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improve the functionings of the Radio
production staff. Pathe's vice president-in-charge-of-production,
Charles G. Rogers, now also a vice president of RKO-Radio, will
continue to be responsible for Pathe productions. Hollywood gossip
however lost no time in concluding that the controlling figure in
RKO-Radio and RKO-Pathe would be David Selznick, that his policies
would determine the management of both companies. In general, Radio
pictures will, for the future, be made at a lower than average (for
Hollywood) cost. The Selznick idea is to develop stars rather than buy
them ready made; to recruit acting and directorial talent from the
Manhattan stage; to hold down production costs by avoiding some of the
most flagrant waste motion common and to some extent unavoidable in
cinemanufacture. Knowing observers last week suspected that the
competition from RKO which Hollywood had foreseen with so much
consternation two years ago, might now be forthcoming, not from a
directorate of bankers but from a clever member of Hollywood's own
inner, more odd than vicious, circle.
*Irving Thalbcrg (MGM) $520,000
Carl Laemmle Jr. (Universal) $260,000
Darryl Zanuck (Warner) $389,000
Howard Hughes (United Artists) .. .$520,000
