Cinema: Big Deal

Ever since RKO laid down $150,000 for Producer Jerry (Johnny Belinda) Wald's Warner Bros, contract last June, Hollywood had been expecting something supercolossal out of the deal. Stretched out over two months, the negotiations between RKO's Howard Hughes and the producing team of Wald and Norman (The Big Hangover) Krasna kept Hollywood gossips atwitter with speculation. Last week, when RKO finally announced its big deal, the effect was almost as shattering as advertised.

At a massive press conference in RKO's chart-lined budget room, Wald and Krasna beamed over the details of the juiciest independent production deal in movie history. In five years, Hollywood's "wonder boys" would make $50 million worth of A pictures for RKO release. The movies, to be cranked out at a production-line rate of twelve each year, would be financed 40% by Howard Hughes and 60% by Eastern banks. Besides weekly salaries of $2,700 apiece, Wald and Krasna would rake in 50% of the net profits on each of their 60 films.

Unlike most large-scale producing agreements, the deal put surprisingly few hobbles on Producers Wald and Krasna. Although Hughes reserved final decision on all films costing more than $900,000, he would do little more than approve the stars and basic story line on the rest. Furthermore, he guaranteed to make his decisions in every case within a week, and to release the finished product within 90 days, no matter how it turned out.

Wald and Krasna were already bubbling with plans and projects. With Hughes's approval, they were going to start a profit-sharing system for top-rank stars, writers and producers, boasted that they would assemble "under one roof, the smartest people since the Greeks." They planned to hire a corps of the nation's top newsmen to scour the world for original story material. Their films would cover the whole scale from social drama (Country Club, a study of Midwest manners & morals) to ribald comedy (Mother Knows Best, a collection of "clean-dirty stories" with Mae West and Jane Russell).

There was really not much more that any Hollywood producer could ask for. Crowed the fast-talking Jerry Wald: "We'll have even more autonomy than Zanuck."