Cinema: Newsreel, Aug. 30, 1954

¶ Eight members of New York's Joint Legislative Committee on Problems of the Aging reported last week that Hollywood is the "archfoe" of the elderly. Reason: movies portray old age as "a trap, a pit, a hopeless end,'' and glorify "teenage super-beauties as the American ideal." Objectionable oldster types, according to State Senator Thomas C. Desmond, 63: Lionel Barrymore (as a cantankerous oldster), Billy Burke (as a rattlebrain). Objectionable youngster types, "the type of youth glorification that makes it difficult for older women to find a useful, happy place in modern life": Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable. Retorted the Motion Picture Association of America: Senator Desmond is making "a desperate play for publicity . . . [and] failed to check the long and respected list of Hollywood's own senior citizens, still going strong after many years of entertaining millions of people."

¶ British Actor James Mason on the Hollywood press corps: "Four out of five of the [reporters] I have met are illiterate boors with unretentive memories . . . The most voluble celebrities cannot satisfy [their] daily demands . . . And the columnists, spurning inventions which must be shared with competitors, secure exclusivity by raking their own occupationally fetid imaginations."

¶ In Rome's mammoth Cinecitta, Troy was razed for the third time in 3,000 years as Warner Bros.' two-acre wood and papier-maché reproduction of the ancient city (for Helen of Troy) was 80% destroyed by fire. As betogaed extras battled the blaze, cameras churned away for an hour and a half, leaving Warner's hopeful that it could salvage some usable footage from a $95,000 holocaust.

¶ In Europe, MGM's Executive Suite was being billed by any other name, largely because the American meaning of the title has no exact equivalent in any European language. Translated examples: in France, The Tower of the Ambitious Ones; in Holland, The Top Man; in Sweden, A Chair Is Vacant; in Italy, Thirst for Power; in Germany, The Schemers.