Cinema: Change of Heart

After deep soul-searching and some well-considered arithmetic, the movie industry is cuddling up to the little monster that gave it such a scare a few years ago. Items:

¶ 20th Century-Fox announced that it will completely overhaul a ten-stage Hollywood studio at a cost of “several million dollars” for full TV film production.

¶ One exhibitor (National Theatres, Inc.) proved that TV advertising can be a more effective box-office draw than newspaper ads. A spot check of 20.000 Denver and Kansas City- moviegoers indicated that 35.1% were drawn by newspapers to see Walt Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 38.5% were drawn by Disneyland on TV.

¶ A recent trend, e.g., Dragnet, is to turn TV plays into movies, using the TV shows as publicity buildups. Several studios and independents are bidding for Patterns, the TV play about big business that got a repeat performance fortnight ago on Kraft TV Theater (TIME. Feb. 21). Seven other TV shows have either been made into movies or are under consideration, including Marty, Dear Phoebe, Halls of Ivy and Waterfront.

¶ One Detroit theater owner brought the onetime enemy right into his lobby. “We run a lot of art pictures.” he explained, “and I’ve found out there are many husbands who don’t go much for them. Well, if the husband didn’t like the show, he simply went out in the lobby where he could watch the fights.”