Selznick Share Cropping

Only major effort of the cinema industry's craftsmen to grab the profits of their own pictures was United Artists, which, formed in 1919, long since passed out of their hands. Last fortnight Hollywood got fair warning of another effort along similar lines when Agent Myron Selznick, who makes about $1,000,000 a year, announced that he would use some of it to help Director Ernst Lubitsch launch a company to be known as Ernst Lubitsch Productions, Inc. From it Director Lubitsch would draw a share of profits instead of a salary. Last week the Selznick system of cinematic share cropping showed signs of becoming a definite trend. Agent Selznick announced that Carole Lombard and William Powell had agreed to act in pictures on the same sort of terms. Producer Sam Goldwyn followed suit with a statement that Writer Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It With You), longtime collaborator of Columbia's Director Frank Capra, had agreed to write pictures for him on the same basis.

Myron Selznick's brother, Producer David Selznick, last fortnight made news by hiring his onetime boss at Paramount, Benjamin P. Schulberg, as an assistant at Selznick International. Both Selznicks are sons of the late, famed Lewis J. Selznick ("Selznick Pictures Make Happy Hours"), kingpin of the industry during and just after the War, whose major worries, before he failed in 1923, were: 1) how to get stars like Clara Kimball Young, Olive Thomas and Owen Moore to act for as little as possible; and 2) how to teach the business to his sons, who used to do odd jobs around the office. Hollywood gossips last week were wondering whether Myron's latest scheme might not cause his father, who believed in sharing as few profits as he could, to turn over in his grave.

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