Hollywood
MGM'S Arthur Homblow .'15 featured our April "fourth Friday" luncheon, managing without apparent effort the difficult trick of being simultaneously informative and amusing, and demonstrating to the record turnout of 53 alumni that at least one veteran member of that much-maligned group, the motion picture producers, came equipped with taste, intelligence, and unshattered English.
Taking examples from his recently completed picture The Hucksters (Gable and Deborah Kerr),, he clarified the misty subject of just what a Producer does. Which is, in esseiice, to start with an idea and end with a picture. The idea may be the actual germ of a story, as with Goldwyn's Best Years, or it may be a belief that a book like The Hucksters will make a good movie: it's the producer who draws together the many and varied talents necessary, and, acting as founder and president of the enterprise, guides and coordinates these talents until he comes out at the far end with a film sufficiently intriguing and satisfying to a worldwide audience to get its bait back with a profit. Sometimes a different routine is followed, in which case our hero is known as an ex-producer, but fast. For the relatively small number of "intelligent adult" pictures, Hornblow offered two convincing explanations: one, the fact that the "universality" of the audience invites a crushing censorship, partly actual and partly feared; two, the fact that the great bulk of the paying audience is around 18 years of age makes it necessary to slant the pictures to attract that group.
SIDELIGHTS: Jack Rourke '40 presided and Bob Guggenheim '33 kept the till, both as usual.... latecomer Fred Fuld '40 and friends at an overflow table looked like four guys on a raft.... nobody, and this is News, tried to sell Hornblower a story .... the "brass ring" pass to the next luncheon turned up under the plate of Walt Kadlec '36 .... Wen Williams '34 drew the door prize", which was (I'm entitled to one plug for my home lot) a framed eel of Donald Duck .... the "Round Robin" featured birthplaces, and only 2 of 53 present were native sons .... well-deserved bows for the new Directory went to the officers of the Association.... Pres. John Lyman '28 announced the Annual Dinner, at Disneys in May, and the Ivy Picnic at Elysian Park on June 14, for details of which, pay your dues and keep getting this MAGAZINE. Incidentally, pay your So. Cal. dues, too—five dollars, to Brad Petersen '37, 1641 Laurel St., So. Pasadena.
NOTICE ALUMNr VISITORS to Southern California, please check in with Leon Rotschild '24 (TRinity 3821) on arrival, even if you're to be around only a few days. Leon will put you in touch with your old friends and classmates, and tell you the when and where of any Dartmouth functions, which always include the weekly downtown luncheons every Tuesday noon in the Redwood Room of the Savoy, and the Hollywood luncheons on the "fourth Friday" of every month at the Knickerbocker, on Ivar. See you there.
NEW OFFICERS ELECTED AT UTICA CLUB'S ANNUAL MEETING: President Jim Capps '19, left, congratulates President-elect Jim Brown '23 while George Collins '34, secretary, stands between them. At the far right Joe Kyser '32, new treasurer, beams approvingly.
