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P: In Hollywood, Howard Hughes's limping RKO studios announced that all production would stop for "the present." The studio cut its already skeletonized staff, planned to rent its studio space to independent moviemakers and release their pictures. Cinemaoimator Walt Disney has already ended his 17-year tie-in with RKO, from now on will distribute his films through his own outlet, Buena Vista Film Distribution Co., Inc.

P: In Manhattan, This Is Cinerama, pioneer 3-D spectacle among U.S. films, finishes up its second year this week--still going strong. Its exhibitors, Stanley Warner Management Corp., totted up some cheerful facts and figures. Shown in only 13 big cities, Cinerama nevertheless drew a total audience of over 9,000,000. Original cost: $900,000. Box-office gross to date: $17 million. First European showing: in London, this week. Coming soon: Cinerama Holiday, produced by Louis de Rochemont.

P: In London, six months after it was seen in Manhattan, Salt of the Earth (TIME, March 29) opened to rave reviews in the anti-U.S. and left-wing press. A militantly proletarian film about striking Mexican-American zinc miners in New Mexico (sponsored by the Red-run International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers), Salt even won the measured approval of the staid Times: "American films as a whole proclaim that . . . the American way of life [comes] as near to perfection as is possible . . . There is much value in a minority report . . . Powerful, though perhaps prejudiced, is the case as pleaded by [Salt]." But the film did little box office at the highbrow Academy Cinema, due partly to the presence of Communist pamphlet-passers. "To put it bluntly," complained Manager Francis Howard, "Salt's laid an egg."

P: The late George Orwell's powerful fantasy-novel of the totalitarian state, 1984, already a U.S. television success (TIME, Oct. 5, 1953), will be filmed next year in Germany by Britain's Rathvon Overseas, Ltd. The producer: Lothar (Martin Luther) Wolff, who will make 1984 in both German and English. Hollywood's Cornel Wilde may star.

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