Please Don't Eat the Bankbooks

Had he seen last week's Variety, W. H. Auden's "starving actor in the oven lying" might have pulled his head out and shut off the gas. There may be no such thing as a money tree, but the closest thing to it is still show business. Items: > Jean Kerr picked up $13,597 as one (1) week's royalties for her play Mary, Mary. Still on Broadway after a year and a half, Mary, Mary also has two road companies out in the dingles soaking up provincial cash. Author Kerr stands to make maybe a quarter of a million from the movie rights, which have been bought by Warner Bros., and still more when the amateur and stock royalties are released and the London company opens. With that sort of green entering the family treasury, she may understandably go around the house shouting "Please don't eat the bankbooks!" Her wild Irish mother's name was—suitably—Kitty O'Neill. Nowadays, her own name could just as suitably be Jean O'Nassis.

>The Justice Department may have chopped down on MCA, forcing the company to give up its talent agency while hanging on to its TV producing wing (Revue Productions), but, shrugs Variety, "it should happen to you." From Alfred Hitchcock to Jack Benny to Wagon Train to Leave It to Beaver, MCA shows this fall will hold eleven hours of network prime time—one-sixth of all the prime time on the three networks.

What's in it for MCA? Some $55 million, or more than $1.4 million a week in billings, enough to place MCA well ahead of all challengers.