Word: korda
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Rank had already cut back plans for big-budget pictures in favor of ?200,000 and ?250,000 productions. And some of his (and the world's) most talented moviemakers, feeling the cold hands of businessmen curbing their artistic impulses, had deserted him for Sir Alexander Korda (TIME, Nov. 17), who is concentrating on prestige films. Carol Reed (Odd Man Out) and Powell & Pressburger (Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) had already gone. British critics had begun to note the deterioration in Rank films; recent films, said the Sunday Times, ranged from "mediocre to ghastly...
...into the wedding festivities, by shortening the length and speeding up the pace of the procession, by asking workers to stay at their jobs, and even, at first, by refusing to put the Household Cavalry in full dress. When the Cavalry turned up in full dress in Sir Alexander Korda's movie An Ideal Husband, released a week before the wedding, the government backed down...
...Budapest journalist who started making pictures in an abandoned shed shortly after World War I, Korda reached the top in Europe, went to Hollywood, and returned after five years-a failure. Three years later, in London, with actors he promised to pay later, he turned out The Private Life of Henry VIII and won the support of Britain's powerful Prudential Assurance Co., Ltd. Prudential staked his London Film Productions, Ltd. with cash to turn out topflight pictures (Catherine the Great, Rembrandt, Scarlet Pimpernel...
...Despite its critical successes, London Films went broke for lack of U.S. outlets, leaving Korda's company owing ?700,000 to Prudential. He recouped in Hollywood, went back to England, hocked his life insurance policy to make the British propaganda film The Lion Has Wings. It earned him a handsome profit and helped win him a knighthood. Korda, whose finances puzzle even his friends, then bailed out London Films, bought a controlling interest in British Lion, a top-rung distributing company, and issued ?1,000,000 in stock...
...Korda organization has all the old Korda assets, plus a strong U.S. distributor-20th Century-Fox. But the organization also has the old Korda foibles. If the first 13 pictures are successful, quips Korda, he will "increase production to eight" so he can improve his product...