Word: celluloid
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...while the triumphant networks lord it over admen and sponsors, a celluloid cloud looms threateningly in the West. If TV's entertainment remains mostly live, Manhattan will be its source and Broad way its inspiration. Should TV go to film, the bulk of the industry will shift to Hollywood-as radio did before it. Some pessimists see the day not far off when 70% of TV shows will be movies (currently, about 35% is filmed...
Blood Alley (Batjac Productions; Warner). Spare the celluloid, according to Director William A. ("Wild Bill") Wellman, and spoil the picture. His last three films (Island in the Sky, The High and the Mighty, Track of the Cat) have run to an average length of two hours. Encouraged by the business they brought in-The High and the Mighty has already grossed more than $7,000,000-Director Wellman has apparently decided that when people go to the movies they want to kill time, no less than to live dangerously. In Blood Alley, he gives them plenty of chance...
...work left the critics cold. For his recent Manhattan show Dali personally grabbed the limelight by mugging with his wax-bean mustache, but his work drew a bouquet of cabbages. His smooth-as-melted-ice-cream paint surfaces reminded one critic of "old miniatures painted on celluloid." Other critics deplored the "vacant trivialities" in the show...
Sabrina (Paramount). When Hollywood's abracadabblers find a new formula for turning celluloid into gold, they overwork it every time. For Sabrina, based on Samuel Taylor's Broadway hit, Paramount's magicians used the same elements that mixed so well in Roman Holiday: Actress Audrey Hepburn, Director Billy Wilder, a switch on the old Cinderella story. Gold, in a word, is guaranteed at the boxoffice, and this is never less than glittering entertainment, but somehow a certain measure of lead has found its way into the formula...
Miss Holliday and her two marquee running mates attempt to make up for what the plot lacks in coherence and pace. Playing a playboy with a turn for ear kissing, Peter Lawford is his usual suave self. Jack Lemmon breaks into celluloid as Gladys' camera happy boyfriend. The latter, star of the 1946 Pudding show, seems to have picked up a new habit of dress since leaving Harvard, but his acting ability is only hampered by some of the script's insipidly sentimental lines...