Variety (March 1959)

Wednesday, March 11, 1959 UTERATI 85 Literati Ganger's Literati Safari Ken Giniger, v.p. and g.m. of Hawthorn Books, off on his annual European safari to contact authors and publishers in Rome, Paris, Milan and Rome. While in the Eternal City he will huddle with Vatican officials on a number of Catholic book projects •which require Holy See coopera- t on. Hawthorn, which also pub¬ lishes Protestant books, is now one of the largest publishers of Catho¬ lic books. More Biographies Fred Astaire’s memoirs, “Steps In Time,” has been timetabled for Harper publication in June. Ex-UP prexy Hugh Baillie, a third - generation newspaperman, lias written his recollections for the same pub under the title, “High Tension,” for June and Harper is also bringing out “Kyra,” autobiog of World War II top Russian film- legit actress, Kyra Ostrivskaya. Max Eastman’s “Great Compan¬ ions (Critical Memoirs of Some Famous Friends)” touches on Hem¬ ingway, Scripps, Casals, Freud, Chaplin, et al., scheduled by Far¬ rar, Strauss & Cudahy. “Kent Cooper and the Associ¬ ated Press” is Random House’s entry in the autobiog sweepstakes. June Havoc calls her personal story “Early Havoc,” a Simon & Schuster publication. Doubleday is bringing out Nor¬ man Bel Geddes’ autobiog post¬ humously, titled “Miracle In The Evening,” and “The Van Clibum Legend” by Abram Chasins in col¬ laboration with Villa Stiles who worked on the Dale Carnegie books and more recently “The Lit¬ tle Church Around The Corner.” Post - playwright Mercedes de Acosta’s memoir, “Here Lies The Heart,” is a Coward publication In May. James Thurber’s biog on New Yorker editor Harold Ross is due from Little, Brown, and Greta Garbo reportedly is writing her memoirs. William Lindsay Gresham, who has a penchant for outdoor show biz, has authored “Houdini (The Man Who Walked Through Walls)” which Holt will publish in April. Speakeasy hostess Belle Living¬ ston’s autobiog is a Holt item for July, titled “Belle Out of Order.” She was the No. 2 femme scoff law operator to Texas Guinan during the Prohibition era. Cincy Enquirer’s McLean Claim Cincinnati Enquirer Inc., seeks leave to appeal to Ohio Supreme Court a $91,000 award in its favor against American Security & Trust Co., Washington, trustees for estate of John B. McLean from which the company bought the pa¬ per June 6, 1952 for $7,600,000. Enquirer originally sought $357.- 000 in a suit filed in 1952 and was awarded $85,000 plus interest in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court and an additional $1,800 by the First District Court of Ap¬ peals. Money sought represents 1951 and 1952 expenses which the En¬ quirer believes should be paid by American Security. Prentice-Hali’s Peak Prentice-Hall hit a new high net income in 1958 of $2,963,940 is compared with $2,393,791 in 1957. Earnings last year were equal to 96c on each of the 3,078,316 com¬ mon shares outstanding, compared with 72c in 1957, .an increase of 33 and one-third percent Common stock was split three for one and adjusted on that basis in December, 1958. Assets of the com¬ pany, according to John G. Powers, prexy, in past decade jumped from $8,500,000 to $25,000,000. O’Connell to American Weekly Bill Atherton, ex-executive editor of Cosmopolitan under John J. O’Connell, has been upped to edi¬ tor with the latter’s shift by Hearst to the editorship of Ameri¬ can-Weekly. Ernest V. Heyn, previous AW ed, has gone over to Family Weekly. Bobbs-Merrill’s New Prez M. Hughes Miller has been named president of Bobbs-Merrill. Howard W. Sams, board chairman, recently acquired the 120-year-old BM firm. Miller comes from American Book^Stratford Press where he was veep in charge of new publishing, ■' Zsa Zsa’s Biog to .World Gerold Frank, who collaborated on the Lillian Roth, Diana Barry¬ more and Sheilah.;. Graham auto- biogs, is working w th 7.9 a Zsa Gabor on hers. World Puhtishmg has the rights, via the William^ Morris agency's (Helen Strauss) bidding system. Frank’s veering to World re¬ volves around William E. Buckley, the company’s recently acquired trade book veepee, who last was ditto at Holt. When at Holt, Buck- ley handled Frank’s collaborations on the Barrymore and Graham memoirs, both respectively sold to Warner Bros, and 20th-Fox. Miss Roth’s “I’ll Cry Tomorrow” (which also had Mike Connolly as collab with Frank an'd the songstress) was a Fell publication. Metro filmed that one. Len Forman’s Post Leonard M. Forman is new v.p. sales promotion and ad veepee of Pocket Books under exec vicepresi¬ dent James M. Jacobson. Forman will continue as ad-sales promotion topper for Affiliated Publishers and Golden Press. Bernard Sobel’s New Handbook Bernard Sobel, former N.Y. Mir¬ ror drama critic and longtime Bos¬ well for the late Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., is "having his “New Theatre Handbook” brought, out by Crown April 14. It’s a complete updating and revision of his longtime stand¬ ard book. Sobel sailed with his sister on a recuperative trip to Europe, with an eye also to talking up the book with Crown’s Paris and London affiliates. Anthologies William Nichols, editor of This Week magazine, has edited “A New Treasury of Words To Live By,” which S&S will publish. It’s a sequel to “Words To Live By” (1949),' the best from the last 10 years of the column .of the . same name in This Week. Doubleday is bringing out a Satevepost 1958 anthology of sto¬ ries and also “The Fourth Galaxy Reader” of science fiction. Hundredth anni of A. E. Hous- man’s birth will be observed in this country with Holt publishing the first definitive edition of the poet’s collected verse. Text of the poems is identical to Housman’s original manuscript sheets now in the Li¬ brary of Congress. Basil Daven¬ port, a Book-of-the-Month Club judge, is doing the intro and Tom Burns, Ohio State Univ. English prof, is providing a history of the text. Holt’s previous “Collected Poems of A. E. Housman” was first pub¬ lished in 1940 and sold 17,000 cop¬ ies. Holt was the first publisher of Housman in America. Jonathan Cape publishes his works in Eng¬ land. Dubious Reading. Coincident with the opening of Shelagh Delaney’s “A Taste of Honey” at Wyndhams Theatre, London, Methuen have- published the play at 50c. The author, who was 19 when she wrote it, was a factory worker in Manchester and she has set her play in a Man¬ chester suburb. •It is a stark piece of work con¬ cerned with the relationship of a flighty, amoral mother and her teenage daughter, who gets preg¬ nant by. a colored sailor and then sets up home with an effeminate young man. It is not a pleasant play and does not read very well. Occasionally, Miss Delaney shows a certain amount of brutal wit and a feeling for characterization. But this is a case where any real qual¬ ity must come out in the acting. Rich. CHATTER Hazel Guild, Variety correspon¬ dent in Frankfurt, Germany, has sold an interview with Elvis Pres¬ ley to Musical Express, the British musical and entertainment publica¬ tion. . The Car Fax Pub. Co. Inc. em¬ powered to conduct a business as publishers in New York. A daughter, their second, to pub¬ lisher-author (Exposition Press) Edward Uhlan and wife Miriam, March 4 in N.Y. Phil Strassberg, of the N.Y. Mir¬ ror nitery sector, will da a cafe and restaurant column ,for Dude and Gent’s magazines starting with the May issue. Pines Publications, magazine and paperback book publisher, leased a floor in a new Lexington Ave., N.Y., air conditioned office build¬ ing. . - - John Meston, writer on “Gun- smoke”. teleseries, will pen a biog on his wife, actress-bullfighter Betty Ford, during year’s European tour; "for which they left .over weekend. Bantam Books will put out a special paperback edition of “Ask Any Girl,” Winifred Wolfe novel Z'SkieFy picturized as a Metro production by Joe Pasternak, to hit stands coincident with April release of film. Sam Levenson writes about “The Teacher I’ll Never Forget,” in col¬ laboration with Martin Abramson, in upcoming Coronet. Abramson’s series on “Teen-Age Disc Idols” also, syndicated by United Fea¬ tures. Jay Mallin, Time and Variety correspondent in Havana, back to Cuba after a fortnight’s sabbatical in the States. . He was close to Fidel Castro throughout the cam¬ paign and is of the opin'on the new leader “will do a real job.” Gary Belkin, ex - Sid Caesar scripter, is -represented in the current issue of Dude mag with a piece called “Romeo?” satirizing the styles of six magazines in the handling of the “Romeo and Juliet” story. Rube Goldberg’s latest cartoon anthology (Doubleday) is titled “HowTo Remove The Cotton From A Bottle of Aspirin.” TV’s Don Herbert is also having his “Mr. Wizard’s Experiments For Your Scientists” published by Doubleday, both in May. Rocky Mountain News book edi¬ tor Robert Perkin has been col¬ lecting anecdotes for the -higtory of “The First Hundred Years': An Informal History of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News” since he first joined the sheet in 1934 as a cub reporter. It’s due soon. Viking Press Is now the pub¬ lisher of Studio Books. Bryan Holme, who' has been head of Studio Publications in America for the past 27 years, and who is the grandson of the founder of Studio Ltd., in London, has joined Viking and will continue as direc¬ tor of Studio Books. Two books by James M. Cain, “The Moth” and “Mildred Pierce,” and one by Taylor Caldwell, “The Earth is the Lord’s,” have been banned by-the Irish Censorship of Publications Board. “Three Com¬ rades” by Erich Maria Remarque also got the thumbs down from the censors. Union News* New York Service Corp. authorized to conduct a newstand and restaurant business in New York, Directors are Henry Garfinkle, 211 Central Park West, ■ N.Y.C.; Morris Strassman, 229 East 79th St., N.Y.C.; William J. Bliss, 172 Wellington St., Garden City, N.Y. Freeman Lincoln has edited and written the introduction for “The Joseph C. Lincoln Reader,” collec¬ tion of his father’s. works,- to be published by Appleton-Century- Crofts which is also bringing out “The Harper’s Bazaar Beauty Book,” edited, by the editors of that magazine. Viking is calling its new paper¬ back series Vista Books instead of Panorama because that tag is al¬ ready utilized abroad and may create confusion. The $1.25 paper¬ back series is already a click in the original French (Petite Planete abroad) with books on Italy, Greece, Germany and Israel. N.Y. Times staffer Robert Phelps has edited “Men In The News 1958 (Personality Sketches from the New York Times)” for Lippincott pub¬ lication which may become an annual series of miniature biog¬ raphies of personalities who make the headlines and who get the “profile” treatmnet in that daily. Stanley Lewis exited as ciccula- tion promotion director of The American Weekly and the Hearst Newspapers to join Family Weekly as assistant to president-publisher Leonard S. Davidow. Ralph Finch, formerly an art director of The American Weekly, named art di¬ rector of Family Weekly. Helen Hull and Michael Drury’s “Writer’s Roundtable,” as pres¬ ented by the Authors Guild, com¬ prises 21 professional writers, edi¬ tors and agents in a symposium, on practical advice for the hew writer, which Harper is bringing out in April. Miss Hull, former Guild president, edited a previous volume for its fenefit. Dorothy Daniel, author of “Circle ’Round The Square” (Funk), mem- ! oirs of her Iowa childhood, was the first woman to have a regularly scheduled tv program (W9XAP, Chicago, 1930), and helped found WQED, Pittsburgh, where she has lived sihce 1933. Former Chi Daily News staffer later became woman’s editor on the Pittsburgh Sun- Tele¬ graph. ' Radcliffe College will stage its 12th session of “Publishing Pro¬ cedures” from June 17 to July 28. As in past, top names in publish¬ ing world will address the summer students. Topics include book publicity, promotion, textbook publishing, philosophy of mag pub¬ lishing, fiction, nonfiction, circula-. tion, business pubications, book advertising, proofreading, copy¬ editing, vmanuscript reports, book¬ store selling, magazine layout, etc. SCULLY’S SCRAPBOOK f »♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ By Frank Scully ♦♦♦++♦♦»♦• Hollywood, March 10. Mark Robson must be a picture executive’s ideal director. For one thing, he-can be easily chumped into going anywhere to make a pic¬ ture. He knows from experience he is going to run into a whole raft of difficulties and will come home beaten and bushed. But with a hit. He is next to produce and direct John O’Hara’s “From The Terrace,” and it won’t‘be from his Brentwood front porch. The picture that caused him the most grief was called, ironically, “Return to Paradise.’,’ It starred Gary Cooper, and was shot in the South Pacific. It’s still No. 2 on his personal hit parade. “Bright Vic¬ tory” is his favorite. “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness,” which will probably gross more than all his other pictures put together, has not settled down among his listings as yet. 20th-Fox executives expect “Inn” to be one of the studio’s hot numbers. Producers seemingly have ways of telling these things vefy early in a picture’s life. They know the quarter-horses from the steeplechasers. Robson Money Talks Too When the late Cecil B. DeMille was running “The Ten Command¬ ments” up to a cost of $13,000,000, Par was not worried. Their execs told me that the picture would gross $40,000,000 and it already has passed $32,"000,000. “Peyton Place,” which is 20th’s second all-time grosser (“The Robe” is No. 1 with some $17,500,000) and w’hich Mark Robson also directed, has passed $12,000,000 and his “Bridge at Toko- Ri” has grossed $4,500,000. Some of Robson’s best-liked pix—“The Champion,” “Home of the Brave,” “Bright Victory” and “The Little Hut”—never got up among the b.o. champs, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t make a lot of money, because, on what they cost, they did. There are several kinds of money-making directors—the domineer¬ ing type, the weepers, and the even-tempered ones. Robson belongs to the last group. He handles actors, staffers and a thousand and one headaches of production with a calm “we-expected-this” and proceeds- to solve the problem without wasting too much time screaming for a ' crying towel. Either on or off a set he* has a cheerful personalty. He is a solid sort, perhaps 5 foot 10, weighing 170 pounds, possessed of pleasant features and a solid crop of crew-cut hair. The thing that seems to make his pictures flow is one of the rarest of human juices. That is compassion. He even feels sorry for villains, but not sorry enough to confuse picturegoers as to wondering who is the villain. Call Him ‘Mark’ But Not ‘Easy’ Everybody on a set, from the star to a grip, calls him “Mark,” and while a producer now and then may add under his breath the word “easy,” because one can always con this Mark into making a picture at a place where one has never been made before, he isn’t as easy a mark as all that. He knows the grief which goes with such a gamble but he has known from the beginning that a Burton Holmes’ setting and a story are a tough combination for the homeguard to beat. He did his groping, of course, before he mastered direction, but practically all his grist showed a profit at the mill. Kis father was a banker in Montreal and by the time Mark knew profit from loss we were in a depression and picture houses were being bounced back to bankers regularly. After he was graduated from UCLA he decided to study law at night. To pay for this he got . a job around a studio days. He first worked at Pathe as a laborer. Then he got into the prop department of the old Fox lot. While still studying law nights, he was hired by RKO Radio’s film library. Then he went on to become a sound-cutter and an assistant film editor. Ultimately he became a full fledged film-cutler. He Cuts Law For Film Then he married Sara Riskind. Bachelors must go in pairs because having dropped one for matrimony he dropped bucking for his bach¬ elor in law and decided to stick with pictures, where he was making nice take-home pay every week, for he was now editing films for Or¬ son Welles, Garson Kanin and Val Lewton. Lewton had started on his horror pictures which raised more hair and more profits than Charles Antell. He gave Robson “The Seventh Victim” to direct. Robson came out with a horror that made a profit. It didn’t take much to make a profit with these things, because they were made for peanuts, but the basic problem of mak'ng the most ex¬ pensive or the cheapest picture is about the same. If you know your business you will succeed in one as well as the other, and a former cutter certainly knows what has to be thrown away and therefore would have been better not to have been shot in the first place. Unfortunately in this business type-casting goes for film cutters and directors of horror pictures. It takes a tremendous amount of drive- be¬ tween pictures to get out of one current and into another. Robson made it when he swam his way free of screamers after directing “Bed¬ lam” and convinced Stanley Kramer that he, Robson, was the director who could put the bigleague punch into “The Champion.” Robson followed “The Champion” with a beautiful picture called “The Home of the Bnjve,” and after that, knocked off “My Foolish Heart,” “The Bridges at Toko-Ri,” “Trial” and “The Harder They Fall,” as well as his favorites, “Bright Victory” and “Return to Paradise.” Then he directed “The Little Hut” and “Peyton Place.” After that, he got wooed in chasing down locations, for “THe Inn of the Sixth Happiness,” a jaw-breaking title which has survived all assaults in the interests of bravity. The original idea was to make “Inn” in Formosa, but the .current occupants of that islancT asked for 4*4 changes in Isabel Lennart’s script Though the word “appeasement” had been a dirty word for 20 years, 20th-Fox kept backing off, surrendering one change after an¬ other, but the final area of disagreement was -so big that Buddy Adler said, to Robson, “Let’s forget Formosa and try another locale.” Robson thought he knew a place in Wales where they could build a Chinese city and make the picture better, than they could have in Hol¬ lywood or Formosa. As the picture had been budgeted for $4,000,000, it took a lot of faith to believe-Robson could transport the Orient to the Occident and certainly, of all places, to North Wales, add keep within that figure—especially with a cast headed by Ingrid Bergman, Curt Jurgens and Robert Donat, not to stress 3.000 Chinese. The next big obstacle was to combine Ingrid Bergman’s personal past with a picture of such charm and cleanliness that everybody would forget that she was a bigger chump in the field of matrimony than Robson was in being conned into conquering the impossible if it were far enough away from home. But the fact that the Legion of De¬ cency has gone out of its way to recommend the picture shows that those who make appraisals for the Legion know compassion when, they see it. And the compassion they saw in that picture was Robson’s. All he saw in Ingrid Bergman for “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” was a very sweet and loving woman, a wonderful and adoring mother whose failures in this thing called love were not concealed in worse sins. She could lead a 100 children over the mountains of Mount Snowden in North .Wales in cold, misty and foggy weather because she not onfy Is. a great Actress but basically a loving mother. Perhaps the hardest thing about making a picture anywhere in the British Isles is that at 4 o’clock everything stops for tea. Even this one Robson accepted, -and -in fact improved upon it by ordering special pastries on days when the shooting was particularly successful. If the. time ever comes, to make a movie on the moon, Mark Rob¬ son will be the boy. And he’ll be just the chump to volunteer.