NEWS AROUND HOLLYWOOD
- Dr A H Giannini resigns as chairman of United Artists. [Gianinni and his brothers headed up the Bank of America, headquartered in San Francisco. They had a long history of investment in the film industry – for example they loaned Walt Disney the money to produce ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’].
- Director Frank Lloyd and his wife Alma celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. [See 5/30]
- Mickey Rooney received a gift from a fan today – a box containing 200 packs of gum, or 1000 sticks in all. The note from the fan read -“I hope this is enough to last you the duration of your trip.” This was referring to his upcoming trip to Boys Town, Nebraska for the film to be shot there.
PER ED SULLIVAN
The columnist has some comments on the opening of the new race track in Inglewood. “The horses I bet on yesterday were the same plugs that emoted in ‘Robin Hood.’” He reports that the ‘take’ was over $500,000 for the day.
FROM THE HOLLYWOOD SPECTATOR (for this date)
- The columnist hints about the problems that caused the downfall of Charles R Rogers from the Executive Vice President of Production position at Universal. It seems he lost all sense of proportion when “according to rumor, Mr Rogers ordered some $45,000 worth of glass bricks for a cinematic fiasco called ‘Top of the Town’ (out in 1937). Of these but $9 worth actually appeared in the release print of the picture.” Some one in the accounting department at the studio, pulled the records and calculated these results. And a set for a night club had been built on such a large scale, that Rogers had to hire an extra 400 extras just to fill it up. (No doubt part of the half a million dollar losses reported at Universal for their half yearly period. Then there was the $104,000 he received in salary for the year). [Rogers would be back – his next production found him at Paramount for ‘The Star Maker.’ Of his fourteen years in the business prior to this, 1932-35 had been with Paramount].
ITEM OF INTEREST (from the Film Daily)
- George Antheil, now writing the score for DeMille’s ‘Union Pacific’ has devised a new method of writing music which eliminates the clefs and reads like a column of figures, from top to bottom. System requires one-tenth as much page space, and will make transposition unnecessary. Copyright is to be sought. [Antheil would later work on a project with Hedy Lamarr – a radio guidance system for torpedoes, unused at the time (1942), but later the basis for WiFi and Bluetooth]