(See front cover)
Of all the strange organizations functioning in the amusement industry, Pioneer Pictures, Inc. is one of the strangest. Organized two years ago, it is run by John Hay ("Jock") Whitney, 30, and his Cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt ("Sonny") Whitney, 35, whom Jock interested in cinema as Sonny had interested him in aviation. Board members are almost exclusively Whitneys. Last week the Whitneys had made ready for the U. S. public, at a cost of $1,000,000, the first full-length color picture since 1931—8,000 ft. and 1½ hours of 19th Century romance which may or may not revolutionize the cinema industry.
Having completed last year an experimental two-reeler, La Cucaracha (which grossed $350,000), the Whitneys held a story conference to choose a feature subject. The vogue for clean pictures, the necessity for glamorous costumes and the current popularity of Victorian classics made a dramatic version of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair appear to be ideal. For a director the Whitneys chose Lowell Sherman. For a star they chose Miriam Hopkins. Becky Sharp went into production almost a year ago. By last week, it had survived a series of unprecedented mishaps.
First calamity was the death of Director Lowell Sherman from pneumonia, when he had shot about one-third of the picture. Second was an attack of pneumonia for Miriam Hopkins, in the middle of a ballroom scene erected on a rented Pathe lot. Director Rouben Mamoulian, hired to replace Sherman, scrapped all the scenes made by his predecessor. A sequence carefully pieced together from 6,000 ft. of negative was burned in a projection machine and had to be recut, which took a week. During these tribulations, Jock Whitney flew to the coast nine times. Final difficulties with Becky Sharp were concerned, not as anticipated with color, but with sound—re-recording the sound track by a new RCA process. Last week, its release date was postponed to June 6.
The Whitney fortune expresses itself in directions which are urbane, sporting, adventurous, without being reckless, and which betray efficient and complex sophistication. The interest which most Whitneys have in common is horse-racing. Theirs is the most important name on the U. S. turf but their stables are at once so well-managed and so large that a sport which is economically ruinous for people who attempt it less elaborately costs them almost nothing. Without being either dilettantes or intellectuals, Whitneys are rarely averse to making money or spending it on enterprises connected with the arts. Without being extravagant or foolhardy, they like to gamble with experiments.
That some of the Whitney fortune would find its way into cinema has been inevitable ever since Jock Whitney started backing unsuccessful Broadway shows, like his friend Peter Arno's Here Goes the
Bride in 1931. Jock Whitney's literary cronies are Donald Ogden Stewart and Robert Benchley, who spend most of their time in Hollywood. In Hollywood, Jock Whitney met RKO's production chief, Merian Caldwell Cooper, who talked enthusiastically about Technicolor as the next great revolution in the cinema industry. Color was the incentive Jock Whitney needed. He and his cousin bought 15%—about $1,000,000 worth—of Technicolor Inc., organized Pioneer to make color films for RKO release.