Schenck to Fox

When Cinema Producer Joseph Schenck went to Florida last winter, he said his purpose was to look over studio sites for the companies of which he is president--United Artists and Twentieth Century, youngest and liveliest of the producing units whose pictures United Artists distributes (TIME, March 18). All but credulous Florida boosters supposed that his real purpose was to help the industry scare the California Legislature out of passing a proposed 35% income-tax bill. In Florida, Producer Schenck conferred with President Sidney Kent of Fox, ostensibly about a wild plan to have Florida put up $10,000,000 by popular subscription to build moving picture studios. Last week Presidents Schenck and Kent revealed what they really had talked about by issuing a joint statement which said that plans had been completed for the biggest cinema merger of the year, between Fox and Twentieth Century.

Producer Schenck, who resigned last week as president of United Artists, will become chairman of the board for Fox, where Kent will remain as president. Twentieth Century will move from the United Artists lot at Hollywood to the enormous Fox studio at Fox Hills. Twentieth Century's Darryl Zanuck, who has proved his lively and eccentric skill as a producer by such films as Les Miserables, Cardinal Richelieu, Clive of India, The Affairs of Cellini, The House of Rothschild, will become a Fox vice president. The combined companies will together produce a minimum of 55 pictures a year, of which Twentieth Century, as an independent unit, will make at least a dozen. Significance of the move is that it may give Fox, for the first time since talkies arrived, a producing organization equal to any in the industry.

Founded in 1915 by William Fox who spent 15 years building up his enormous theatre chain, Fox Film Corp. became, except for Paramount, the biggest cinema company in the world before its founder was ousted in 1930. Reorganized in 1933. the company's net profit for 1934 was $1,273,000. Twentieth Century owns no theatres at all, exists solely as a medium for the producing genius of excitable little Darryl Zanuck. The company was organized two years ago when Zanuck squabbled with Warner Brothers, where he had worked up from comedy script writer to production chief. He persuaded United Artists' President Schenck to back his new company, release its productions. The split between Twentieth Century and United Artists started when Sam Goldwyn, who had been United Artists' No. 1 producer, decided that the new company was getting more than its share of attention. On the Fox lot, where Producer Schenck's good friend Winfield Sheehan is production chief but where Jesse L. Lasky and others have been making independent pictures for Fox release for the last two years. Twentieth Century will function much as it has in the past. With a better score of hits than any other comparable organization in the industry, its autumn schedule. to attend to which Producer Zanuck was last week returning from a bear-hunting jaunt in Alaska, includes Ivanhoe, Sing Governor, Sing, The Diamond Horseshoe.

While Fox executives were gloating over the merger at their annual sales convention last week for which the announcement had been carefully timed, United Artists heads were frantically trying to deal with the situation caused by Twentieth Century's departure. A loosely organized group of producers, set up 16 years ago by actors who felt that they were being exploited by their employers, the company's only active producing members now are Sam Goldwyn, Charlie Chaplin, whose new, unnamed "Production No. 5" will be released in August, and Mary Pickford, who plans six pictures next year. In Hollywood last week, Producers Goldwyn, Pickford and Chaplin held all-day meetings, lunched for five hours, arguing about whom to elect president to replace Producer Schenck, where to find a new producing organization to replace Twentieth Century.

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