All Is Bright

For months, like a ham actor overplaying a role, Hollywood has been beating its breast and wailing about the hard times. There is plenty of reason for wailing. Studios like Warner and RKO are carrying on only token operations; Eagle-Lion has suspended production. The foreign market is shot, the cost of making pictures has risen skyhigh, like everything else, and who can predict what damage television will eventually do to the movie industry?

Last week, the heads of all the studios had called a conference to face these grim issues, wrestle with them and perhaps make a public announcement. The meeting was postponed--to some vague future date. The black basic facts of the Hollywood depression have not changed, but suddenly it is no longer fashionable to talk hard times. Studio chiefs admit that there were only 36 feature pictures in production last week--but instead of comparing that with the 49 of two years ago, they prefer to remember that this time last year there were only 32.

Three Wise Men. The cinemoguls are briskly businesslike and determinedly cheerful. Paramount's Henry Ginsberg said last week that the so-called "depression" is largely "psychological." MGM's Dore Schary says with assurance: "We all know what the problems are and what must be done about them." Twentieth Century-Fox's Darryl Zanuck likes to think about the day in the not-so-distant future when television will be an exciting new adjunct of a busier Hollywood.

The business and social highlights of Hollywood last week had very little flavor of hard times. At the huge testimonial dinner ($15 a plate) naming Darryl Zanuck "Man of the Year," there was no noticeable scarcity of mutation mink and diamonds among the 1,500 diners. The only damp spot in this glittering evening was the five minutes during which Georgia's Ellis Arnall got off to a belligerent start as president of the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers. He scolded Eric Johnston and brashly challenged him to a debate on monopolies and the movies; he proposed that misbehaving Hollywood figures be "banished"; to top things off, he called the guest of honor "Zarryl Danuck."

One actress lost her job but she didn't seem very depressed about it. When Sam Goldwyn fired her after she had pleaded illness in postponing a New York publicity junket ("the day is over when stars can get away with this sort of behavior"), Teresa Wright said she would never sign another standard "archaic . . . and . . . absurd" movie contract, because it treated actors like cattle. The exchange of unpleasantries happily coincided with a new Goldwyn picture called Enchantment (see below), starring Teresa Wright.

Come All Ye Faithful. Though fewer pictures are in production, some things are just like the good old lavish days. At Paramount, Cecil B. DeMille is deep in his $3,000,000 Technicolored Samson and Delilah. At MGM, the huge set with swimming pool is kept at a tropically humid temperature for the swimming sequences of the new Technicolored Esther Williams picture (with dance numbers by Busby Berkeley).

Everything else to one side, talk of hard times at the Christmas season would offend Hollywood's sense of dramatic values. Along Hollywood Boulevard, the street lamps are covered with those decorations which are not real trees, or even slavish representations of real trees, but interesting, frankly synthetic designs frosted in colored lights. And along Wilshire and Sunset the roadside stands are gay with little trees sprayed in pale blue, white, pink and lavender. At this time, Hollywood would like everyone, particularly itself, to wear a cheerful face.

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