THIS business is like opium--once it's in your blood, everything else is dull," muses Paramount Pictures Executive George Weltner. The habit has proved profitable for him: last week, at 62, he was promoted from executive v.p. to president. In something of a youth movement, he replaces Barney Balaban, who at 76 becomes chairman; Paramount's founder, Adolph Zukor, 91, was named chairman emeritus. Aging Paramount lost $2,800,000 in 1962 when several films were boxoffice flops. Last year it was back in the black, and first-quarter '64 earnings ($1,041,000) were almost twice as high as in the same period last year. Weltner expects further improvement, thanks to such current successes as Becket and Seven Days in May. A small, freckled man who resembles neither a movie mogul nor a matinee idol, Welt ier is a chemist by training who begat, in the darkroom during the early '20s. How did he reach the summit of Paramount's star-ringed mountain? Says Weltner, with a grin: "Longevity, that's all."

HE is known to friends as "unbudgeable Judge Budge." As a Republican Congressman from Idaho for ten years until he was defeated in 1960, he consistently voted against Government spending and public welfare measures, stood with Southern Democrats on civil rights. Now a state judge in Idaho, he admits to being far from expert in finance. These may seem like unusual qualifications for the newest member of the five-man Securities and Exchange Commission, but last week Hamer Harold Budge got the job. President Johnson appointed him, said SEC sources, partly as a political favor to House Minority Leader Charles Halleck, the judge's longtime golfing crony. (The judge calls Halleck "Pop," while Halleck calls him "Son.") He replaces Jack M. Whitney II as the second Republican member on the commission. Idaho Republicans consider Budge "a top hand," and he will have plenty of opportunity to prove it: the SEC is drawing up a program to implement its 1963 study of stock markets, and much rulemaking lies ahead in such complex areas as brokerage commissions.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.