What the Public Likes

Cinema news of the week:

P: M-G-M was fraternizing with the enemy. In Manhattan, Cinemogul Nicholas Schenck sat down with RCA's President David Sarnoff to discuss ways & means for M-G-M movie stars to appear on NBC television shows.

P: In Minneapolis, Theater Owners Rubenstein & Kaplan took action against TV and rowdy teenagers. By barring adolescents, except those accompanied by adults, from their Dale Theater, they were so successful in bringing adults back to the movies that they reopened the long closed Arion Theater and barred not only noisy kids but all advertisements, including trailers for coming pictures. Explained Owner Rubenstein: "People leave their TV sets because they're sick of commercials; they don't want to see them in movies, too."

P: Columbia Pictures announced that Rita Hayworth, who has just completed The Story of Mary Magdalene, will now be cast in a new picture entitled The King's Mistress.

P: In Bridgton, Me. (pop. 3,000) Theater Manager Thomas Hanlon generously offered to set Hollywood straight on what the public likes. Hanlon told a New York Times reporter that "television, so far, is no competition. You can't beat a Ma & Pa Kettle movie. After the Kettles come the cowboy pictures, and another favorite that everybody goes for is a musical like Lili. It's the serious pictures, the crime pictures and the war pictures which don't go."

P: Sixteen nations, including the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., entered 29 feature films in the 14th annual Venice Film Festival. The first picture shown, Hollywood's Roman Holiday, starring Gregory Peck and Newcomer Audrey Hepburn, won bravos and prolonged applause from more than a hundred critics and notables from both sides of the Iron Curtain.

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