952)

September 17, 1952 UXEKATI 73 Literati *T V Pn«it's Circulatiori Builder i sorry if a wrong impression was N. * ■ schiff’s N, y. _ Post I given about Mrs. Cowles’ feelings poioui^ struck ^ circulation- on war. She assures us she was seems 'O .. Ijy latching 9 hto misquoted and was not ‘enchanted hlllKUn& P >> ic linifine «rViaf eaur in .XCnfUfi builtiing ;,ir.rnv ficures, tnat: is vniq.uc oy wnar sne saw in is.orea, ana “Broaa y started with the when describing the beauties of Winchell “expose” series, Panmunjom she did so only to a^^^Ponfidential—Lait & Morti- point out how ironic it was that “ one of the most seriou$ peace nego- it has been a two-ply tiations of our time was going oq focused first on the Post in such a beautiful setting.” camP‘ K Qj.jiy versus Winchell Buchwald’s interview touched on vfrP versa), and the other is Mrs. Cowles’ book; “Ye Bloody " of. “inside Billy. Rose” $e- Precedent” (about Juan and Eva Hiroshima blast but has been re- pressed to now. Other literary and artistic ef- forts based cn the bombs and hav- ing increasing sales include “Atom Bombed Children,” a collection of writings by young sufferers from the blasts; “Streets of Corpses,” a work of fiction by Mrs. Yoko Ota; “Pictures of the Atom Bomb Blast,” photopraphic reproductions in color » » »»■ » »» » # ♦ I ♦ » »»♦#»» t » t t SCULLY’S SCRAPBOOK By Frank Scully ^ 4 4 ♦■4'4 4 ♦ ♦ ♦ 4 *4' enrt Ot UISIUC ^ a 1 \auuut uoix aiixx ^ya ^ Latter is heightened by the Peron); her activities as associate rms. procedure where [editor of her husband Gardner (Mike) Cowles’ Look and Quick; the revival of ‘‘Flair” as an annual shima,” Iwanami Photographic Library’s collection of stills; “Atom-Bombed Nagasaki,” a Dai ! Ichi Shuppan collection of pix from that city, and Asahi Shuppan’s “Atomic Bomb No. 1,” another col- lection of pix from Hiroshima, unique proeeuurc where IhL^'exposee" does a footqqte re- the day. Running .so K^24%7u7s-::bVhind. the sus- Sn might be that the paper ? gives Rose advance .pUeys, hPMUse the context admits that thfs ''series” has. been several "’"S'between? toe *Poft's managii^ editor, James A. -Syechsler., who renounced his Commie tip in his voutli has been the pet target, along' with Gray, of Winchell m fie N. Y. Daily Mirror. WW s wprhsler raps have been keyed to ^h^Red angle. Wechsler in turn $10 hardcover edition via Random House; her observations on the Far • East trip she just made with her husband; and her plans to do a book on the Far East. Rinehart’s Hemingway Analysis Rinehart will publish “Ernest Hemingway,” critical analysis of Hemingway’s works from his early stories and poems to his just-re- leased “Old Man and the Sea,” by Philip Young next February. and the Hemingway Hero, who would like to live up to The Code but cannot. hA. been editorializing and doing Young as apo^ciate ppfepp at Jf-insWe Winchell:” While read- New York U„ differentiate betwp P?s nStim?ally may wonder at this the hero who lives up to The Code local hassle, and many may not even know what the Barry Gray disk jockey business is all about, it is selling papers for the Post— and the Mirron N.H. Libel Claims Concord Monitor, Concord* N.H., and its publisher, James M. Lang- lev have been named in a $250,- 000 libel suit brought by Dr. Robert Medford Mass., New Lorain, O., Daily New daily will be published in Lorain, O., a one-daily city for the last 20 years,* before the end of this year, according to Edward J. Kiser, president of the Lorain Typographical Union, AFL. New F Lincoln of Medford Mass., in daily will employ most of the print- y ijmcuiii UL * u \ c.inprinr ^^s and compositors who have been Merrimack County (N.H.) fauperior o^ainct th^ T.orain Jour- Miss Caldwell’s Opinion Taylor Caldwell was asked by the N. Y. Daily News’ Inquiring. Photographer, via a question sub- mitted by a. reader, “Financially, what does a best seller mean to an author?” Miss Caldwell replied: “It means nothing except, of course, 10 to 40 years of rejection slips, education, hope, prayer, despair and ultimate poverty. It means - working for nothing for a whole lifetime and then, suddenly, the bonanza. It means having the Internal Revenue Bureau treat your years of struggling, without an income, as a daily wage when you get the bonanza. Your royal- ties, after barren years, are com- puted as a daily wage and all is taken from you Chapel Hill,*Desert Springs. Two young press agents, fired with idealism and the possibilities of snaking a vagrant buck, chased me for three days to ask me what I' of paintings by Sado MarukCand ! thought of a great idea which had just .struck them anp had, left them his wife Toshiko Akamatsu; “Hiro- .quaking as if they had just seen a meteor knock out an atomic bomb. . They were so glad, they told me, they had got me at night because that way they wouldn’t be using the boss’s time to further their own ambitions.. It seems they had come on some memorabilia of A1 Jolson, and it fired them into thinking what the picture industry needed more than anything else was a museum. ' ^ They went oji to explain that they figured they coujd rent an empty store in the neighborhood of Grauman’s Chinese, or maybe the Egyp- tian would be better, and fill it with exhibits which stars and stpdios would lend them from time to time. Of course, they would charge a small fee, just enough to take care of the overhead. They explained that being outsiders they could do the thing better than the studios as the issue of jealousy would not rear its ugly head, I had to point out in all honesty that the studios were having a tough time maldng both ends of their billion-dollar biz meet these days and if there were a loose buck lying around, whether fast or slow, my young idealists would have a hard time getting it away from older hands in the field. If their idea prospered, the nearby picture bouses would be sure to look upon them as opposition. If it didn’t, exhibitors ' would look upon their cultural project as just one more shooting gal- lery designed to lower the level of the boulevard. They wondered if in that,connection they couldn’t get aid and sup- port from the chamber of commerce in the hope of adding civic pride to the glamor and culture they hoped to put on display. In fact, they were so tenacious that there was nothing left for me to do except throw the Sunday punch. I filled them in with some melancholy background. . Years ago, I told them. Commodore J. Stuart Blackton laid out a blueprint on the i floor of Bedside Manor. He not only planned for a museum but figured Court. j-i. • 1 Action is based on an editorial allegedly published by the Monitor a year ago in connection with treat- ments developed by Dr. Lincoln for cancer and other diseases. Same editorial also resulted in two other $250,000 suits against the newspaper and its publisher, brought by Charles W. Tobey, Jr., son of the U.S. Senator, and the Lincoln Foundation trustees. Cases are due to come up at the October term of Superior Court. on strike against the Lorain Jour- nal for the last three years. The Lorain Journal is owned by Isadore and Samuel Horvitz, of Cleveland. Lorain paper, and an- other in Mansfield, also owned by the Horvitz interests, have been defendants in suits by the anti- trust division of the U. S. Dept, of Justice because they allegedly dis- criminated against advertisers who used local radio stations. ‘It means endless loneliness and 1 work, for, to pay the taxes on the bonanza, you must immediately whip your exhausted mind and body into a fresh effort, which may or may not pay off. It means smil- ing and smiling, when meeting the public, when you are really terri- fied as to your future. It means wishing you had taken up dish- washing or factory work or brick- laying as a career. Then at least, you know you will eat—at the ex- pense of somebody else. Why, then, do we write? God only knows.” Post Fight Story Suit Samuel Becker, Cincinnati cloth- ing dealer, has filed suit in U.S. District Court, Philadelphia, seek- ing $250,000 from the Curtis Pub lishing Co. over alleged libelous statements in an article, “The .Charles,” Lowdown on Wear Television, film and theatre cos- tumers and dress designers now have at their fingertips a veritable gold mine of documentation in a $7.50 tome just bropght out by Vik- ing Press called “What People Wore: A Visual History of Dress from Ancient Times to 20th Cen- tury America.” Written and illus- Strange Case of Ezzard* by W. C. Heinz, in the Satevepost trated by Douglas W. Gorslme, it of June 7. is perhaps the most exhaustive an- Article allegedly accused Becker thology treating with costuming to of promoting a fight between the be put between covers. It’s a natu- former world’s champifon and Oak- land Billy Smith, in Cincy Sept. 23, 1946. In addition to being finan- cially interested in the bout, Beck- er was also accused of serving as judge and having a piece of Charles. Plaintiff states that at no time was he ever interested financially ral for all the show biz facets con- cerned with the world of costume designing. The book is unique in that the author uses his own drawings rather than photographs. By eliminating all background, he con- centrates more on detail and clarity and also suggests the man- in Charles, never held the position nerisms and characters of the era. of judge and never talked to the author of the article, who quotes him liberally. Becker is repre sented by . the William A. Gray office of Philadelphia. Too Confidential? “Chicago Confidential,” by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, and Ralph Ingersoll’s “Wine of Violence” are listed among the more than 100 books which have just been banned by the Irish Censorship Board on allegations that they contain “inde- cent or obscene” material. Five pulp magazines and one English periodical also got the nix upon the latest list. ‘Karen* Into Third Edition Marie Killilea’s book about Karen,” her cerebral palsy-afflict- Jj^t-’bild, in its third edition, 35,- The text is at a minimum, yet valuable and directive, attempting l 3 y its arrangement to point out sociologically the evolution of the costumes. It is a very terse, con- cise documentation as ex'amplified by the convention of clothing. Although of greatest value to anyone in the theatre interested in professional costuming, it should also prove of interest to the lay- man, with its nearly 1,800 detailed illustrations correlated with his- tory and progress. Emphasis is placed on 19th Century America with direct tieup of environment character and clothmg sharply pointed up in both the written word and the sketches. Rose, Japs Buy Blast Pix UMXAU w,.,-, Hottest thing in J^P^nese pub 000 copies in all. Her Ladles Home lishing circles at Present are me Journal mag piece sparked doing me book for Prentice-Hall. Leon- ard Goldenson, prez of United Paramount Theatres and head of me United Cerebral Palsy Assn., oas been working on the book’s if with the authoress m the CP work in which the film IS prominent. Art Buchw'ald’s Apology atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With end of U. S occupation control, pictures books about the blasts ai^ their effect have been flooding the mar- ket Most sensational sales have been recorded by Asahi Graph, Life-like weekly picture mag of Asahi news- paper. A special issue containing heretofore repressed pix, hit Tokyo Art Buclnvaid, who does a “Par- streets Aug. 6, seventh People” column for the of the Hiroshima blast, and sold edition of the N.Y. Her- out in a matter hours. Two sub fm ^rhune, published the follow- sequent re-runs of the mag by POP" mt, lortlinght apology—so cap- ular demand brought total sales to .day after he did an in- more than 500,000, an unprece Fleur Cowles: “Occa- anri „ u “^^.'^eone says something take^'n^’^ d comes out in .print it exnprin^ ^ different meaning. This yjPerience hannpno.1 18) Literary Note Editor, Variety: Wizard, my longtime Seeing Eye boxer, got to be somewhat at- ached to show business and would nave liked, I know, to have his passing recorded in Variety. The poor guy passed away last Wednes- day, the diagnosis being a kidney condition. He was the subject of the book, “My Eyes Have a Cold Nose.” We were a team eight years. He was 10 when he died. He went through psychoanalysis with me and always felt it helped him a ot. Wiz was a great guy, always friendly, never forgot a face and always held to the philosophy that the show must go on. Hector Chevigny. Jr., has been and Sidney B. veepee of Ban- happened yesterday ^leur Cowles^^ we _ quoted Mrs. on Korea, We’re was dented success for this type of pub- lication. / _ „ Asahi's stills come from the Asahi Newsreel release No. 363, now playing at hundreds of the^ tres throughout the country. Film made immediately after the comedy wi'iter, has first novel, “The Strong Don t Cry,” to be published Sept. 25 by Liverigbt. Dial Press and Doubleday post- ing annual awards of $100 and $200, respectively, for the best work of young writers at the New | School for Social Research, N. Y. Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong plans finishing his autobiog for Prentice- Hall this fall, before^'he takes off for his European tour in October. It will list for fall ’53 publication. “Put -ey in My Purse,” thes- per Michael MacLiammoir’s diary of the Orson Welles’ production of “Othello,” in which MacLiammoir played lago, has just been pub- lished In London by Methuen. An Irish language edition has also been puljlished in. Dublin. he could save the studios a lot of money by detouring, visiting firemen from the working lots to such a museum. He figured, to ask the studios to give him one-day loanouts of contracte.^ players to go through the motions of making a picture at such a m'useum. He would also run off a full-length picture giving the history of pictures, from Edison's, black box to clips from the latest Academy winner, with cultured commen- tary by himself no less. / The Commodore Tangles With a Landlubber He carried the dream around with him for some time. He even spliced a sample seven-reeler from his own library to show the general idea. I saw it and thought it was most promising. But apparently nobody else did, and before he could leap off a water tower in despair with the intention of ending it all, a* typical L.A. driver clipped him while he was crossing Pico Blvd. and landed him among the obits. Then some years later some front-runners for Mervyn Le Roy lured me to luncheon at the Hillcrest Country Club so that I could be the first to hear the great director’s dream. It turned out that he, too, wanted to build a museum of the movies. He even had the lot picked out for it. It was pretty impressive acreage in Beverly Hills, which it seems he owned or had optioned. Here then was a solvent director-producer, not a has-been, wanting to repay an industry which had paid him well. But the next thing I knew he was off to Italy to direct “Quo Vadis” and I doubt if he has given the great dream a second thought. I went on to explain to my young idealists that there was something about Hollywood that seemed to pipe all idealism into racetracks, niteries, yachts and cuties. Many men have made millions out of Hol- lywood but not quite in the sustained way men have made it out of automobiles, steel or dynamite. To the best of my knowledge and belief none had founded a college or even endowed a chair in a seat of learning. No Hollywood Carnegie had emerged to perpetuate his name on libraries. No Nobel had set up $40,000 prizes for men who had helped mankind in the arts and sciences. No Mellon had collected master- pieces all over the world and set them up in well-endowed art gal- leries. No Ford had financed a peace foundation. No Rockefeller had financed a medical foundation. In fact, no producer or group of pro- ducers had done anything except outbid each other In the hope of landing a thoroughbred that would win next year’s Kentucky Derby. Until this happened I could see no future for even the most modest of museums to lend a cultural note to the marquees of Hollywood Blvd. Will Rogers had willed a ranch of his to the sovereign state of Cali- fornia and his widow had left it much as it wa.s when he lived there. Hardly enough peasants had made the pilgrimage in the years between to pay the state for a caretaker. Of course, the place is pretty much off the beaten path, far out on Sunset Blvd., and most trippers scoot by it in the hope of getting to Santa Monica beach before earlier opportunists grab off all available parking space. But it has a good road up to it, and any who make the trip can’t help but feel more than rewarded. The state charges a modest two-bit fee for parking and peeking, but I have never seen a crowd there. The trouble is that California itself, viewed in the long perspective of history, has no more stability than its desert flowers, which come in all colors and in billions in May and die like flies in June. The mental attitude of picture people, is no different than that of other carpet- baggers. They are all one-suitcase political economists who hope to fill their bags with gold and get out before the whole thing becomes a ghost town. Few settle down to found dynasties. They build homes, yes, but with an idea of selling them for more than it cost to build them, not with the idea of leaving them in perpetuity to their children and their children’s children like castles in Spain. Heavy industries moved in with the war, and in 10 years turned the playground into a land of smog, fog and grog, the Pittsburgh of the west. Like Munsey And the Museum of Art It may well happen that out of one of these latter-day tycoons will come the dream of setting up a non-profit organization to endow a Museum of Motion Pictures. Probably some character who had never ! been inside a studio in his life. Henry Kaiser, who has already set up cars CHATTER Alan Hynd’s “Murder” due from Duell, Sloan & Pearce Oct. 2. Wallis E. Howe, v.p. and director of sales for Pocket Books, switched to Avon Publishing. Lester Alexander in Hollywood to interview film folk for the Shreveport (La.) Times. Willard Crosby resigned his post of article ed for Collier’s this week. No replacement has been set yet. Quentin Reynolas' ’-Courtroom” in the Popular Library Giant edi- tion (35c) goes on sale Friday . (19). Lou Berg, film editor of This Week mag, to the ' Coast Monday (15) on four-week trip to line up stories. Woodrow Hyate in Hollywood to round up a special story on film production for the London Daily Express. Wilter Pitkin, elected exec v.p., Kramer upped to tarn Books, Inc. Geoige Sidney wrote an article, “Why You Can’t Get That Tune Out of Your Head,” for the January issue of Pageant mag. vcfAiiP former sineer and i a stuaio in ms me. nenry jvaiser, wno nas aireaay s( ’ hfl.*? authored her I ? -hospital for polio victims, might do it. If his steel mill and his keep making more money than his heirs can possibly spend, he might find solace in preserving the most outstanding wonder of the first half of the 20th century. But picture people don’t have a product as stable as cars or steel. Their product is on film, a stuff that tends to deteriorate in quality and value almost from the moment it is developed and printed. To believe that any of it can be preserved for centuries is to have more faith in preservatives than the facts indicate. I can see archeologists digging for dinosaurs centuries hence but not for the bones of Cecil B. DeMille, one of the most cultured, incidentally, of the current crop of Hollywood producers. In fact, I have more faith that a chapel the Scully Circus spent the last year in building at Desert Springs will endure longer than a Holly- wood museum’s oddities. Indeed, it has a cloth of gold which has al- ready gone through 200 years of wars and rumors of wars. Its chalice and candelabras might disintegrate under atomic fission but I doubt that anybody would waste a bomb on Desert Springs. The town has only 191 souls. The overhead would be too high for such a small return. But Los Angeles or Hollywood would make a nice splash of destruction. I leave my young Idealists with that melancholy thought.