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Six Shows Sold Out
At 'Bailie' Premiere
HOLLYWOOD— All six scheduled performances—two
in each of three Shea circuit
theatres—for the world premiere of U-I's
"Battle Hymn," Thursday il4) in Marietta.
Ohio, were completely sold out in advance.
Rock Hudson, Dan Duryea and Jock Mahoney,
the film's stars, and Col. Dean Hess,
whose life is the basis for the story, planned
to participate in the debut festivities, making
personal appearances at the sextet of performances.
* « •
Paramount has scheduled an April world
premiere of "The Buster Keaton Story" at
Prairie. Okla.. which Keaton considers his
home town, despite the fact that he spent
most of his early years touring in vaudeville.
The comedian, whose life the biofilm depicts,
expects to attend the feature's bow along with
Donald O'Connor, who portrays him in the
picture. Also planning to attend the event
are press and television newsmen from key
cities throughout the country.
New Grifford Co. to Film
Quixote Series for TV
HOLLYWOOD—Don Quixote will be the
initial effort of the newly formed Grifford
Productions, of which Gordon S. Griffith is
president and Robert Bradford vice-president.
Slated for filming in color. Quixote Ls
planned as a nationally syndicated TV series,
consisting of 39 half-hour weekly segments.
John Carradine has been inked to star
in the series, which is to be lensed on location
in Spain.
* • •
Briskin Productions. Inc.,
announced Daniel
Boone as another new half-hour telefilm
series which it will produce for Screen
Gems. Columbia Picture's TV subsidiary. It
will be based on the life and adventures of
the American pioneer and frontiersman
identified by its title.
* « «
Serge Krizman, newly elected president of
the Society of Motion Picture Art Directors,
disclosed plans for 26 half-hour dramatic
episodes of a television anthology series
based on Nostradamus, famed 16th century
seer, and his now-classic prophecies. Titled
the Voice of Nostradamus, it is designed so
that each segment will deal with one of the
clairvoyant's prognostications covering the
years 2000 through 3797.
* * •
Anne Baxter has been signed by Revue
Productions to make her dramatic television
debut as the star of "The Bitter Choice" on
the General Electric Theatre. In the vehicle,
she will portray a compassionate army nurse
who, as a means of therapy, must force all
her patients to resent and dislike her.
* * *
Actor-director Paul Henreid has been
signed to pilot "The Vicious Circle" for Alfred
Hitchcock Presents.
* * •
Allen H. Miner has been signed to direct
"The Vigilantes," a segment of the Wells
Fargo vidpix series for Revue Productions.
Two to 'Hot Spell' Cast
HOLLYWOOD—Toni Sommers and Marjorie
Jackson have been added to the cast
of Hal Wallis' "Hot Spell" at Paramount.
AT
hand is a copy of the San Quentin
News, bi-weekly newspaper published
by and for the inmates of the formidable
state institution which the editors of
the News term the "Bastille on the Bay."
And a right sprightly, well-written journal
it is. Presumably Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's
publicists magnanimously arranged for members
of Hollywood's press corps to receive
an i.ssue of the prison periodical because Leo
was shooting—you should pardon, pliss. the
expression—a feature within its grim walls.
a fact of which the editors of the News took
generous cognizance. For the sake of the
record—an' that's another disquieting term
for the San Quentinians—the opus is "The
House of Numbers," being produced by
Charles Schnee and directed by Russell Rouse.
Jack Palance—who else?—is toplined.
If business gets any tougher, what with
mergers, shutterings and how come you got
a pink slip?, a few drum beaters and their
Cinemania newsmen contacts may become
regular readers of the News or, at least, its
poor farm counterpart.
There might be a chore for a headshrinker
in the fact that Bill Blowitz, of the independent
space-snatching firm of BIowitz-Maskel,
and a fellow who couldn't fight his way out
of a paper bag, is impresarioing the publicity
for two upcoming epics about ring champions.
"The Jack Dempsey Story," which Sam
Wiesenthal is to make for a yet-to-be-determined
release, and "The Barney Ross Story,"
which Edward Small is fabricating for United
Artists, have both been entrusted to the
more-or-less tender Blowitzian touch.
Maybe it stems from Breezy Bill's deepseated
propensity toward extending his neck.
And inescapable is the arresting originality
evident in the selection of the pair of abovelisted
titles. Once upon a time, there was a
picture about a maestro of fisticuffs that
wasn't tagged "The So-'n'-So Story." That
rule-proving exception was Metro's "Somebody
Up There Likes Me."
Joint Estimates of Current Entertainment
Films is a periodically pubhshed brochure,
subsidized by the Motion Picture Ass'n of
America, and undertaking to supply a labyrinthical-keyed
consensus of opinion from
various organizations that appraise features.
Despite the dignity of the religious and educational
groups from which it gathers data,
the editor sometimes leads with his chin. As
concerns United Ai'tists' "The King and Four
Queens," it is stated, "Estimates Agree;
Strictly synthetic sex studs this strictly
synthetic Western."
If it's synthetic, it's a gelding.
When the Southern California Motion Picture
Council singled out a group of current
features for its awards of outstanding merit,
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer publicists rushed out
a newsworthy release listing the honored pictures,
those coming from their studio as well
as the films from other companies. That
handout was widely printed and, of course,
stressed the MOM titles.
Subsequently, the space snatchers from
Paramount, Warner Bros., Universal-International
and RKO anti-climactically and
repetitiously broadcast the same information,
but in each case, limited it to their own
respective offerings. Those handouts were
wicketed.
So Leo's larruping lionets enjoyed a substantial
slice of bread upon the waters.
Although the year is still in its infancy,
freelancer Alex Evelove is a heads-on bet to
win recognition for having perpetrated 1957's
worst pun.
Anxious Alex, in captioning a newsless item
anent Roger Corman taking a crew to
Marineland to record submarine sound effects,
blazoned;
"Life with Fathom"
Someone in Teet Carle's Paramount pralsery
has developed a distinct and disturbing Diamond
Jim Brady complex. Broadcast trivia
regarding the currently shooting "Hot Spell"
seems to specialize in food—and in prodigious
proportions. One such item concerned itself
with 2,800 pounds of candy procured from the
Newberry store to dress a five and dime
counter scene. Still another relates how the
cast consumed 30 pounds of cold cuts, six
gallons of potato salad, nine stalks of celery
and three gallons of ice tea for a dining
room scene.
Perhaps the Carlean caterwaulers should
be checked for tape worms, lest the jittery
stockholders crack down on such prolific
purveyance of provender.
Bob Goodfried is exempt, per se. Not only
does he have the lean and hungry look of a
Cassius, but he's too busy trying to revive
the myth that "Paramount is seriou.sly considering
staging a gigantic pre.ss preview of
Punny Face' in Paris"; that hoary fantasy
that has had Jimmy Stan- packing and unpacking
his bag for lo! these many months.
William Fawcett, who boasts A. B., M. A.
and Ph. D. degrees, has been cast as an
illiterate hillbilly in Mervyn LeRoy's "No
Time for Sergeants" at Warner Bros., inform
Bill Hendricks' tub thumpers, just to illustrate
that, personal performances to the
contrary, they have an appreciation of the
benefits of higher education.
And from the same Burbanklan blurbers, a
twist on the venerable mother-in-law joke
in the intelligence that, "Director Raoul
Walsh's brother-in-law visited him for the
first time in five years and was promptly put
to work in . . . 'Band of Angels,' the film
Walsh is making in Baton Rouge."
Now that it has been established that
nepotism, that loudly decried quality which
flourished during the industry's most prosperous
days, has been revived, hopm can again
spring eternal.
BOXOFnCE :: February 16, 1957 W-3