Movie Industry History

Cinema turned 100 last year and the British, who believe in doing things properly, wanted to give the movies a present. But what can you possibly give the medium that has done it all? "I hesitated for eight months because I couldn't think of how to do it," says Colin MacCabe of the British Film Institute. "The cinema is so enormous, so vast, how could you turn out something that would show its range?" Then Florence Dauman, a Los Angeles-based producer, had a thought.

At the height of Hollywood's Golden Age he was one of the town's most sought-after bachelors. He was a crooner and Valentino look-alike with flashing eyes and a smile that could charm a sphinx. His composition, "Prisoner of Love," became his vocal trademark. He was taller than his principal competitor--Bing Crosby--and most Hollywood insiders considered him more handsome, better dressed and more formidable at the microphone.

Michael Ovitz wasn't the first and he certainly won't be the last. Before him were agents who made it to the top of their game with innovative deals or sheer force of personality. * 1900-20s * William Morris: The original super-agent was the first to recognize that the future was in representing talent, not the vaudeville houses in which they appeared. * 1920s and '30s * Myron Selznick: The brother of film producer David O.

Greta Garbo would not have been the same without Gilbert Adrian. Joan Crawford owes her shoulder pads to him. Dorothy's blue gingham pinafore, practically an American icon, came from his drawing board. As the head of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer costume department, Adrian was one of Hollywood's greatest and most prolific designers, with more than 200 films to his credit, including "The Wizard of Oz," "Queen Christina," "Camille," "Pride and Prejudice" and the all-female cat fight "The Women."

If Al Jennings had been as tall as his tales, he might have become one of Hollywood's early leading men, instead of a technical adviser and character actor who helped shape one of the film industry's most enduring genres--the Western. Unfortunately, the gun-packing man who was variously an evangelist, outlaw, lawyer, author, actor and politician before becoming one of the San Fernando Valley's most colorful characters stood a scant five feet in height, even with his boots on.

As kids growing up back East in the '40s, Dave Joye and a dozen of his friends had a weekly ritual: They would grab their cap pistols, strap on their holsters and head for the Saturday matinee to spend hours watching the latest sagebrush sagas. "Hopalong Cassidy was one of my favorites," recalls Joye, now a 60-year-old salesman in Huntington Beach. "We used to shoot and yell and scream. We'd yell, 'Look out, Hoppy! There's the bad guy!' But they always seemed to surprise him anyway."

Gripping the seats in the small, darkened theater, the audience is engrossed in the action on the screen. The room is vibrating, and eyes as wide as gramophones are fixed on the high-definition video. Disneyland's Star Tours? Not quite. . . . Debbie Reynolds' Hollywood Movie Museum. It's a little high-tech for a museum, but this is a \o7 Hollywood \f7 museum, and it \o7 is\f7 in Las Vegas. The star-studded opening is tonight--on Reynolds' 63rd birthday.

It probably wasn't planned that way, but the title of Thursday night's opening attraction at UCLA's always anticipated Festival of Preservation, "A Man for All Seasons," could serve as the theme for the entire event. For this seventh annual extravaganza from the university's Film and Television Archive is, even more than its predecessors, a cornucopia of wide-ranging film treats destined to appeal to all possible tastes.

The most immediately apparent point made by "Movies She Wrote: Women Screenwriters in the Hollywood Studios," a UCLA Film and Television Archive series that begins Thursday, is that men haven't cornered the market on mediocrity.

When Cindy Crawford makes her film debut Friday in the oft-delayed "Fair Game," she joins a long list of models who have made the leap from magazines to the screen. While Candice Bergen, Andie MacDowell, Isabella Rossellini, Rene Russo and Cybill Shepherd, to name a few, made the transition, others retreated to the comfortable womb of fashion. Movie roles filled by models have much in common. Not surprisingly, clothes are shed. And voices seem awkward.