Boom in Spain

Last week, Producers Sam Spiegel (On the Waterfront) and Joseph Mankiewicz (The Barefoot Contessa) were jockeying with each other and with Italian Director Alberto Lattuada (Mill on the Po) to get a head start in shooting the life of Goya in its original Spanish setting. All three want Marlon Brando in the title role. But so does Director Stanley Kramer, whose new film, The Pride and the Passion, will be entirely photographed in Spain.

Meanwhile, on the Manzanares River, outside of Madrid, Director-Producer Robert Rossen was busy shooting his multimillion-dollar spectacle, Alexander the Great, using an army of more than 5,000 extras. And M-G-M was waiting its turn to rent the 1,000 horses Rossen is using before starting its own extravaganza, Ben Hur.

All told, U.S. producers were making or preparing to make at least ten major pictures in Spain, representing an investment of some $25 million and underscoring the fact that almost overnight Madrid has supplanted Rome as the cinema capital of Europe. Items:

P:Allied Artists has signed Jose Ferrer for Matador, the Barnaby Conrad novel based on the life of Spain's famed bullfighter, Manolete.

P:Rouben Mamoulian is looking for a singer-actress to play the lead in Carmen, to be filmed in Seville with a libretto by Playwright Maxwell Anderson.

P:Linda Christian and Carlos Thompson are in Bilbao working on Thunderstorm.

P:Actor Helmut Dantine, who worked in Alexander, announced in Madrid that he would help wealthy Play-Backer Blevins Davis film Porgy and Bess, with a cast of Spanish "unknowns."

Why the sudden boom? Cheap labor is part of the answer. Rossen, who plans to spend $4,000,000 on Alexander, another million on publicity, estimates that it would cost him twice as much in England or the U.S.

Dictator Franco has donated hundreds of horses and Spanish cavalry troops to movie projects, given his approval to all independent producers who have approached him for government support. His generosity is practical. Unemployment rates have already begun to dwindle. As many as 1,200 non-union extras are employed in a day at 50 pesetas ($1.25) apiece, compared to the 10 pesetas (25-c-) they would earn for working in the fields.

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