Cinema: Plots & Plans

Founded on uncertainty, dedicated to illusion, the $2,000,000,000 cinema industry every year makes one monumental effort to seem prudent, predictable and precise. This effort, in itself the most heroic of the industry’s whims, occurs every spring when the producers assemble their salesmen for annual conventions. Purpose of conventions is to excite enthusiasm. Procedure is to boast as loudly as possible about lists of forthcoming productions. By last week two major conventions were over, six more were scheduled for the near future. From pages of ballyhoo in magazines, newspapers, trade publications, cinemaddicts got some idea of what to expect in the way of entertainment for the next twelve months.

Main trend of the industry in 1937 and 1938 will be to spend money. By bringing in huge initial receipts, elaborate pictures like Maytime, Lost Horizon, A Star is Born have encouraged producers, never inclined to be pennywise, to spend stockholders’ funds more freely than ever. Minor trends will be toward even more musicals, most of them frivolous rather than operatic; fewer child stars. Color will continue to progress slowly. In the next year, Hollywood will produce a total of 700 feature pictures.

Most successful Hollywood producer, as usual, last year was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This year, also as usual, MGM convened before its rivals. Pictures about which MGM salesmen heard most in Hollywood last fortnight were Kim, co-starring Freddie Bartholomew and Robert Taylor, and Idiot’s Delight starring Clark Gable. Other major MGM ventures will be Girl of the Golden West (Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy) ; The Return of the Thin Man (William Powell and Myrna Loy). Total MGM product will be 52 pictures at the most. On MGM’s list but not yet assigned are Silas Marner, As Thousands Cheer, Tish, Bright Girl, Pride and Prejudice.

Most omnivorous producers in Hollywood are Warner Brothers, who get a fat share of their material by backing or buying more Manhattan plays than any of their rivals. At last week’s convention in Manhattan, Warner executives boasted about $5,000,000 worth of stories already on their shelves to choose from. This year’s 60 Warner productions will include eleven Manhattan plays, among them Tovarich, Yes, My Darling Daughter, Boy Meets Girl, White Horse Inn, On Your Toes. Also scheduled are two Technicolor pictures ; The Story of Emile Zola, to go with last year’s Louis Pasteur; 17 pictures based on popular books.

United Artists’ liveliest members are David Selznick, Walter Wanger and Sam Goldwyn in Hollywood, Alexander Korda in London. In New York last week for conferences were Producers Selznick and Korda, and Producer Selznick’s chief backer, John Hay (“Jock”) Whitney. Chief problem before Selznick International was still: who will play Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind? Last week Producer Selznick failed to substantiate a rumor that Rhett had been assigned to an obscure American actor discovered in British cinema named Ken Duncan. Backer Whitney’s wife, Philadelphia’s sprightly onetime “Liz” Altemus, was screen-tested for Scarlett, which she will not play. Other major Selznick productions will be Prisoner of Zenda, with Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Mary Astor; also Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Nothing Sacred in Technicolor. First and most novel Wanger production will be Vogues of 1938. Most publicized Goldwyn contributions will be The Goldwyn Follies and Hurricane, sequel to MGM’s Mutiny on the Bounty. Starting with the Follies, every Goldwyn production will be filmed in Technicolor. In England, Producer Korda’s most noteworthy picture on the new season’s schedule will be I, Claudius with Charles Laughton and Merle Oberon. Said Producer Korda last week before leaving for a United Artists directors’ meeting in Hollywood: “I feel that British pictures have to fight prejudice on the part of big American circuits. . . . While I am here I will look into the matter.”

At Universal’s convention this week, most ballyhooed productions will be two Buddy de Sylva musicals like Top of the Town, three Deanna Durbin musicals like Three Smart Girls. Salesmen will hear about a general trend to light, unsophisticated entertainment with lots of action, to which the only noteworthy exception on the Universal menu is the late Luigi Pirandello’s Yesterday’s Kisses.

Other companies whose conventions will be held late this month or early next are Twentieth Century-Fox, Columbia, Paramount, RKO. Items on their lists:

Eddie Cantor in Ali Baba Goes to Town, a new French star called Germaine Aussey in Lancer Spy, another investigation of the Quintuplets, a picture about Stanley and Livingstone (Twentieth Century-Fox).

You Can’t Take It With You, to which the movie rights cost $200,000, and 57 other features (Columbia).

Another Big Broadcast, Marlene Dietrich in Angel, a Viennese novelty named Oscar Homolka in Ebbtide, with Frances Farmer, in Technicolor (Paramount).

Irene and The Joy of Living with Irene Dunne; Stage Door with Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers; Victoria the Great with Anton Walbrook and Anna Neagle; and a covey of new celebrities including Joan Fontaine, sister of Warner Cinemactress Olivia de Havilland (RKO).