Hollywood Pictures

Actor Jerry Lewis sued Walt Disney Co.'s Hollywood Pictures unit, saying he is owed $1.05 million under an agreement to remake or produce a sequel to the 1961 comedy "The Errand Boy." Hollywood Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment Group, which acquired the 1996 agreement from Hollywood Pictures, have paid Lewis only $50,000 out of the $1.

Like the sluggish box office, the jobs picture in Hollywood isn't looking pretty so far this year. Employment in the motion picture, television and sound recording category fell 7.3% to 114,700 jobs in January, compared with the same period a year ago, according to the latest figures from the state's Employment Development Department. In fact, the employment level in January was the lowest of any month since January 2001, when employment also stood at 106,300 jobs, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

Michael Lynton, a top executive from Disney's Hyperion Press publishing unit in New York, is expected to be named the new head of Hollywood Pictures, sources confirmed Friday. The Walt Disney Co., under which Hollywood Pictures hangs its banner, is currently in intense contract negotiations with Lynton and his announcement could come as early as next week when details of his deal are hammered out, sources said. "It's between days and weeks," an insider noted.

Over the last 41 years, film historian and author Marc Wanamaker had acquired some 200,000 photographs chronicling the history of film production in North America from 1909 until the present day. Many of these photographs are one of a kind. Eventually, he sold the photos to Cecilia DeMille Presley, granddaughter of filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille. Then last month, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences received more than 70,000 of those photographs from Presley. FOR THE RECORD: Movie photos: In the April 23 Calendar section, the Classic Hollywood column said that Marc Wanamaker's Bison Archives had donated more than 70,000 photographs chronicling the history of film production in North America to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

As expected, Walt Disney Co. has named publishing executive Michael Lynton president of its Hollywood Pictures division. He succeeds Ricardo Mestres, who resigned in April. Lynton's appointment is unusual because of his lack of background in the film business. For the last three years, he has been senior vice president of Disney Publishing Group, where he has overseen Disney's domestic publishing operations, including Hyperion Books.

There's one less Michael at Disney. Michael Lynton, president of Walt Disney Co.'s Hollywood Pictures unit for two years, will return to the New York publishing business as chairman and chief executive of book giant Penguin Group. Lynton's departure, which was expected, comes amid a sweeping reorganization of Disney's film operation, in which Hollywood Pictures will no longer be involved in the production of films as part of a long-term plan to trim the number of Disney live-action releases.

Ricardo Mestres is out as president of Walt Disney Co.'s Hollywood Pictures movie division, bringing an abrupt end to a six-year reign that left a string of lackluster films ranging from "Super Mario Bros." to "Swing Kids." Mestres, 36, stepped down Tuesday and was given a long-term production deal at the studio. The move was widely expected, based on long-running speculation that Disney management had grown impatient with the division's poor performance.

Hollywood can be a tough and skeptical town--particularly if you arrive here without a Rolodex or a road map to the lay of the land. It is peculiar in that even an industry outsider can be both a stranger in a strange land and an instant "player," just by breaking into the business in the right job. A month ago, Michael Lynton, 34, a Harvard-educated, ambitious executive from New York's literary community working for Walt Disney Co.'

A year ago, Hollywood Pictures was a studio on decidedly shaky ground. Ricardo Mestres, who had headed the Walt Disney Co. unit for six years, stepped down amid widespread criticism that the studio's formula for success--a steady diet of high-concept, low-budget films--was growing stale. The formula had produced huge profits for Disney with movies like "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" and "Encino Man."

A doctor who claims to be the model for the "Medicine Man" depicted by Sean Connery in the recent movie of that name sued the actor and others connected with the film Monday, contending that they misappropriated the doctor's autobiographical story and misrepresented his work with Amazon Indians. In their copyright infringement suit, the doctor, Wilburn H.

Actor Jerry Lewis sued Walt Disney Co.'s Hollywood Pictures unit, saying he is owed $1.05 million under an agreement to remake or produce a sequel to the 1961 comedy "The Errand Boy." Hollywood Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment Group, which acquired the 1996 agreement from Hollywood Pictures, have paid Lewis only $50,000 out of the $1.

T.S. Eliot had it mostly right when he wrote about the world ending not with a bang but a whimper. He simply didn't specify that the whimper might take the form of an interminable stretch of mind-numbing litigation. That's the case with the brief, painful dalliance between Hollywood producers and German capital, which peaked in 2000 and ended with the Nasdaq-like collapse of a sheaf of entertainment companies on the Frankfurt stock exchange.

Although Latinos in the United States spend billions of dollars annually on entertainment and represent the fastest-growing segment of the movie-going audience, a majority believe that Hollywood portrays their community negatively and want to see more films with realistic and positive portrayals of Latinos, according to a report released today.

Jesus Salvador Trevino's lament about the lack of Latino representation in Hollywood ("Missing From Hollywood's Big Picture: Latino Heroes," April 26) is a sober reminder that the Anglo cultural hegemony reflected in motion pictures is a subject that still demands attention, especially at a time when America is finally coming to grips with its multicultural heritage. My concern is that Trevino's rationale for more Latino inclusion could be perceived as having undertones of group resentment and/or envy of the modicum of progress African Americans artists have made in the entertainment industry.

Television news images of yellow ribbons clinging from homes in East Los Angeles and Huntsville, Texas, as two Mexican American families anxiously await word about their captured sons in Serbia, raise anew an old question: Why has the ubiquitous and courageous participation of Latinos in America's wars eluded public recognition? I think I know the answer to this. Ten years of trying to get a true story of Mexican American heroism in World War II made into a motion picture has taught me.

It was the junket they shoulda junked. Before releasing a major motion picture, studios will usually rent out a few suites in a fancy hotel and bring in the big names (stars, director, writer, what have you) for a choreographed cattle-call with all the media they can rope in.

Can it be? Is niceness starting to infect the corridors of the notoriously pugilistic Walt Disney Studios? Maybe it's the Seven Dwarfs grinning down from atop the new corporate offices on the Burbank lot. But cynics would attribute it to the drubbing that Disney has taken at the box office, inside its theme parks--and in the press (most recently pieces in New York magazine and Vanity Fair), where questions about Disney's ability to reverse its losing streak have gotten louder.

Two years ago, Michael Lynton parachuted into Hollywood without a survival kit. The Harvard-educated executive--who had helped launch Disney's New York book and magazine publishing unit, Hyperion--was suddenly plucked from the literary ranks to come run the company's troubled movie banner, Hollywood Pictures. It was the first time anyone in the industry could remember that an outsider had landed on these treacherous shores anointed the head of a studio film label.

There's one less Michael at Disney. Michael Lynton, president of Walt Disney Co.'s Hollywood Pictures unit for two years, will return to the New York publishing business as chairman and chief executive of book giant Penguin Group. Lynton's departure, which was expected, comes amid a sweeping reorganization of Disney's film operation, in which Hollywood Pictures will no longer be involved in the production of films as part of a long-term plan to trim the number of Disney live-action releases.