Jimmy Gets It

When anyone makes a hit in Hollywood, first recognition is to get his signature on a long-term contract. Last week such recognition came to one of Hollywood's biggest and newest names, 31-year-old James Roosevelt. After six months as vice president of Samuel Goldwyn, Inc., Jimmy got from his bald, bombastic and highly pleased boss a new, two-year contract, enlarging his studio duties, providing a salary increase next year from $25,000 to $30,000.

Oddest quirk in the saga of Jimmy-in-Hollywood is that under another name Mr. Roosevelt might well make more money. When Cinemagnate Goldwyn hired him last year, just as Trust Buster Thurman Arnold had poised his ax over the cinema industry, Hollywood feared that if he were paid too much he would be resented as a last-minute Pocahontas. Jimmy Roosevelt has stayed as far away from the antitrust prosecutions as possible, although he was named as a defendant in the Goldwyn suit. He has served as Goldwyn representative on the board of United Artists and as Mr. Goldwyn's liaison with his New York sales and distribution organization. He easily earned a year's salary by his successful European promotion trip for Wuthering Heights, highlighted by a Paris premiere at which French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were his guests. Under his new contract Jimmy will spend more time in Hollywood, continue his cinema education by taking a hand in the production of the new Goldwyn picture, Raffles, starring David Niven.

In movieland Jimmy Roosevelt lives as quietly as he can, in a Beverly Hills house with two bedrooms and a swimming pool. Except for command appearances at Goldwyn parties and entertaining an occasional celebrity, he goes out little, devotes one evening a week to his duties on the executive committee of the Motion Picture Relief Fund. He has taken Merle Oberon out to dinner. Although he has transferred his 40-foot motor cruiser, New Moon, to a Pacific anchorage, he has left his wife in the East, keeps his voting residence in Framingham, Mass. Jimmy how first-names most of Hollywood but respectfully speaks of his employer as Mr. Goldwyn. To an interviewer Cineman Roosevelt recently observed: "I won't say I'm not going to go back into politics, because if I do say so, and then later decide I will go back, people will say I don't know my own mind."

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