A Touch of Class

Gary Grant last acted in a movie (Walk, Don't Run) in 1966, and since then has spent much of his time jetting round the world to promote the cosmetics of Faberge Inc., of which he is a director. Now he is getting a new line of products to push. His knowledgeable advice has helped encourage Faberge to join the growing list of big corpo rations (General Electric, Xerox, Mattel, Reader's Digest) that are sinking money into making movies.

Faberge's Brut Productions subsidiary kicked off its first film, A Touch of Class, after Grant, 69, declared that if he were 20 years younger, he would have liked to play the lead himself. The $2,000,000 light comedy grossed $3.5 million in its first four weeks. Brut, named after a Faberge men's fragrance, has completed three other films and put four more into production; it aims eventually to turn out six a year. Grant, who took a glider ride at a Sun Valley film festival last week to plug the movies, insists that he plans no acting comeback. "I'm really interested in the economics of it," he says. He points out that in addition to any profit, "each time one of our films is mentioned anywhere in the world, it is identified as a Brut production; you get a great deal back in hidden advertising." The new film division has also helped bring out one of the lesser-known talents of Faberge President George Barrie, a former saxophone player who won a screen credit in A Touch of Class as a composer of the musical score.

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