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> In Manhattan last fortnight, an even dozen of the cinema industry's top line executives, representing all of Hollywood's eight major producing companies, gathered in the office of Tsar Will Hays for the most impressive powwow of cinema bigwigs in a decade. Present were: Barney Balaban (Paramount), Nate J. Blumberg (Universal), Harry Cohn, Jack Cohn (Columbia), Samuel Goldwyn, Maurice Silverstone (United Artists), Nicholas M. Schenck (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Sidney R. Kent, Joseph M. Schenck (Twentieth Century-Fox), Leo Spitz (RKO Radio), Albert Warner, Harry M. Warner (Warner Bros.), Will H. Hays.

Since Hollywood's eight major producing companies had only until November 1 to answer the U. S. Department of Justice indictment for monopolistic practices, ostensible purpose of the meeting was to discuss ways and means of meeting this and other major crises, such as restrictions on cinema distribution in Italy and Germany, labor troubles on the West Coast, conduct of the Motion Pictures' Greatest Year campaign. Actually, word leaked from Hollywood that the real purpose of the meeting was something else entirely: to consider ways and means of checking anti-Semitism in so far as it affects movie revenues.

Cinema producers, as a class, rightly or wrongly have the reputation of being uncultured, brash and boorish. On the theory that this reputation is a liability, the producers agreed that one means of combatting anti-Semitism would be to render themselves less vulnerable to unfavorable publicity, by abstaining from cafe society, ostentatious gambling for large stakes, misconduct with "Aryan" actresses. When cinema morals were under fire in 1922, the Hays Organization was given the job of raising the standards of personal behavior among cinema performers. Confronted with the problem of their own behavior, producers proposed to establish an organization along somewhat similar lines, for which Chicago Adman Albert Davis Lasker was proposed as unpaid head, to help cinemagnates guide and regulate their private lives.

>In Hollywood Producer Walt Disney announced that he had bought the screen rights to Peter Pan; learned that Singers Adriana Caselotti and Harry Stockwell, who sang the roles respectively of Snow White and Prince Charming, in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, were suing him for $300,000, as their share of the profits from the sale of phonograph records.

>Elected president of RKO to succeed retiring Lawyer Leo Spitz was bulky, greying, onetime film salesman, George Joseph Schaefer, now distribution head of United Artists. First Schaefer job at RKO: steering the bankrupt company through a reorganization plan which the U. S. District Court is expected to approve this week.

> In Jefferson City, Mo. Attorney General Roy McKittrick ruled that the famed MPAYBE "Movie Quiz" was a lottery, advised Missouri theatre owners who wished to avoid the chance of going to prison for from two to five years to avoid participating in it.

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