Who Pays the Alimony?

In Hollywood, Warner Bros, announced that it had signed a contract with ABC to produce 39 hour-long film shows for Tuesday-night showings next fall. Based on three oldtime Warner hits, Casablanca, King's Row, and Cheyenne, the series allots Warner six minutes per show to plug current pictures, gives ABC a major source of weekly readymades. The on-again-off-again love affair between TV and the moviemakers is plainly on again. Simple economics served as shotgun to the merger. Television has knocked out Hollywood's staple product, the inexpensive cops-and-robbers "B" picture. Since 1950, moviemakers have turned to fewer (by 39%) and bigger movies, leaving highly paid cameramen, contract actors and a horde of stagehands in the slack time. Warner's venture was only the latest. Among the others: P:Columbia Pictures, facing up to the dollars-and-cents facts of its overhead, decided to grind out this year some 390 TV films, e.g., Ford Theater, Father Knows Best, Rin Tin Tin. The studio makes about $7,000,000 worth of TV films a year (as compared to $80 million for its regular theater releases). P: Republic and Monogram, once standard "B" producers, have turned almost entirely to TV filmmaking. P:20th Century-Fox is spending $2,000,000 to prepare for TV deals much like Warner's. One planned series will be based on refuibished oldies, e.g., My Friend Flicka. P:Universal-International, M-G-M and Paramount are watching the competition with an accountant's eye. Said U.-I.'s President Milton Rackmil: "Any decision [to plunge into TV] hinges on the profits." Major clue to Hollywood's interest in TV deals lies in the booming success of ABC's tie-in with Walt Disney (TIME, Dec. 27). Since its start last October, Disneyland has been in the top ten in the Nielsen ratings; one of its songs, The Ballad of Davy Crockett, is a frequent No. 1 on the Hit Parade. Plugged on the TV show, Disney's movie 20,000 Leagues under the Sea is the nation's top-grossing picture, all without much added overhead. Said Walt's businesslike brother Roy: "Going into TV was the obvious thing. After all, our staying out isn't going to kill it. There was a lot of exhibitor animosity, but you might as well try to kill off night baseball."

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