Theater and Movie Notes in Sunday Herald Tribune

Joe Pihodna wrote a column of theater and screen news items for the Sunday paper. He led off this day with several paragraphs on “Call Me Mister,” opening this week (see Broadway section for more on this hit musical). He also reported that:

• Theatre Incorporated, which was managing the upcoming visit of the Old Vic to New York, had been inundated with mail order requests for the run. Most requests were for tickets to all four productions being presented during the six-week season. Since half the orchestra seats were sold to brokers, the company was finding it hard to meet the demand.

• Popular novelist Taylor Caldwell finally was seeing one of her best sellers make it to the screen. A new company, Story Productions Inc, was putting an adaptation of her current novel This Side of Innocence before the cameras in the fall and had also bought The Wide House. Caldwell, had received $100,000 (more than $1-million in 2009 dollars) against a ten percent share of the producers profit for This Side of Innocence. The writer, also known as Mrs. Marcus Reback of Buffalo, had set both novels in the Buffalo area. She wrote mostly at night after her wifely and motherly chores were done. (Note: Neither novel made it to the screen. It wasn't until the advent of the television miniseries that some of her epic sagas were dramatized.)

• A new Swedish actress, Viveca Lindfors, had arrived in America with a Warner Bros. contract. She was already a stage and screen star at home. While in New York she planned to catch the Lunts, Katharine Cornell, Gertrude Lawrence and “Anna Lucasta” on Broadway.