Divorce Granted

One of Hollywood's first corporate citizens was involved in a divorce action last week, but not the kind that makes the gossip columns. Stockholders of Warner Bros. Pictures voted to divorce the company's producing & distributing business from its theaters, thus becoming the last of Hollywood's Big Five (Loew's, 20th Century-Fox, RKO, Paramount) to conform to the federal court decision won by the Government's trustbusters.

Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. will produce and distribute films; the Stanley Warner Corp. will take over the exhibition end. For every share of stock in the old Warner firm, stockholders will get half a share in each of the new companies. For brothers Albert, Harry and Jack Warner, the choice between being producer-distributors or exhibitors was not too difficult to make; they have always liked picturemaking better than operating theaters. They will hang on to their shares in the studio, sell their shares in the exhibition corporation to Simon H. Fabian's Fabian Enterprises, Inc., which already controls 51 theaters.

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