Books: MGMunificence

Last fortnight U.S. authors blinked and dived for their typewriters. The biggest cash literary prize ever was offered to book writers. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced that, for the “best book of the year,” fiction or nonfiction, it would award $100,000 in advance of publication, add 20¢ for each copy sold above the first 50,000.

M.G.M. knew what it was doing. Movie rights of top best-sellers have recently cost producers more than $100,000. By acquiring the rights before publication, M.G.M. will escape the cut-throat competitive bidding which sends up the price of anything that looks remotely like another Gone With the Wind. For its prize money M.G.M. will acquire the movie rights, control the legitimate stage and radio rights of its prize book.

Only manuscripts accepted for book publication by 25 “Grade A” publishers will be eligible for the prize. Before next June 15, these publishers will submit their entries to M.G.M. From these a dozen or so manuscripts will be winnowed, sent to a “board of experts.” The board will consist of four or five literary critics who will choose the “best book of the year,” receive an M.G.M. retainer for their trouble.

The idea was born when M.G.M.’s Voldemar Vetluguin persuaded M.G.M.’s Louis B. Mayer that books with a million readers are better movie material than Broadway plays seen by only 100,000.