Movie News in the Sunday Times

Besides the front page movie coverage, The Times had a couple of upfront pages devoted to movie news and ads. Screen editor Thomas Pryor interviewed producer Alexander Korda. Composer Marc Blitzstein wrote an encomium to the short film "Hymn of the Nations."

Publicity photos on the main film page showed Joel McCrea and Brian Donlevy in a scene from "The Virginian", Danny Kaye in "The Kid From Brooklyn" and Joan Fontaine and Mark Stevens in "From This Day Forward," three of the most notable films opening that week. See here for more on these films.

"By Way of Report" by A.H. Weiler was a roundup that week of lesser film news. Among the more interesting tidbits. Leopold Lindtberg, the Austrian refugee who had directed "the Last Chance," winner of the Cannes Peace Prize in 1945, and "Marie Louise," currently playing at the 50th Street Beverly, was being deported from Switzerland. Both of his recent movies dealt with the plight of refugees who had found sanctuary in Switzerland. Protests were mounting there and elsewhere. Weiler also noted that United Artists was marking its 27th anniversary on April 17. The company had released 426 features to date.

Film ads were not as numerous or as big in The Sunday Times as they were in the Sunday New. In particular, the ads for the major theater chains were smaller. However the ads for Manhattan's independent theaters, most showing revivals or foreign films, were more numerous. MGM was already beating the drums with ads for "The Postman Always Rings Twice" which was set to follow the "Follies" at the Capitol. The Translux newsreel theaters at 49th & Broadway and 60th and Madison featured Truman's Army Day speech urging unification of the armed forces and a special feature "Roosevelt Man of Destiny." Newsreel theaters had become popular in the late 1930s as the world moved toward war but the audience would wither in the post-war years.