The O. Henry Manner

TV has brought a swarm of hungry, would-be film makers to Hollywood, often with no more equipment than a desk, a chair and an idea. One of the eager idea-men is Marc Frederic, 40, an ex-department-store buyer who was short on cash but long on inspiration. Luckier than most, he joined forces two years ago with Gifford Phillips, an heir to the Jones & Laughlin steel fortune, who had both money and the conviction that film was going to be the biggest thing in television.

Calling themselves the TeeVee Co., Frederic & Phillips first tried a filmed puppet show imported from France. TV-men shook their heads, pronounced it "too sophisticated" for U.S. viewers. Then Frederic had another idea: inexpensive, five-minute films, each telling what he called "a complete O. Henry-type story." A typical one is Patsy, about a parish priest who suspects that one of his boys is a hold-up man because he suddenly begins to flash a lot of money. The climax and happy ending: the priest learns that the boy earned the money as a professional boxer, fighting under an assumed name.

Five pilot films were shot and sent to

New York. Six months later they were still unsold, and Phillips, who had already lost $200,000 in TV experiments, was thinking seriously of going into another line of work. Then came the big idea: suppose two of the five-minute shows were put together and sold as a 15-minute package? It would mean that a sponsor could run in his opening, middle and closing commercial without once breaking the continuity of the program. Says Phillips: "All of a sudden, everybody discovered the stories. They were different. Everybody liked the 0. Henry endings."

Five TV stations promptly contracted for 13 weeks of the new package. In Hollywood, Frederic & Phillips began shooting five-minute films at the rate of four a day, with such stars as Bonita Granville and Gale Page. They hired a $500-a-week screenwriter to flesh out the plots (picked up in the free-lance market at $50 a plot). The California Bank advanced $50,000 to finance a second 13-week series and, last week, stations in Grand Rapids and Nashville signed up, bringing to 17 the number of TV stations now carrying the show. Says Frederic of his assembly-line product: "We're making Chevvies--not Buicks or Cadillacs, but we're making the best type of program at the cost."

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