Cinema: North Formosa Novelties

Formed in 1919 by a group of cinemactors who felt that they could make more money producing and distributing their own pictures than by working for someone else. United Artists Corp. developed gradually into something else: an enormously high-powered distribution organization, fed by a loosely organized group of producers who function independently in its huge, rambling studio on Hollywood’s North Formosa Avenue. From North Formosa Avenue on a single i afternoon last week went two pieces of cinema news lively enough to put the triumph of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on inside pages of Hollywood trade journals.

Selznick. That David Oliver Selznick would eventually head up a major cinema producing company has been obvious since he was an office boy in the company run by his famed father, Lewis J. Selznick. By the time Selznick Pictures crashed in 1923, David Selznick at 21 was already an experienced cinema executive. Affable, industrious, intelligent, he set out to restore the Selznick fortunes, not like his older Brother Myron, with an actors’ agency, but by producing pictures. His steady progress — head of Paramount’s writers’ department, assistant to Paramount’s pro duction chief, production chief at RKO. associate producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — was climaxed last summer when he quit M-G-M to form David O. Selznick Productions. Inc. to distribute through United Artists. There was still, obviously, one thing that Producer Selznick lacked: a bankroll. Before leaving M-G-M to move onto the United Artists lot with his new company, Producer Selznick boarded a train for Manhattan.

That John Hay (“Jock”) Whitney would eventually make the amusement business a major interest has long been predestined. Like most members of his family, he has always enjoyed the com-pany of show people. Years ago he took to backing plays on Broadway. Two years ago, he bought a large slice of Technicolor, formed Pioneer Pictures to boom it with cinemas like Becky Sharp (TIME, May 27). The main thing the Whitney cinema ventures lacked was the services of an able, full-time producer. Selznick and Whitney have been friends since 1929. When Producer Selznick arrived in Manhattan, he week-ended at Saratoga, where Jock Whitney was watching his horses run, and at Manhasset, where the rest of the Whitney clan live on their Greentree estate. When he got back to Hollywood last week. Producer Selznick announced a new company:

Selznick International Pictures, Inc. The personnel of its board of directors: John Hay Whitney, chairman; Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney; Banker Robert Lehman of Lehman Bros.; Dr. Attilio H. Giannini (Bank of America); Myron Selznick; Lawyer Lloyd Wright; and Producer Selznick. Clearly. Selznick International Pictures was about to become one of the most important, in many ways the most extraordinary organization in the industry.

The new company took over all assets and contracts of David 0. Selznick Productions, announced it had no stock to sell the public. It will produce, on United Artists’ lot where Pioneer Pictures will also function, some half dozen films a year at an average of $500,000 each. First on the list is Little Lord Fauntleroy, with Freddie Bartholomew,* starting Nov. 15, to be followed by an effort in Technicolor. Producer Selznick plans to bring Author Somerset Maugham to Hollywood. Directors George Cukor and John Cromwell, Actor Ronald Colman are now under contract.

Lichtman. The ups-and-downs of United Artists this year started in June when Darryl Zanuck’s Twentieth Century Pictures left the lot to merge with Fox, taking United Artists’ President Joe Schenck with it. To replace Schenck, United Artists partners—Pickford, Fairbanks, Chaplin, Sam Goldwyn—chose Al Lichtman, for eight years the sales manager who was generally considered responsible for United Artists’ brilliantly run distribution. With Lichtman as president. United Artists speedily refilled its producing plant with the Selznick company, a new Mary Pickford-Jesse Lasky partnership and Alexander Korda’s London Films, whose pictures it had distributed in the U. S. since 1933.

Last week President Lichtman resigned because of ”a difference in views with one of the producers.” The producer, every-one knew, was Sam Goldwyn and the difference in views concerned distribution of Barbary Coast (see p. 45). with which Producer Goldwyn was dissatisfied. On the day of the announcement of Selznick International Pictures, United Artists’ directors unanimously accepted Lichtman’s resignation, unanimously denied that any of United Artists’ producers would follow that supersalesman out.

*In Los Angeles last week. Cinemactor Bartholomew’s aunt, Myllicent Bartholomew, filed suit for his permanent custody on the grounds that she has been his guardian since he was 3. Freddie’s parents, Mr. & Mrs. Cecil Bartholomew, were expected to file countersuit in London.