Prosperity Row

The eight top U.S. motion picture companies last week got something they could really call colossal: a cocky, teen-aged messenger barged into their showy Manhattan offices, left checks totaling over $42,500,000--the biggest single batch of cash Hollywood has ever seen. The checks, ranging from $11,267,000 for Loew's Inc. to $2,113,000 for Columbia Pictures Corp. represented money owed by British film distributors ever since the outbreak of war in 1939 when the Exchequer abruptly barred all cash payments.

First-Class Business. This windfall comes smack atop the biggest year in U.S. cinema history. The stampede to spend new-found cash and forget the war with Mickey Rooney or Hedy Lamarr has shoved movie attendance to almost 100,000,000 weekly, 15% above last year. Around war plants the flickers play to standees at every show, theater walls fairly bulge with ogling patrons. Result: total box-office take of 16,500 U.S. cinemansions this year will hit a record $1.3 billion--20% above the peak year 1930.

Because producer profits are geared directly to theater receipts this means prosperity-plus in Hollywood. Thus, 20th Century-Fox boomed first half profits from 1941's $861,000 to $2,191,000; giant Paramount Pictures lifted nine months' earnings from $7,450,000 to $9,278,000; Columbia tripled June year-end profits to $1,612,000. Total 1942 movie profits may hit a peak since 1929.

Secondhand Scenery. This delightful picture may not have a Hollywood happyending. Last week the film colony had two big dolors:

1) The $25,000 salary ceiling was raising hob with high-priced stars, directors, writers, producers. At week's end the Treasury Department modified its rules so that movie colonists can earn more in 1942 than in 1941 provided their contracts so specify. But in 1943 no cinestar can earn more than $25,000 net--a figure many of them once got for a single picture. Plain & simple out: lower salaries.

2) Government restrictions were raising hob with production. One horror: a $5,000 top on new materials used in the sets in any one picture. To movie directors who once thought nothing of spending $300,000 for stages and costumes in a single musicomedy, this is the end of the line. But the prop boys went to work, are now using such non-Hollywood items as retouched scenery, secondhand lumber, repaired costumes--even unkinked used nails. Besides this WPB has cut film use by 10% to 24%, threatens a still bigger cut next year.

How long before this sorry-go-round breaks down nobody knows. But veteran independent producer Samuel Goldwyn suspects it may be soon, fortnight ago predicted that a picture shortage was unquestionably on the way. His advice: make pictures while the film and actor last.

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