Hollywood Revolution

With big studio production giving way to independent production, Hollywood heard further news of its quiet revolution (TIME, Feb. 13). Last week, following hard on Darryl Zanuck's resignation as executive producer of 20th Century-Fox, Paramount Studio Chief Don Hartman resigned to do what Zanuck plans to do: produce independent films. Columbia's Production Chief Jerry Wald was reported to be contemplating the same course.

For the past five years the revolution toward independent production has been spearheaded by United Artists, one of Hollywood's oldest motion picture distributing companies. United Artists was formed in 1919 to distribute the independent films of its four owners: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, D. W. Griffith. In early 1951 the company was losing $100,000 a week. It was so desperate that it offered a group headed by Lawyers Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin half the company's stock, valued at $5,400,000 and full control for ten years at the nominal cost of $8,000, if the group could show a profit in any of the next three years. Within months United Artists was in the black--and that year grossed $18 million.

Last year its gross was $55 million. Its projected gross this year: $65 million. The United Artists formula is simple. In effect, it is a studio without overhead, since it needs no physical property. It offers to finance and distribute, as well as promote, the films of independent producers. The producers are the owners of their products, and in return for United Artist assistance, share their profits with the company. Among those who have taken advantage of the United Artist idea: Rita Hayworth, Hecht-Lancaster, Stanley Kramer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Robert Mitchum, Otto Preminger, Frank Sinatra, Jane Russell, Orson Welles, Joan Crawford, Kirk Douglas, Errol Flynn, Abbott and Costello, Cary Grant. Reasons for liking the U.A. formula: i) U.A. does not interfere in production, 2) the artist can make a lot of money, 3) because of capital gains, he can keep a lot of it.

When the Krim-Benjamin group took over U.A. in 1951, the other half of the stock was owned in equal parts by Chaplin and Mary Pickford. Last year Chaplin sold his share to Krim-Benjamin for an undisclosed sum (TIME, March 14, 1955). Last week Mary Pickford sold her share too, and the Krim-Benjamin group became 100% owners of the company that has done more than any other single force to change the industrial pattern of Hollywood.

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