Boxoffice-January.24.1953

. . Picked
^oUe^cwMcC ^cfront
Columbia Plans 30 Films
In Color During Year
There is an ever-wiciening area of agreement
among all industry segments that the
so-called "lost audience" can best be lured
back into motion picture theatres by offering
potential patrons scope and spectacle in increasing
quantities—those being the ingredients
which home television competition
cannot hope to match. Such scope and spectacle
call, of course, for the employment of
color photography, the use of which is being
constantly expanded.
Exemphfying the boom market in color as
an adjunct to theatrical celluloid is the disclosure
by President Harry Cohn of Columbia
that his company has charted the greatest
number of Technicolor productions ever made
by a single studio in one year. The Cohn
plant lists a total of 30 features to be made
in that tint process during 1953.
Fifteen of them will be top-budget entries
made under the aegis of Jerry Wald, vicepresident
and executive producer. The Sam
Katzman unit plans ten tinters, the Robert
Cohn lists two, and the Stanley Kramer,
Scott-Brown and Warwick Pictures organizations
each have one.
Under the Wald guidance. Technicolor will
be employed on "Cruisin' Down the River,"
a musical; "Miss Sadie Thompson," based on
W. Somerset Maugham's "Rain," and to star
Rita Hayworth; "The Wood Hawk," a historical
western; "Renegade Canyon," also a
galloper; "The Broadway Story," a musical;
"High Command," outdoor adventure:
"Debut," a backstage musical; "Ten Against
Caesar," a sagebrusher; "The Long Gray
Line," a West Point story; "Liszt," a biography
of the composer-pianist; "Pal Joey," a musical:
"Lola Montez," a costumer; "Tombstone."
By
IVAN SPEAR
a western; "River of the Sun," localed in
South America, and "Casanova."
Kramer has obtained a Technicolor commitment
for his projected "The Caine Mutiny,"
while the Robert Cohn unit will tint "The
Nebraskan" and "Tarawa." Scott-Brown Productions
will make the Randolph Scott starrer,
"Sunset Rim," in that process, while Warwick
Productions has Technicolor camera crews in
the Antarctic for "The White South."
Katzman 's color slate includes "Prisoners of
the Casbah," "Charge of the Lancers," "Jesse
James Meets Bill Dalton," "The Kiss and the
Sword," "Tripoli to the Sea," "Battle of Rogue
River," 'Fort Ticonderoga," "Chief of the
Senecas," "Drums of Tahiti" and the tentatively
titled "Meet Me at the Fair."
More Benefit Appearances
Made in 1952 Than 1951
Industry critics, take note:
More Hollywood film and radio entertainers
made more free personal appearances for
patriotic and public service events here and
overseas in 1952 than in 1951. The increase
of 9 per cent was tabulated by the Hollywood
Coordinating Committee, which reported that
853 performers made 3,157 gratis appearances
in conjunction with 680 programs last year
to score the greatest 12-month record in
the HCC's history.
A breakdown revealed that troupers appeared
on 380 programs in the U.S and
abroad for all branches of the armed forces
and government agencies, as comparpd with
319 in the previous year. These shows included
hospital, camp and overseas visits.
Personal appearances on behalf of fundraising
events, both national and local, accounted
for the balance. National organizations
involved included the American Cancer
TEX.\S (CHICAGO) STYLE—Plugging "The Tall Texan," which Lippert I'iilures
will place in distribution next month, western headgear predominated at the iccent
Chicago meeting of company executives and franchise holders. Participating i;i the
conclave of Vi new franchise owners (from left, standing) were Harris Dud-lson,
Chicago: \\ Grubstiek, San Francisco: .Vrthur Greenblatt, general sales manager;
President Robert L. Lippert: Ed Baumgarten. Lippert's executive assistant: William
Pizor, foreign sales manager. Seated (from left): Cliff Wallace, Memphis; .W Swi rdlove,
Boston; Milton Brauman, Pittsburgh, who may have been camera-shy.
Press Boat Trip to Plug
'The Sea Around Us'
Something new in the way of press
agentry is being evolved on behalf of
"The Sea Around Us," the documentary
film version of Rachel L. Carson's nonfiction
best-seller, which is being distributed
by RKO Radio.
Capt. Allan Hancock, who guides the
Hancock foundation at the University of
Southern California, is making available
his research boat, the Valerio IV, for the
purpose of taking members of the press
to sea for the day to give them a demonstration
of the workings of a marine
laboratory. The vessel was to take off for
the bounding main Saturday i24i with 25
magazine editors aboard, and will make
ano her trip the following Saturday with
a complement of 25 newspaper and wire
service representatives.
Society, CARE, Cerebral Palsy A.ss'n. Community
Chests, infantile paralysis, the March
of Dimes, Red Cro.ss, Boy and Girl Scouts,
the Salvation Army and the United Jewish
Appeal.
Representing a 60 per cent increase over
1951. the players performed on 274 network
and local broadcasts, live and transcribed, last
year, plus 257 programs shortwaved by the
armed forces radio service.
Week's Story Purchases
By MGM and Columbia
For packaging into a single subjett, MGM
purchased two Saturday Evening Post articles,
"Forgotten Heroes of Korea," by James
Michiner, and "The Case of the Blind Pilot,"
by Cmdr. Harry A. Burns. To be procuced
by Henry Berman, the project is untitled
. . .
.
at present. It depicts combat activities of
U.S. navy carriers and fighter pilots in the
Korean struggle, and is being scripted by
Art Cohn Sam Katzman added two
space-opera originals, both by Dick Williams,
to his 1954 slate at Columbia. Tagged "Escape
From the Moon" and "Space Fortress." they
were penned by the drama editor of the Los
Angeles Mirror up by Columbia
from Horizon Pictures was "Reminiscences
of a Cowboy," a novel by Frank Harris, which
originally was to have been made by the
Horizon outfit—for Columbia release—with
Montgomery Clift and the late Walter Huston
co-starring. The death of the latter stalled
the project. Under the Columbia aegis, it will
still star Clift, and will be written and produced
by Ranald MacDougall.
Gene Autry Sho-w Touring
47 Cities Until March
Hitting the high spots: Having completed
his latest starring western for Columbia,
"Saginaw Trail," Gene Autry took off for
Wichita to open a 47-city p.a. tour. Accompanied
by a western variety show with a cast
of 27, and his two famous horses. Champ and
Little Champ. Autry will tour the midwest,
eastern Canada and New England, winding
up in Washington, D. C, March 1 . . Allied
.
Artists has begun the construction of two new
cuttino rooms at a cost of $10,000 . . . Norman
Freeman, for the past four years an executive
of the Motion Picture Capital Corp. and previously
associated with RKO Radio in both
the production and distribution fields, joined
the Sol Lesser organization.
26
BOXOmCE January 24, 1953