Plots & Plans

On board the He de France when she docked in Manhattan last week, an amazed Manhattan furrier named I. J. Fox unexpectedly found himself surrounded by inquisitive ship news reporters. To them his name suggested, and his occupation did not exclude, the possibility that he might be a cinemagnate. Their mistake was ignorant but understandable, for the He de France's passenger list was brimming with the names of cinema celebrities.

Most notable were Director Fritz Lang (M, Metropolis), on his way to Hollywood for the second time; Director Howard Estabrook, who had been in England making notes for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's forthcoming David Copper field; Novelist Hugh Walpole who, as a vice president of the Dickens Society, had signed with MGM's Associate Producer David Selznick to help keep the Dickens novel from "reeking of America." To ship newsmen Producer Selznick functioned as advance agent for an even more distinguished Hollywood prospect: Britain's onetime Prime Minister David Lloyd George.* Producer Selznick. back from a month abroad with his wife Irene, daughter of MGM's potent Louis B. Mayer, said he had chatted with Mr. Lloyd George in London, secured permission to make a scenario of his War Memoirs. If the scenario satisfies him, Mr. Lloyd George may travel to Hollywood to supervise the screening.

Whether or not Mr. Lloyd George goes to Hollywood, the resounding name of a great British statesman was even more useful to MGM last week than the actual prospect of producing the Lloyd George Memoirs. Unlike the theatre, the cinema has no fixed "season." Only punctuation of year-round activity at major studios are annual "sales conventions," at which studio officials ballyhoo to their distributors the pictures they plan to produce during the next year. By last week, all major studios, except Columbia, had held their conventions, provided cinemaddicts with some notion of the screen fare in store for them for 1934-35.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, still the most potent producing plant in Hollywood, had more than David Copperfield and a Prime Minister to ballyhoo. Prime factors in the past success of Metro pictures have been 1) "star-power"; 2) Irving Thalberg. First two pictures on Producer Irving Thalberg's schedule are The Merry Widow, with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, directed by Ernst Lubitsch; and Pearl Buck's The Good Earth for which exteriors have already been filmed in China. Cinemaddicts, who have lately been warned by the Roman Catholic Church's Legion of Decency to cast a suspicious eye on all pictures starring Norma Shearer (Mrs. Irving Thalberg), will next see that actress performing as a well-behaved Victorian poetess in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, with Fredric March and Charles Laughton. Clark Gable, Wallace Beery and Robert Montgomery will do what they can with Mutiny on the Bounty, a salty slice of sea history.

Paramount still produces more pictures than any other studio in the U. S.--64 features, 204 shorts. Adolph Zukor, who last week went to Hollywood where Emanuel Cohen, one-time newsreel specialist, is still Paramount's production chief, promised his distributors two more Mae West pictures after her forthcoming It Ain't No Sin. They are called Gentleman's Choice and Me the Queen. Whether or not Marlene Dietrich's vogue survives The Scarlet Empress, finished last April but held for release until the public forgets the queening of Garbo (Queen Christina) and Bergner (Catherine the Great), she will make at least one more picture directed by Josef von Sternberg. Most pretentious picture on Paramount's present schedule is Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert), directed by Cecil B. DeMille, with Warren William as Caesar and 8,000 extras. The Legion of Decency will probably take loud alarm at She Loves Me Not, Sailor, Beware! and The Pursuit of Happiness, all Manhattan stage successes of the last season and all concerned with misbehavior. A Paramount experiment this year will be four pictures produced in Manhattan by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht.

Radio-Keith-Orpheum, still considered Hollywood's most mismanaged studio, was last week once more in the throes of reorganization. Pandro Berman resigned as production chief to head a small unit of his own. Of the 35 pictures which RKO released in the last half of 1933. only four (Little Women, Flying Down to Rio, Wild Cargo, Morning Glory) were money-making hits. In charge of RKO's 50 forthcoming pictures will be president Benjamin Bertram ("Bright Boy") Kahane. Most important on the production schedule for 1934-35: three Katharine Hepburn pictures (Joan of Arc, the Forsyte Saga, The Little Minister') ; Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii; Irene Dunne and John Boles in Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence; Brian Aherne and Ann Harding in The Fountain and Franci: Lederer in The Three Musketeers.

Universal, like other Hollywood companies, is suffering a painful shortage of good story material. Cinema producer have bought production rights to almost every successful play produced in Manhattan since last autumn. Next year's schedules are, more than ever, topheavy with oldtime "classics." Not to be outclassed by MGM, Universal was last week planning to produce Dickens' unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood, with an ending supplied by some writer under Universal contract. Charles Dickens' face appeared in Universal's list of "Box Office Authors,' along with those of Edith Wharton (Strange Wives) and Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven). Frankenstein's monster wil again appear for Universal in The Bride of Frankenstein. Universal distributors last week were told that "the mere thought of the monster seeking a bride makes -L- showman's fingers fairly itch." A classic with catholic tastes, Carl Laemmle Jr. Universal's birdlike little production chief last week also promised his patrons Show Boat, a series of shorts showing Moor Mullins and a new picture by Damon Runyan called Princess O'Hara.

Warner Brothers are considered to have more (73) and better writers than any other company, a flair for making fast action stories without wasting too much money, a knack of originating trends. To Warner Brothers salesmen in Atlantic City last fortnight. Major Albert Warner, in charge of distribution, told what his brother Jack, in charge of production, had prepared for 1934-35; Barbara Stanwyck in Willa Gather's A Lost Lady, a sequel to I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang called I'm Back in the Chain Gang; Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt, with Guy Kibbee; Anthony Adverse; Dolores Del Rio in Farewell to Shanghai; journalistic investigations of bicycle racing. Boulder Dam, roadhouses. traveling salesladies; five musical pictures.

Fox last week planned 58 features. Like other companies, Fox will depend more on adaptations than original stories: Sinclair Lewis' Work of Art, Robert Nathan's One More Spring, Stallings' The First World War, Pitkin's Life Begins at Forty. Owning 45% pf British Gaumont, Fox last year distributed four British Gaumont pictures in the U. S. Because they were poorly received there will be no British pictures on the Fox schedule this year.

United Artists planned to distribute a minimum of 22 feature pictures--produced DARRYL ZANUCK . . . pitches his picture high by 20th Century. Samuel Goldwyn, Reliance, London Films, Viking Productions and Walt Disney. Most active company releasing through-- United Artists is Darryl Zanuck's lively year-old 20th Century. Toothy, excitable little Producer Zanuck plays much polo, squeaks at his teammates in the same shrill tones he uses in story conferences. He likes bombastic entertainment, pictures with high pitch. The Zanuck touch should improve Cardinal Richelieu with George Arliss; Jack London's Call of the Wild; Ronald Colman in Clive of India; The Mighty Barnum, with Wallace Beery in the title role. Samuel Goldwyn, who usually spends and sometimes makes more out of his pictures than any other producer in Hollywood, plans two more Anna Sten pictures, one of them based on Herbert Asbury's Barbary Coast. From London Films will come Alexander Korda's sequel to Henry the Eighth-- Charles Laughton in The Field of Gold.

Columbia's No. 1 Director Frank Capra last season, produced two pictures, Lady for a Day and It Happened One Night, which provided Harry Cohn, Columbia's Production Chief, with sufficient capital for the most elaborate program in the company's history for next year: 48 pictures, 32 of them ambitious features. Frank Capra will direct Broadway Bill, in which Warner Baxter will appear at twice his usual salary ($40.000.

*Last week Mr. Lloyd George, 71, lay ill of a chill at his home in Churt, Surrey.

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