Word: aubreys
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...established stars must face up to other adjustments, too, with the industry's new orientation toward youth. "The older stars are going to have to play older roles if they want to work with us," says MGM President James Aubrey. "We can't make a picture with I Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr groping with each other any more. That's obscene. It's like watching a couple of grandparents pawing each other." That even goes for Liz Taylor...
What Holidays? If any single man personifies the violent change in Hollywood, it is Aubrey, who in October became MGM's third president in eleven months. They called him "the Smiling Cobra" when he was president of CBS-TV from 1959 to 1965, and at MGM he is to be the new broom-or ax. The company he took over was in paralysis after three years of proxy battles and within four weeks was to report the $35 million loss for 1969. Part of that deficit, though, was accounted for by the cancellation of 15 films in progress that...
Last week Aubrey returned to power. Las Vegas Financier Kirk Kerkorian, who a month ago won control of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, picked him to be the company's new president to replace Louis ("Bo") Polk Jr., 39, who was fired. Polk had been chosen only last January by Edgar M. Bronfman, whose 16% holding in the company was the largest until Kerkorian bought roughly a 40% share for about $100 million. (Time Inc. owns 5%.) Bronfman and one of three other directors representing his interests quit the 19-man board last week...
Smelling the Public. Kerkorian hopes that Aubrey, whom he met for the first time only two weeks ago, can put new vigor into the ailing MGM lion. Kerkorian wanted a show business veteran to replace financial man Polk, but his choice for the presidency, Herb Jaffe, a vice president of United Artists, turned the job down. Gregson Bautzer, the Los Angeles socialite lawyer who counts both Kerkorian and Aubrey among his clients, introduced the two men at the Beverly Hilton and recommended Aubrey for the job. Bautzer's sales pitch: "Jim Aubrey has a real good sense of smell...
According to Bautzer, Aubrey told Kerkorian: "I don't want a contract. If I do a job on this, the contract will take care of itself. If you don't like the way I'm doing it, you can say 'Get lost, Jim' without any obligations." Aubrey will get $208,000 yearly, plus an option to buy 17,500 shares...