Variety (October 1954)

■' rv*- Wednesday, Ociolier 6, 1954 LITERATI Brit. Asks U.S. Comics Ban Call for a ban. on American honor comics arid magazines was made by the council of the British Federation Of Newsagents* which represents 27,000 news agents, at quarterly meeting at Stratford-on- Avon,'Erie? . Federation called for a ban on sale of the funnies, and, Without dis- sent, passed a resolution deploring that the British government had not banned the importation and rer moduction Of the comics in Great Britain. Members of the Federa- tion will -now lobby meinbers of the British Parliament and urge that a special bill be put through to enforce such a ban. . Newsagents at Crieff, Scotland, have also called for a ban on American comics. Buchwald-Condpri Pic Idea Art Buchwald, columnist of the Paris Herald tribune, and Rich- ard Condon, UA overseas publicity rep, have just finished a. 90-page film treatment of an original, en- titled "Gold Key To Paris." Treatment has already started the rounds arid is being handled by George Marlon. Buchwald has had bids before on pix but this is his first venture in this department. Condon has three plays to his credit. Bonelli-L:A. Times Feud Feud between Wm. G. Bonelli, member of the powerful board which tells Californians how much taxes they are going to pay and handles liquor licenses on the side, and the L.A, Times has broken out on the literary level. Though up for re-election and an almost sure push-in, Borielli took billboards he would normally use to ballyhoo his own. candidacy to advertise "Billion Dollar Blackjack ■— the Story of Corruption and the Los Angeles Times" (Civic Research Press, Bev- erly. Hills; ($2.95) with himself billed as the author. Book, which is well-written, well- printed and well-exploited, takes the Times through three genera- tions! from Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, a Civil War vet, to Norman Chandler, his graridson,. and at- tempts to show that the paper is merely a house organ for their fingers, ip many well-paying pies and some, like station KTTV, which are. not. 1 so well-paying but add to their prestige and power. .For an expose, it’s on the schol r)y side arid in the heat of i political campaign rather temper- ate, which is better understood when it . is revealed that Bonelli was a professor of political econo- my at Occidental before he entered' practical politics and has an M.A and LL.D. as well; Press, radio and tv covered him and the book on release date Sept 20. Times acknowledged its pub lication, too, but denied that Kyle Palmer was on their payroll at the time he was doing public relations work for the Santa Anita track Track is on property Chandler 4 Interests sold to racing interests. Track, according to documenta- tion printed by Bonelli, was to pay the Times $21,881.82* sum due the paper from Palmer in 1937. Mys- tery is not explained by Bonelli or the paper how their in-and-out staffer could have put such a big bite on the front office in the first place. He’ is currently their politi- cal editor. Book is jammed with dubious dealings running into millions Though all Hollywood is reading ‘‘Blackjack,” if^ill never become another "Citizen Kane," despite the fact that the Chandler power does not extend beyond the borders •of California, Sent. Faulkner, F. Sco*t Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Virginia Woolf, Alistair Cooke, David Low, Ed- mund Wilson, Heywood Broun, William Allen White and. Otis Fer- guson. % a $i5,000 salary tilt enticed Ken Special issue; in addition to be Purdy to Argosy, he took Stern ing oversize and glossy cover (a along with him, in the same post of departure from the norm), will chief of the foreign staff, and also have a four-color run for ads and.a with headquarters in Rome rather, press run of 100,000 copies. Pub- than Paris or London; Tom Naugh- lisher Gilbert Harrison, has sent ton, managing editor Who is called personal to.newspaper;and, maga- executive ed on Argosy; X,en Leone, zine publishers asking them to par- art ed; A1 Silvertfan, sports ed; tieipate in the issue via placerrient Ed Ddwne, shopping editor; plus of ads "to cheer us along in. our two art assistants; three secretaries' second 40 years." and two admen. True’s circulation is 2,200;Q00; , „• Argosy, 1,200,000, but November is- Show biz took oyer almost a sue, due Oct, 20, Will run to 1,400,- half-pag e of_ yesterday s (lues.) 000. Doug Kennedy, ex-sports ed N. Y.'Herald Tribune in an unusual of Time, is the new editor of True, spot—the editorial page, Walter At this writing he is hunting for a Lippmann’s whole column was de- successor to Stern in Europe. . . voted to films.; Headed Sadism^ln Stern currently is in the U. S. the Movies,” it .rapped crime sto- ori a six-week visit, researching m.a- ries, in pix in an answer to .a. letter terial for foreign features from the: from Arthur B. DeBra, of the Mo New York and Hollywood end. tion. Picture Assn, of America, Two inside columns were, devoted 2 British Show Biz Books to reprint of an address by CBS’ John Montgomery, a former; Edward R. Murrow, made in ac- studio publicist, has done a pains- cepting the Freedom 'House Award taking job of research for "Come- Oct/ 3. Reprint Was headed "The dy Films" (Allen & Unwin, Lon- Necessity to Preserve Freedom in don; $3) . in which he faithfully the Cold War.” records the progress made by the motion picture from the days of CHATTER Fred Ott’s "Sneeze" (1894) to the The George W. Joels’ (Dial present time. The book is a factual Press) daughter, Susan Barbara a Norman Wisdom, Britain’ .•newest:.|.ijf s i^,-^ .th£" November Catholic screen Comic, and the stills of old- Digest time stars, help to widen its scope. G 6rdOn Irving, Variety's Scot R. F. D elder field, author of the. mu gg, to London to appear in film record - breaking "Worm’s E y e trailer for new Gregory Peck pic,. View,” which ran for . six years in “The Purple Plain.” under" the aS appropriate 5 tltle-o! Chicago,.Sun-Times reporter Carl "Bird’s 1 Eve P vSw” (Constable Larson penning a piece for Pageant J§£do*; & stor^if coin- mag qn Tom DuggamYVindy City's monplace enough—strict parents, controversial ty gabber, . boarding school, working as a re- Winthrbp Palmer, exec editor. of porter on his father’s country Dance News, returning to N.Y, this paper and then war. service iri the weekend after three months in R.A.F. Always, however, he was Europe, and the Near Easi- interested in play writing and it Was Irish Th.esper Nigel Fitzgerald while in uniform that he had the has his third whodunit listed for inspiration for his major success; publication by Collins Crime Club Unpretentious, but quite readable, in January, titled “The House is Myr.o. Falling.” 'Herb Mayes, editor of Good Dewey On ‘Newspaper Week’ The American press •5 ek j Housekeeping, has been appointed • . . - Provides chairman of the Editorial Commit- "wider and^more^accurate' mforma- t€e of . . t he Magazine Publishers’ tion” than that of any other nation, A^rtninfinn while New York State has “ a pow- association. .... erful number of the greatest news- Tmpleton Pe^ papers in the. world,” said Gov. on .>^ a i l 1I 9^v° n ^fK Thomas E. Dewey in proclaiming switched t<y Oct. 1-8 as "Newspaper Week;” He PauJ . editoi-in-chief foi continued: "Even those whose cii- Crowell-Colliei. ^5 u .. culations. is. not so extensive are Composer-conductor Dimitn T| cherished and supported in their communities for the high degree of k^te . Technique ^Of Film professional skill with'which they Jfusic,. e( Lfe gather and present to their readers the .Council of the Birtish Film a steady and truthful «stream. of Academy. . . e news ” ' 7 Alec Newman, former member of In 'a simultaneous proclamation "Information PUeasq” quiz team for Qct. 2 as "Newspaper Boy Day,” and other Radio Eireann panel the Governor wrote that "Many a boy has received his start and : Iris 1 k Q ^ 1I ^ ies ’ Ue 8 been assistant learned his first lessons as a busi- ^ nessman by delivering paper." JftgUgf W&Sg Elsa’s'R.S V.P.’ service last week to draft a code "R.S.V.P.: Elsa Maxwell’s Own of ethics R>r-the comic magazine Story” will be on, the stands by -industry. He has been a magistrate Oct. 20. Published by Little, Brown, sin ^e 1945. the volume .covers her life’s span, Scotsman Features Ltd., based in from her birth, through her early Glasgow and Edinburgh, became years as a pianist in a nickelodeon. independent of Scotsman Publica- and to her present heights as a con t ro l| e< I b, y Canadian partygiver. p Roy Thomson, and switched name The book gives the o.o. to people to -® co ^ ne ^® . . , ...... of diversified fame, incuding Sig- Vic Gauntlett, former advertising mund Freud, George Bernard manager for. Evergreen Theatres, Shaw, Christian Dior, Bea Lillie, Seattle, and veteran Pacific North- Barbara Hutton, among the many'- west flack, has joined the staff of _____ Advertising Counselors Inc. of Curtis Into How-To-Do-It Seattle, Spokane and Portland Curtis Publishing Co,, which Jam e s jj,_ Street Jr. has joined brings out its new mag, TV Pro- garold Matron’s literary t agency, gram Week, early in. November, He Rumford Press^ Pay Tilts Approximately 125 employees o the . Rumford Press in Concord N.- II., which prints a number.: o; the ^country's leading riiagazines have been granted a "step in crease” in wages, it has been an nounced by J. Richard Jackman president of the firm. Other unions at the plant, which also signed a two-year contract in 1953, took a "fiat increase," rather than pay boosts in two steps.. The Rumford Press has‘ about 800 employees with an annual pay- roll of around $3,500,000. Total sales volume; last year was a record $7,000,000 and this, year’s, figure should be about the same, presi- dent Jackman reported. Was formerly assistant to the editor of Family Circle' magazine arid associate editor of Cosmopoli- movement which got its. start duf- t a n. Before that .he was on. the ing the. war. faculty of the University of North plans to. cash in on another popu- lar, craze, the “Do It Yourself" Curtis has jiist acquired con- trolling interest in Science & Mechanics Publishing Co., Chi- cago, publishers of one of the lead- ers in the how-t.o-fix-it Carolina. The Leeds (Eng.) City Police seized the entire stock, 108;000 copies, of the latest issue of A Bas- inful of Fun, and removed them Science & Mechanics, Self-KeTp from-the printers, . F. Youngman mag is published bimonthly and Ltd., before they^were put on sale, has circulation of 650,000. Popular Periodical, consists of stories, gags Mechanics, a monthly coiripetitor, arid cartoons, - . has 1,350,000 circulation. Virgil & second printing of 350,000 Angerman, only other .stockholder copies has been ordered by Popu- in S&M Co., liemairis as president ^ar Library for its 35c paperback and ho other changes. are planned. pf. Polly Adler s A House Is Not A Home,” whose first print- ing of 500,000 copies sold out in 30 days. The original Rinehart edition of the notorious madame’s Argosy Vs. True The first issue of Argosy, in No- Jcmber, With ' the lead story by Michael Stern ("How. To Steal $8,- 000,000 From the GIs Abroad"! is the first issue of a largely trans- planted editorial and business staff winch resigned from True last '*uly.. Both are competitive in the man’s readership field, and When New Republic’s 40th Ann! The New Republic will publish a 128-page, glossy cover 40th anni- versary issue Nov. 22 whielr will contain reprints of the best articles copies and poems which have appeared in the "memoirs” sold almost 100,000 heels of Ed Murrow’s the mag since it was founded in “Person to Person" (CBS) inter- 1914. Among the writers repre- view of the Walter Whites (he’s sented will be Theodore Dreiser, exec sec of the NAACP), Holt is H. G. Wells, John Reed, Herbert cocktailing at Poppy Cannon’s Croly, H. L. Mencken, Bertrand/ house on East 68th St., N. Y., in Russell, Katherine Mansfield, E, honor of her latest, "The Bride’s M. Forster, Carl Sandburg, W. B. Cookbook.” Holt’s p.a., Barbara Yeats, Felix Frankfurter, Edna St. Emerson, labels the shindig "the Vincent Millay,'Hart Crane, LIn- wedding of The Gourmet and The coin Steffens, James Joyce, William Can Opener.’’ ►♦♦♦»+♦ By Frank Scully v Hollywood/ ... •To Mm'e. Pandit .and her s*k Indian club" Swingers who still.believe in human progress, I. have discovered an encouraging footnote*. He is a character .playing Tai' z 0 n whose head is not flat in the back. In-fact, he is the, handsomest, giant - who has ever essayed the role in ail-the 30 productions 'Starring the jungle dreamboat of the late Edgar. iRice JBuiroughs, - His name on the payroll of Sol Lesser, is Gordori Scott, son of Stan- ley G. and Alice Irene Johnson Werschkul of Portland, Ore. The youngest of nine children, five boys and four girls, Gordon is as strong arid as smooth as the gin after which I‘suspect he was named. He is six feet three, weighs 215 of the tightest pounds you ever, saw, has a 50-irich chest, 30-inCh Waist and 40-inch rump; or hips, I .believe the politer phrase is. He has a crop of dark brown hair (his own),, all his own magnificent teeth in ideal alignment, is brown as ari autumn leaf, well read, a good dancer and possessed of a vocabulary far beyond the range de- manded by Frank Gruber in the^ current Tarzan script entitled “Tar- zan’s Hidden Jungle.” ' ' I fir^t heard him being interviewed over CBS and his. manner; of expression was so gracious, modest and generally becoming that I decided to set up a safari from Desert, Springs to a jungle back of Culver City and view him. in person. It was a hazardous 100-mile trek, much of it through Wild freeway traffic and I niade it unscathed. I first saw him ’ the chow line, where he towcried above the tech- nicians lined up in front and behind'him. All he had on was a lot cloth arid a bowlei knife. For a jungle boy, he had the manners of one raised on the refined, table etiquette, of Emily Post. ; He helped me get a fair measure of; corned beef arid cabbage arid we Sat down Vis-a-vis for a chai I w careful riot to use words" of more than one; syllable, not wanting to. disturb the atmosphere created by the scripticiari; At Scott’s si,de sat Vera Miles, the Maureen O’Sullivan of “Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle," a blond chick weigh.irig in at 1.17, with green eyes. People with even short meniories may remember her as Vera Ralston, "Miss Kansas" of the 1949 Atlantic City bathing beauty contest. With such a surefire nairie for pictures she changed it to. Vera Miles, when, she married Robert Miles, casting director at UI. / It must have been love. . How’s His Gin Rummy? Beyond being in the same picture, she arid Scott have much in com- mon. Her people, came! from Oklahoma, his from Montana, wlier his mother Was born on a cattle ranch; As an example of how cattle- ranching has. changed, Scott’s father Was quite a golfer. Though a mixture of Swedish and German- Gordon was raised in the British , athletic tradition. So Were the rest of the boys,. They Were all proficient in riding, swimming, skiing, rifle; and pistol shooting! arch- ery'*. golf, football, baseball, basketball, gymnastics, boxing, wrestling and weight-lifting. With that sort of diversity none of course be- came champions* but if the Greek ideal of. a sound mind in a sound body is riot practically “subversive.-in the age. of specialization, Gordon Scott is a shining example of a well-rounded man. His parents, he told me, planned it that way. They moved to Port- land before Gordon Was born and all his schooling was there. I have a hunch he would have developed into a terrific tackle at Oregon U, but at the end of his freshman year he was yanked off to Fort Lewis arid iritb the dogfaced infantry. It was in the fall of 1944, arourid the time Der Fuhrer had stopped chewing rugs; arid Was down to eating old crow seasoned with potassium cyanide. Gordon was such a good_ soldier that he soon ; was teaching close- order drill, rifle and bayonet drill, hand-to-hand Combat arid judo. About the. time he might have been shipped to the South Pacific,* recalcitrant prisoners were arriving on. the Coast. He was elevated to the rank of sergeant and transferred to M.P. to handle dangerous prisoners. On Washington’s Birthday, 1947, the Army figured they had enough of his gentle bone-crushing skill arid discharged him. It seemed top late to go back anjd pick up the threads of a college education; so he joined his oldest brother Jim on a cattleranch Jim owned. When he threw the bull it wasn’t a figure of speech. Three years ago he took a trip to Las Vegas for a vacation and also to <give the sun the privilege of shi ing on the handsomest hunk of man the Monte Carlo of the . masses had ever seen. The' manage- ment of the Hotel Sahara watched him Working out at the pool, checked through their own intelligence to make sure he wasn’t a space man from Venus or a’new champion of the grunt-and-groan school of acting and offered him a job as a lifeguard. ... In fact, in keeping with Vegas values, they offered him such a fat fee that it made cowpunching seem like working for pot roasts. He simply couldn’t afford to turn it down. . This proved the perfect show window for; him. Sol Lesser had lost Lex Barker to either* the Barker Bros; or some redhead, I forget •which, and was pestering the life out of talent scouts to find him an heir to the jungle throne which had been previously occupied by Elmo Lincoln, Gene Polar, P. Dempsey Tabler, Jimmy Pierce, Frank Merrill, Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe, Herman Brix (Bruce Bennett, to you), and Glenn Morris (with Eleanor Holm,, remember?). One Test. Arid Stardom The field narrowed down to 15 finalists, Gordon M; Werschkul among them. He had never had a screen: test in his life. In fact, the only time a camera had ever turned his way was when a newsreel photog Wanted to get a shot of Eleanor Holm at the Sahara pool and he was in the way...,Even here he. seemed to have a better pre-Dior figure than she did. Certainly his. hips Were slenderer. Lesser; took one look at the test, heard Gordon’s fine masculine voice afid - Said, “He’s in." It was figured that if, his English were too refined they could always blur it over With sound effects. "The'first thing wg have 1 to do,” said Sol, "is to change his name," Just why* eludes me, Certainly. Gordon Werschkul is no tougher , oil marquees than Johnny Weissmuller. But froin here in it's Gordon Scott, though personally I think Gordon Gin would be better remem- bered by. the army of fans which are sure to be his as soon as "Tar- zari’s Hidden Jungle” comes out of . hiding. This is Lesser’s 14th Tarzan picture- He’s. still paying off to the Burroughs estate and expects to continue to do so for, the next 20 years; having acquired; these additional rights last year. The nick is $100,000. a. picture, 'Which rates Burroughs; both dead and live, as the smartest author the town has seen,. Edna Ferber possibly excepted. It’s been a great springboard for actors and should do rnore for Gordon Scott, because he starts with, more on the ball than most. It hasn't done badly for girls either. Maureen O’Sullivan of course is the. best known of these* but Natalie Kingston, Nancy Kelly, Frances Gifford, Brenda Joyce, Linda Christian, Evelyn Ankers, Denise Darcel, Virginia Huston, Joyce MacKenzie; Dorothy. Hart and even Vanessa Brown got some good notices out of the pictures too. Vera Miles; the ; current cutie of t^ie khaki and Soudan hat set, Will gain a lot of/ glory out of this one as Scott’s mate, Most of the Tarzans were, Olympic champions, In fact the ninth one, "Tafzan’s Revenge,”. had two Olympic champions-rGlenn Morris, 1936 decathlon fchamp,, and. Eleanor Holm, femme diving doll*. The role is packed with action and short on dialog, which makes it caviar to the foreign riiarket. It is strictly escapist entertainment, a jungle- raised human who becomes king of the jungle, He’s the great, equal- izer against all persecutions or man-eating animals. He’s terrific, arid there’s a barrel of money in him, too.