Comeback in Hollywood

Comeback in Hollywood Hollywood moviemakers were suddenly feeling so much better that they could hardly remember how sick they had felt. The box office, which first began climbing uphill last spring, was now a solid 10% to 15% better than in 1950. Film rentals were up another 10%. Hollywood optimists were even beginning to wonder why they had ever been so worried about television.

The hopeful new arguments burst out all over the place. Television's existing market is already saturated (look at all the cut-rate sales of TV sets). Subscription TV will never be profitable (not when a whole roomful can see a movie for the price of one). Television's shaggy old movies and annoying commercials are already driving people back to the movie theaters (look at the box-office figures). Said one spokesman: "They're getting tired of watching Charles Laughton, as King Henry the Eighth, tossing a chicken bone over his shoulder--smack into a singing bottle of 20th Century beer."

Hollywood's happy change of spirits came at a happy time: Hollywood's 50th anniversary.* In an hour-long radio show this week the Council of Motion Picture Organizations kicked off its year-long publicity campaign to remind everybody. Beginning next week, COMPO will start pouring out $350,000 in a coast-to-coast advertising campaign. A week later, task forces of three to six Hollywood stars, directors and producers will take to the road, to spread the word in men's and women's clubs, churches and schools.

*Appropriately, a slightly phony date--April 16, 1902, the day one Thomas L. Tally opened his "Electric Theater" in Los Angeles, the first real movie theater in the U.S.

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