Word: rko
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With his talent for exploiting all the theatrical possibilities of the female bosom, plus some solid moviemaking savvy, RKO Boss Howard Hughes made his mark in Hollywood years ago. His famed Hell's Angels (1930) made a star of Jean Harlow. He ballyhooed the charms of Jane Russell so successfully that she was a national celebrity long before the public ever saw her first movie, The Outlaw. In its day, too, RKO has been known for making both its audiences and its stockholders happy. As releasing agent for Walt Disney productions, it has gladdened the hearts of both...
Hughes, who also keeps busy with airplane and guided-missile production and a tool company, is the kind of personality that Hollywood understands. But he and RKO, which he took charge of in 1948, did not turn out to be a winning combination. Recently he admitted that he had been on the lot only once-and then only suggested that the place be painted.* His offices were located about a mile from RKO; his decisions were announced by telephone or messenger, frequently after midnight. Always elusive and wary, he liked doing business in off hours; frequently dressed in tennis sneakers...
With all his knack for rough-tough, sexy, spectacular productions, Hughes seemed unable to cope with the complex operations of a big studio. His insistence not only on policy-making but on such details as film-editing slowed RKO production to the extent that it lost $3,500,000 in 1950, has not started a new picture in the last three months...
Beware, My Lovely (Filmakers; RKO Radio) casts Robert Ryan as a most unhandy man about the house. A psychopathic killer who has just polished off his latest victim. Ryan is hired by World War I Widow Ida Lupino to do some odd jobs in her small-town Victorian home. Before long, Ryan, who is given to mental blackouts and odd fits of anger, has locked all the doors from the inside, ripped the phone from the wall and is scaring Widow Lupino half to death with his menacing attitude...
...RKO gave her a screen test. She was making $79.50 a week in The Warrior's Husband, but she demanded $1,500 a week from Hollywood, and meant it. Nevertheless, when RKO actually met her stiff price, Kate phoned her close friend Laura Harding and said: "They must be insane out there. You'd better come to the Coast with...