$10 Million Newcomer

U.S. movie exhibitors were fed up with playing the villain's role. For years, and as recently as LIFE'S Round Table on the movies (TIME, June 27), they had heard familiar squawks from Hollywood: theater owners take most of the film industry's profits, run the fewest risks and keep its output down to mediocre level by calling the turn for the moviemakers.

Last week, partly to get some attention for advice that they claim goes unheeded in Hollywood, a powerful group of exhibitors offered to risk at least $10 million. In Manhattan, representatives of 25 independent theater chains with some 1.500 houses organized a National Exhibitors Film Company for financing independent producers.

By month's end, the new company's initial fund of $10 million should be ready for loans to qualified producers of "A"' films. The conditions: a rotating committee of exhibitors will pass on stories, casts and budgets to make sure that they beat in tune with "the pulse of the public" as felt at the box office. Even if some studios do not need financing, they may get the company's advice free.

Just what did the exhibitors think the public really wanted? No one said. Nor did any of the exhibitors hint at what Hollywood suspected was their big $10 million motive: to get up a new supply of films against which the major studios will have to compete when they have to rent out each movie individually under federal decrees.

In Hollywood, most independent producers rubbed their hands at the prospect of the theater owners' largesse. But a few feared that the exhibitors would drive hard loan terms and might spend more time meddling on the sound stages than feeling pulses at the box office.

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