Cinema: End of an Era

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Ever since the war boom ended, Hollywood has alternately moaned about the box-office slump and cheerfully reassured itself (and its customers) that there was really nothing to worry about. But last week Hollywood was finally admitting out loud that the good old days were gone—and apparently beyond recall.

Speaking to 20th Century-Fox stockholders in New York, President Spyros P. Skouras laid it on the line. He was asking the company's 130 highest-paid personnel to take heavy salary cuts (up to 50%). Big reason for the cuts: a drop of almost $1,000,000 in first-quarter earnings, from last year's $1,841,000.

According to Skouras' plan, employees will be cut 25% on the part of their salaries between $500 and $1,000 a week, 35% between $1,000 and $2,000, a full 50% on everything over $2,000. The total slice for Production Boss Darryl Zanuck, who had agreed in advance to the trimmed-down wage scale: $102,700 from his $260,000 annual salary.

Skouras placed much of the blame for his "adjustments" on "this new great medium, television." There were plenty of recent facts & figures to support his stand. Items:

¶Los Angeles movie attendance was down 30%, and 134 Southern California movie houses have closed in the past two years. ¶At Burbank, Warner was negotiating the sale of 30 acres to NBC for a television center; CBS was already working on a center in Los Angeles at a cost of $35 million.

¶One chain of more than 500 theaters admitted that its attendance was down 43% from 1946's high. (Unaffected: its theaters in the almost TVless Rocky Mountain area.)

No one thought that Hollywood was dying—or, at least, no one was sure of it, although there was a lot of cocktail-party talk about the death of the movies. But even the most optimistic had come to realize that Hollywood had outlived its Golden Era. In suburban Bel Air and Brentwood there would still be a Cadillac in every garage—but their owners might have to start washing them themselves on weekends.