Back to Broadway

Led by Columbia Pictures, pennywise Hollywood, licking the wounds of its 16-month battle with the Dramatists' Guild, started its penitent return to Broadway playbacking last week. This move marked the end of a period that had forced up screen prices for stage hits to astronomical levels ($200,000 for You Can't Take It With You, $255,000 for Room Service).

In May 1936, the Guild, and the League of New York Theatres representing top producers (a notable exception, Gilbert Miller), agreed to give the playwright full control of play disposition after its legitimate production, also to give him 60% minimum instead of the previous 50% of film-rights share, cutting the play manager's accordingly. Hollywood, accustomed to making the manager a dummy figure and further controlling play property destinies by entering into noncompetitive bidding accords with other studios, promptly stopped backing plays. Simultaneously seven studios (Warner Bros., Universal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Twentieth Century-Fox, Paramount, RKO-Radio, Columbia) set up the Bureau of New Plays, with canny Theresa Helburn (see p. 55) at the helm, offered advances on royalties, fellowships; hoped to corner young talent. Now in its second year, the Bureau has paid awards, but has so far found no play worth producing, so the film companies are once more ready to do business with Broadway.

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