Korda Into United Artists

When Joseph Schenck and his Twentieth Century Pictures quit United Artists to merge with Fox last June, the remaining owner-producers (Mary Pickford, Samuel Goldwyn, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks) hastily set about compensating for their loss. First, David O. Gelznick decided to leave Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, form his own producing company to distribute pictures through United Artists. Then Mary Pickford took for a partner Jesse Lasky (who was last week vastly disgruntled by news that M-G-M had contrived to beat him in signing a contract with aging Ernestine Schumann-Heink, whom he had already announced as a star of forthcoming Pickford-Lasky productions).

Last week, United Artists announced that the corporation had acquired a new partner. He was British Producer Alexander Korda (TIME, Sept. 9) whose pictures United Artists has been distributing in the U. S. for the past two years. First foreign partner in a U. S. film company, Mr. Korda planned to continue to produce abroad, said he would leave immediately and start Cyrano de Bergerac with Charles Laughton, Lawrence of Arabia with a brand new star named Walter Hudd, who was advertised as a discovery of George Bernard Shaw.

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