Period of Adjustment

The lights went down at the 20th Century-Fox stockholders' meeting last week as Spyros Skouras--beneficent impresario of a troubled corporation--happily announced a preview showing of scenes from new Fox films. The ploy failed. Twenty minutes of movies helped no one to forget that Fox lost $22.5 million on last year's operations, and next year's hopes rest entirely with the $30 million production of Cleopatra. The fact that Liz Taylor's take from Cleopatra will exceed $1,300,000 brought a bitter joke; a furious stockholder nominated her for the board of directors.

Liz's peccadilloes throw a lurid light on Hollywood's supercolossal, cast-of-thousands inefficiency. Marlon Brando has already taken more than $1,000,000 in salary from the Mutiny on the Bounty production, conducting mutinies of his own that helped drive production costs beyond $20 million. Films exist at the whim of their stars. Marilyn Monroe's various illnesses have kept her away from Fox's Something's Got to Give; says Di rector Billy Wilder, who knows her from the anguished days of Some Like It Hot: "It used to be you'd call her at 9 a.m., she'd show up at noon. Now you call her in May -- she shows up in October. We should be able to kick out an actress, have Piper Laurie warming up, and get on with it." Hollywood has offset the vampirous at tacks of its stars by profiting heavily from overseas production, closing down local studios, and cutting back on film schedules. Rome, London and Tokyo now lead Hollywood as film-making centers.

No Memos. In this withering atmosphere of retreat and retrenchment, a brawny upstart is defying the trend. It is MCA Inc., the sprawling talent agency that controls a majority of Hollywood's biggest stars* and is thus largely responsible for the astronomical salaries they have forced on the older studios. MCA has grandly announced plans to "revitalize the film industry." Founded by dapper Jules Stein 38 years ago, MCA has long dictated casting to producers with "package deals" in which a buyer takes a mixed bag of stars and shows in order to get a few good ones. In 1949, MCA moved into television to "fill the vacuum" created by Hollywood's lack of interest. It formed the superefficient Revue Studios which now controls 14 hours of network television each week and is the world's biggest single TV producer.

Since 1946, MCA's operating head (and president) has been Lew Wasserman, 49, the austere and fanatically secretive protege of Founder Stein. Wasserman always dresses in black, and sees that his underlings do too. He is always accompanied by an aide who memorizes conversations so there will be a record of them in the event of Wasserman's death; in the best cloak-and-dagger style, MCA rarely keeps memos on any transaction.

No Nonsense. Now MCA is planning to move into moviemaking as a major producer. Key to its new role is a planned merger with Decca Records (which controls Universal Pictures). In the new combination, MCA will be the senior partner, thus making it overnight into a major Hollywood studio. At the same time, partly as a result of prodding by the Justice Department, MCA will probably divest itself of its talent-agency business, which last year amounted to only $8,400,000, v. $72.6 million from television films and studio rentals.

MCA expects to bring to the movie industry the no-nonsense efficiency of Revue. Already, while other studios are selling their properties or simply allowing production lots and sound stages to remain idle, MCA is planning three new 14-story office buildings for the Universal-International lot it bought for $11 million from Universal Pictures three years ago.

Universal's employees (who stay on as MCA tenants in a serene corner of the lot) have a close view of this relentless efficiency. Stars in Revue westerns often just talk about action, eliminating the cost of shooting it. Even the studio commissary is run to make a profit. Says scriptwriter Marion Hargrove, with expansive hyperbole: "The breads and pastries are delivered by a truck which pumps them in through a hose." Says Wasserman: "We think the movie industry has made many mistakes in judgment.

It has refused to face up to the need for progress in the entertainment industry.

We may fall on our face. But we believe we can afford to invest millions of dollars because Hollywood will remain the home base of the movie industry."

* Marlon Brando. Montgomery Clift, Shirley MacLaine, Gregory Peck, James Stewart, Danny Kaye, and Directors Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, Playwrights Tennessee Williams and William Inge, among others.

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