Meet Frank P. Rosenberg (1952) 🇺🇸
Frank Rosenberg is a bright example of the new future in the motion picture industry.
by Paul Manning
He [Frank P. Rosenberg] has just organized his own company to produce top-quality motion pictures and he has proven his ability as a producer at 20th-Fox, where his latest effort, King of the Khyber Rifles, is expected to pull in a $10 million world-wide gross.
He started out, like all successful people in show business, at the bottom. He left Columbia University to become an office boy at Columbia in New York. However, his ability soon manifested itself and he was put in charge of the direct mail department. This led to a typewriter, upon which he wrote novelized versions of the Columbia product and dramatized scripts for radio. It was in this job that he first attracted national attention when he staged the CBS broadcast of Lady for a Day from a ship on the high seas, utilizing the newly-pioneered ship-to-shore telephone for the first time.
Columbia wasted no time in making him exploitation director of the New York office, followed by his ascendency to the post of national publicity and advertising director. He additionally served as publicity director for the trade War Loan drive. He was brought to the west coast by Harry Cohn to become studio director of publicity and served in that capacity until he decided to turn to production.
Rosenberg’s first effort was in association with Monty Shaff on a film called Man-Eater of Kumaon. Following this, he purchased a book called Night Cry, and began making preparations for independent production. Before he got far, Darryl Zanuck [Darryl F. Zanuck] signed him as a producer at 20th-Fox. Night Cry became Where the Sidewalk Ends, and Rosenberg continued to make such films as The Secret of Convict Lake, Return of the Texan, The Farmer Takes a Wife, and King of the Khyber Rifles. The latter property, incidentally, had been owned by 20th-Fox for five years and the script appeared to be unbeatable before Rosenberg took it on.
Rosenberg has three married sisters. Mrs. A. J. Kott, Philadelphia; Mrs. J. L. Rosenberg, New York; and Mrs. Lillian Braun, New York. He is married to the former Mary Anne Shaffer, Mount Pleasant, Mich., is the proud father of a five-month-old son, John Isaac, and also has a 120-pound Weimaraner called Khyber.
And Frank Rosenberg, who is barely 40, celebrates 25 years in the picture business, come this August. — P. M.
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Good Things to come from Hollywood… 20th Century Fox’s “Hell and High Water”
Dynamic Samuel Fuller, of The Steel Helmet fame, smashes through with this CinemaScope action thriller, “Hell and High Water,” which firmly establishes CinemaScope as a medium which can bring tense interest into scenes other than vast panoramas.
by Paul Manning
The story of Hell and High Water takes place mostly within the bowels of a submarine, and the action therein holds with an iron grip throughout its 103 minutes. The producer, Raymond A. Klune, teams with Fuller very nicely, and the quality of production values is excellent in every respect.
Every member of the carefully chosen cast fits his role like a glove, and the story encompasses engrossing scenes the likes of which have seldom been duplicated on the screen with the added brilliance and scope of its CinemaScope treatment. Hell and High Water will be remembered for a long time as a top action-adventure-drama film. — P. M.
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Seen above, top row, are Richard Widmark, Bella Darvi, and Cameron Mitchell in two scenes from 20th-Fox’s Hell and High Water, in CinemaScope and Technicolor, and, bottom row, left to right, Raymond A. Klune, producer, and Samuel Fuller, director.
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Joan Crawford, on the set of Republic’s Johnny Guitar, receives her 1952–53 Laurel Award from Exhibitor’s Paul Manning for the best dramatic work by an actress, in RKO’s Sudden Fear.
Collection: Exhibitor Magazine (Studio Survey), February 1954