Crackdown

After alternately singing the blues and whistling in the dark all through the postwar years, Hollywood was hitting the gloomy low notes again last week. Speaking to a mass meeting of some 4,000 M-G-M employees on the concrete areaway in front of sound stage 18, MGM's real boss, President Nicholas M. Schenck of Loew's Inc., spelled out the bad news in unvarnished detail.

Schenck had slipped into Hollywood five weeks before, set up a round of interviews with MGM's key personnel, from Production Boss Dore Schary to Bathing Beauty Esther Williams. His conclusion: in the face of a box-office slump and skyrocketing overhead, the time had come for a rigid economy campaign.

As a first step in the economy crackdown, 60 or more of Loew's executives in New York, Hollywood and overseas will take "voluntary" salary cuts of from 25% to 50% on income over $1,000 a week. Unlike 20th Century-Fox, which last year lopped up to 50% off the pay of its high-bracket personnel (but later restored most of it), M-G-M will not cut the pay of writers or directors. But Schenck left no doubt that the days of big-budget, spare-no-expense pictures were over. Best estimate of the total cutbacks: $10 million a year.

Other studios are almost certain to follow MGM's lead. Paramount, probably in the best shape of any major studio, is not planning to renew the contract of Producer-Director George (A Place in the Sun) Stevens, whose perfectionist methods were too costly, and has dropped its top box-office draw, Alan Ladd, whose price is too high. Explained one studio spokesman: "What you've got to do today is make pictures look like four million dollars--but cost under a million."

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