Plots & Plans
0June in the cinema business is the season for conventions at which the producer's salesmen are filled up with drinks on the company and inspirational addresses from the Big Executives. Backs are patted for selling feats of the past year. Tons of adjectives are unloaded to describe the pictures planned for the year ahead. By this week, every major cinema company had held its convention and the public could learn what to expect for 1936-37.
One change in the producers' lineup was announced. Finding his Pioneer Pictures handicapped by producing color pictures only, John Hay ("Jock") Whitney finally merged it with Selznick International, David Selznick heading the combine with Merian Cooper and Henry Ginsberg at his side. All releases will be through United Artists, Mr. Whitney's contract with RKO-Radio being allowed to lapse.
Total number of feature pictures scheduled for U. S. release next season is 912. Of these 485 will be made by major companies, 427 by minor and foreign producers. Paramount's quota is largest: 78 feature pictures, 113 shorts. Second biggest list is Twentieth Century-Fox's: 69 features, 100 shorts.
If color replaces black & white photography, the change will be less abrupt than that from silent pictures to sound, partly because color requires no new exhibiting apparatus. Nonetheless, the swing to color, barely perceptible last year, will be highly noticeable in 1936-37. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine and Dancing Pirate were last season's only colored features. Next season United Artists will make six, Twentieth Century-Fox two, Paramount two, Warner, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Amkino one each.
British rivalry to Hollywood will become even more brisk. Gaumont-British will release 24 films in the U. S., Alliance 14, London Films (through United Artists) eight, with two dozen more from minor British producers. Twentieth Century-Fox will make five films in England.
Most enticing items on RKO's 54-picture list announced last week were three musicals--one starring Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire, two more in which they will appear separately. Singer Lily Pons will appear in an operetta drama called Street Girl, which may try to capitalize on the vogue for swing music. RKO proudly announced that The March of Time which it distributes had spread from 417 theatres to 7,236 in two years.
On Universal's program of 42 pictures, most notable was a life of Mme Curie, to prepare for which Irene Dunne was last week visiting Mme Curie's daughter Eve in Paris. Warner Brothers, who set the vogue for serious biographies in cinema, planned six more, including Danton, Joan of Arc and The Story of Beethoven, as well as their usual investigations of singing, dancing and machine-gun shooting.
Twentieth Century-Fox specializes currently in urchins. Next year Producer Darryl Zanuck will make four Shirley Temple pictures, four starring Jane Withers and another featuring the Dionne Quintuplets, as well as adult works like Ramona (in color), two musicals by Irving Berlin, an ice-skating saga called Peach Edition, starring Sonja Henie. MGM's list, announced last month, will include a new Eleanor Powell musical, Charles Laughton in Good-Bye, Mr. Chips, Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette, a sequel called After the Thin Man. Paramount baited exhibitors with The Texas Rangers, directed by King Vidor, considered a fitting successor to Lives of a Bengal Lancer; Gary Cooper in The General Died at Dawn; and My American Wife with Francis Lederer--all three to be released in August.
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