"Amicable Settlement"

In an industry to which personal vanity, professional jealousy and creative carte blanche are as indispensable as they are to the cinema, upheavals in personnel are naturally more sudden, more dramatic, and more painful than elsewhere. Hollywood long ago chose "amicable settlement" as an apt phrase to describe the results, whatever these may be, of all such events. Two months ago when Producers Darryl Zanuck and Joseph Schenck took their lively Twentieth Century Pictures away from United Artists to merge with Fox, where Winfield Sheehan has been vice president in charge of production since 1926, it was immediately clear that an amicable settlement of major proportions was at hand. Last week it arrived. After chats with Producer Schenck and Fox President Sidney Kent, Winfield Sheehan announced that he had tendered his resignation. Said Mr. Kent: ". . . It was accepted with regret. I and the corporation extend our best wishes to Mr. Sheehan. . . . This matter has been settled amicably. . . ." Producer Sheehan felicitated the new management, said he had no plans except a holiday abroad.

Born in 1883, a onetime New York World reporter who got into the cinema business in 1914, Producer Sheehan was right-hand man to William Fox when that ambitious onetime garment worker was building up his topheavy theatre chain. When Fox was ousted, fat, jolly Producer Sheehan remained, on such good terms with Mr. Fox's enemies that, instead of losing his job as the studio's production head, he held it through two reorganizations. In 1932, when he had the nervous breakdown which is often another Hollywood euphemism for an ousting, it looked as if Producer Sheehan might be through. Instead, though his importance in Fox was somewhat lessened by the introduction of outside producers like Sol Wurtzel and Jesse Lasky, he continued in power, made such successes as Cavalcade and State Fair.

That last week's settlement might really have been amicable was indicated by the terms revealed. Producer Sheehan kept his fat block of Fox stock, got something like $360,000 for his contract which had 14 months to run. In the new regime at Fox--henceforth to be called Twentieth Century-Fox--Producer Zanuck will have Producer Sheehan's old job as Production Chief, direct studio operations under the nominal control of President Kent.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.