Cinema: How to Finance a Movie

Fantastic was Hollywood’s word for it. A 34-year-old ex-film cutter and a 37-year-old ex-pressagent, with a total capital of $25,000, brashly announced last year that they were going to make a million-dollar A movie.

Last week, when their tiny Screen Plays, Inc. released its million-dollar movie, So This Is New York, Hollywood had another word for it: luck. It was that—and considerably more.

Here Comes Morgan. In May 1947, taciturn, brilliant Stanley Kramer, who had almost made it as a movie producer when war came, and squat, shrewd George Glass, known as “an honest pressagent,” took options on 30 of the late Ring Lardner’s stories. They picked The Big Town for their first picture, changed the title and went looking for a star to fit the script. What comedian could handle Lardner’s light touch without seeming all thumbs? Screen Plays eyed radio’s Henry Morgan. After reading the story and a 100-page “treatment,” Morgan said: “You’re the first guys who had the brains to imagine that I might be interested in what kind of a movie I’m in. I’ll do it.”

By now, Screen Plays’ tiny poke had already shrunk to a mere $7,000. It was high time to go to the bank. Negotiations began with a bang. “Who,” asked the Bank of America, “are you? And who is Henry Morgan?” After some fast talking, the bank was persuaded to lend $650,000. That left about $500,000 still to be found. Screen Plays wrote off about half of it in deferred salaries and studio overhead charges, sold a 50% interest in the picture to raise the rest (including $150,000 to be put up as additional security for the bank). United Artists agreed to release the film and everything looked fine.

There Goes the Bankroll. But in July, the backers backed out. David Loew, bigwig in Enterprise Productions, agreed to put up some money on stiff conditions: 50% of the profits to Enterprise, whose label must appear on the film. Reluctantly Kramer and Glass agreed. A shooting date was set.

Then, in August, Great Britain slapped the 75% ad valorem tax on all U.S. films. The Loew-supported bottom fell out of Screen Plays, Inc. That night, trying to drown their sorrows in gin, the partners succeeded in refloating their enterprise on a tipsy wave of optimism. In four days of desperate rewriting, Screen Plays, Inc. shelled $339,000 off the picture’s “nut,” without sacrificing the essentials of the story. Loew agreed to stay in. In September, So This Is New York finally went into production—and came out $30,000 under the final budget. Even silent Stan Kramer got off a bon mot: “Now we can put our ulcers in escrow.”

At four sneak previews, audiences liked what they saw. Cracked Glass: “We are now solidly in a position to finance another million-dollar picture, but we haven’t got a nickel for a cigar.”

So This Is New York (Screen Plays; Enterprise; United Artists) is worth its birth pangs. Though not as funny as Lardner’s original, it is still a nice little farce-comedy of contrasting manners.

Morgan narrates the story of how he and his wife (Virginia Grey) take her unmarried sister (Dona Drake, a good comedienne) to New York to find a husband. The sisters, who have inherited a $60,000 bankroll, run through it all in pursuit of 1) a lustful stockbroker, 2) an old explorer with young ideas (Hugh Herbert), 3) a horse-racing millionaire (beautifully hammed by Rudy Vallee), 4) his foul-playing jockey (Leo Gorcey), and 5) a comedian (Bill Goodwin) whom they back in a “serious” play.

The whole production wears a wonderful Lardnerian deadpan that is often too dead for the screen. Plenty of belly laughs are checked in the chuckle stage with an abruptness that suggests a reprimand. Morgan is played so far down that he is halfway through the picture before it becomes obvious that he has been doing some pretty subtle kidding. And the camera tricks—freeze frames and accelerated newsreels of post-War I New York—are perhaps overfrequent and over-affected.

But the whole show is well paced and leans with its full force into a few very funny scenes. The funniest: 1) a saloon spot in which pie-eyed Leo Gorcey daintily wipes off Morgan’s beer-stained sleeve with a beer-moistened handkerchief; 2) a hilarious horse race, in which two jockeys who have thrown the race furiously flail at the rump of a third jockey’s horse to make him win.

All in all, Lardner would probably have liked it.