Variety (April 1953)

RADIO MUSIC Diamonds as Songwriter’s Best Friend When Kilt the Ump’ Time Blossoms By JIM WALSH -f Songwriters and record makers seem to have first got the idea in 1906 that an honest buck could be turned by writing or recording paens to baseball. True, in 1903 there was a ditty called “Strike Out, McCracken/* whose title sounds promising, but it turns out to have nothing to do with the bat- and-ball game.- Instead, it is the sad story of a sailor foreyer getting shipwrecked and having- to swim to shore. And *when A1 Bernard and Ernest Hare recorded George F. Briegel’s “Slide, Kelly r Slide” in 1920 their hero was not a base stealer but a trombone -player. Names can be misleading! • But in 1906 George -Whiting and Fred Fisher wrote “It's Great at . a. Baseball. Gfame,” which did fair- ly well, and Joe E. Howard did even better with “The Umpire is a Most Unhappy Man,” (words by Hough and Adams)-, a genuinely clever comic song which has been occasionally revived' since—as on a Signature record by Ray Bloch’s orchestra, with “The Giants’ March”-on the other side. “The Umpire” was introduced in th6 mu- sic film, “I Wonder Who’s Kissing. Her Now.” ‘‘It’s Great at a Baseball Game” (Continued on page 44) Pitt’s Vogue Fouled Up In Lamour Mumps, Mick’s Mate, Kallen’s TV, Etc. Pittsburgh, April 7. . John Bertera, owner of the Vogue Terrace, and George Claire, who books the 1,100-seat theatre restaurant, had enough headaches last week to do them for the rest of the year. It all started when Dorothy Lamour came down with the mumps and had to cancel her Easter booking here, which’ was to have started Saturday (4) and extended through this Saturday On strength of the Lamour Bertera had lined up a flock < organization parties and had spent a nice bundle on adver when he got the bad news. Wi Morris office told him and ( not to worry, that they’d, con with a satisfactory replace perhaps either Kay Starr/or ] Smatra, Twenty-four * hours Bertera was informed neithe of them was available but i he like’ to have ’ Mickfey Ro< He okayed The Mick on the and • immediately placed bif announcing Rooney. Almost before the dailies h mg Rooney were on the s rw re « got another call tellinj tnat Rooney, after okaying nate, had decided he couldn’t it because his wife was sic! he didn’t want to leave her* name to be contacted was Fr Langford, in Florida. She coi (Continued on page 15) Arnold’s Tip * Hollywood, April 7. Advice from Edward Arnold, ’ soon to start his 46th year in show biz: “People in the act- ing end of the* business should worry less about the innova- tions- of Cinerama, 3-D and other, technical developments f and worry more about improv- ing their acting. / “There will always be a part for good performers.” Legit Crix Stew Hops from B’way, Chi to West End Situation on the critics front con- tinued .to boil last week, taking on international complications, but there were no further instances of aisle-sitters being barred from the- atres. New developments were confined to verbal agitation. In Chicago, where J. J. Shubert recently took reviewers off the first-night free list and sought to have them cover second nights, the four first-stringers attended the local opening of “Affairs of State” on purchase tickets. By coinci- dence, it was generally agreed, they panned the show. Indications are that the critics will continue to buy their tickets and cover open- ings indefinitely. In Hartford, where the New Par- * (Continued on page 18) SWG Mores to Protect Unwitting Employers ; Of Communist Scribes Hollywood, April ,7. Screen Writers Guild is drawing up a new form of contract with a clause designed to protect any pro- ducer who unwittingly hires a scripter who is a member of the Communist Party or who has re- fused to testify whether he has ever been one. Under the new clause, the producer does not have to abide by the SWG pact, nor doe? he have to give a Writer screpij .credit if he is in any way tainted with communism. Change in the SWG bylaws is an aftermath of the Guild's suit against RKO, in which Howard Hughes refused to give screen credit to Paul Jerrico on the ground that tKe writer refused 'to testify before the House Un-Amer- ican Activities Committee. Hughes won the case and an appeal is 1 pending. At a SWG meeting on April 22 the membership will vote on a proposed • settlement of the suit. BUILT FOR VIDEO The emergence of the former CBS Radio property, “My Favorite Hus- band,” as another potential TV click spotlights one particular facet of video programming that’s generally gone oipheralded. The fact that many of ^the big-money, high - rated television network shows had their genesis as major commercial entries in radio would indicate that the basic properties growing out of TV itself, as a me- dium distinct and apart from radio, are few and far between, This, too, does not take into con- sideration the added fact that vir- tually all the top* TV personalities —the Bob Hopes, the Jimmy Du- rantes, the Abbott & Costellos, the Eddie Cantors, the Dennis Days, the Groucho Marxes, the Arthur Godfreys, the Milton Berles, etc.— are themselves . graduates of the radio kilocycle school. Even the No. 1 “I Love Lucy” TV show has its roots in radio, for it’s a video adaptation of the erst- while Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz “My Favorite Husband’* radio program of a few seasons back. Now CBS- TV is reverting back to the origi- nal title for a second TV fling, with the new one starring Joan Caufield and Barry Nelson. The radio-to-TV transition is particularly in evidence on the (Continued on page 34) Cinerama’s 8-Mo. $1,730,008 Take Based on advance sales, an esti- mated $1,730,000 will have been taken in by Cinerama when it con- cludes its run at the Broadway Theatre, N. Y., on June 4 follow- ing an eight-month run. The fol- lowing night, Cinerama will shift to the Warner (formerly Strand) Theatre, which will be -its per- manent Gotham home. For the Warner run, Cinerama is dropping its Friday matinees for two evening" showings, at 7:15 and 10.- According to exhib chief Joseph Kaufman, completely new equipment will be installed at Cinerama's new home. Included will be the new semi-portable pro- jection booths and the giant screen mounted on aluminum pipe scaffolding. Conant’s TV Hitch-Hike Dr. James B. Conant, U.S. High Commissioner to Germany, arrived at Idlewild Airport, New York, at 5:19 a.m.," several hours earlier than expected last Sunday (5). Lacking other transportation,‘he rode to New York in the back of a CBS-TV film'truck, there to record his arrival." Conant is back in the U. S. to confer with President Eisenhower. Figure ‘Picnic’ Will Cop N.Y. Crix Circle, Pulitzer ‘Best Play’ Awards Hope-Crosby’s New One? Toronto, April 7. In pre-program warmup, ra- • dio audience here was asked* to join later in on-air Ringing of Irving Berlin’s “Easter Parade,” with mimeographed lyrics then, passed- out. Song session sagged halfway to upset proceedings when pro i gram participants discovered that typist had made an error to read: “The -photographer . will snap us, and you'll find that you’re in the * Road to Gravure.” 0’seas $1,329,000 Swells ASCAP To Peal $17,672,000 In addition to the peak domes- tic income of $16,343,000 received by ASCAP in 1952, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers <j^mbtained $1,329,400 from foreign performing societies for distribution to U, S. publishers and writers. Figures were revealed by ASCAP comptroller George Hoffman at the annual meeting in N. Y. at the Hotel Astor, yesterday (Tues.). The foreign coin is not part of the general fund and its distribu- tion is made on a strict per-per- formance basis to writers and pub- lishers. Accurate breakdown of foreign performances is possible because of the tieup between the overseas governments and the per- forming rights societies whiph (Continued on page 46) WB and RKO, Last Major Film Holdouts, to Be 'Toasted’ by Sullivan Ed Sullivan, who has been play- ing best man at the film-television wedding on CBS-TV’s “Toast of the Town,” has cracked two more ma- jor studios—Warner Bros, and RKO—on showing clips from their new pix on his Sunday-night tele hour. First WB current release, “Trou- ble Along the Way,” will be seen in a clip on “Toast’’ next Sunday (12), with Charles Coburn and Sherry Jackson of the cast (John Wayne starred) making personal appearances. . In obtaining WB - pix, Sullivan has broken a logjam that prevented *at least four WB properties from being shown on “Toast,” such as “The Petrified Forest” in Sulli- | van’s Robert E. Sherwood Story, ^' (Continued on page 15) “Picnic,” by William Inge* is figured the. leading contender for the Pulitzer Prize and N. Y. Drama Critics Circle award as the best play of the season. That appears to be the feeling in Broadway legit circles and concensus of the sea- son’s reviews. Critics Circle makes its selection next Tuesday (14) and the Pulitzer committee citation is announced three weeks later. Other possible candidates for the best-play awards include “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller; “Time of the Cuckoo” by Arthur Laur- ents, and as a remote possibility, “Seven Year Itch”/ by George Axelrod. This season, for the first time in several years, there’s be- lieved to be a strong chance that the*Critics and Pulitzer selections may agree. . “Wonderful Town” is rated a vir- tual sure thing as the critics* choice as best musical of the sea- son. There’s no other serious can- didate. For the best foreign play, odds are figured slightly in favor of “Love of Four Colonels,”.with “My 3 Angels” and “Dial M for Murder” major contenders. Critics' generally pick the best musical and best foreign entry, but the Pulitzer committee usually se- lects the best play. In the case of “Of Thee I Sing” that turned out to be a musical, and in the case of “South Pacific” there was a special citation for the musical. Two highly regarded incoming (Continued on page 22) Johnny Burke’s Other Self, K. C. Rogan, Dips Into Classics Again With the current release of “Now That I'm in Love,” tune’s lyricist, K. C'. Rogan, has come out from under his pseudonym and revealed himself as pop. tunOsmith Johnny Burke. The Rogan tag first broke into music biz circles several months ago, with “Wild Horses,’* which is an adaptation of Robert Schumann's melody of the same name, On “Now That I’m in Love” Rogan (Burke) dipped into the classics again, this time culling from Rossini’s overture to “William Tell.” • Burke, who collabs with Jimmy Van Heusen on pix score musicals (they've also penned the score for the upcoming legit musical, “Car- nival in Flanders”) has placed “Now That I’m in Love” in his Burke & Van Heusen ASCAP firm, operated by George Simbn. “Horses,” on the other hand, Was spotted in the Simon catalog. Burke developed the K. C. Ro- gan'monicker from a compilation of the names of his -three children; his' son Kevin Curtis (K.C.) and his two daughters, Rory and Re- gan (Rogan). Four diskeries, RCA Victor, Mercury, Decca and M-G-M, already have covered “Now That I’m in Love.”