
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 18, 1990                   TAG: 9005180446
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Chris Gladden
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TAKING A LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE

What do "The Birth of a Nation," "Gone With the Wind," "Bambi," "The Ten Commandments," "The Sound of Music," "Star Wars" and "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial" have in common?

Pretty easy, eh?

They're the top money- makers of their respective decades as measured by movie-theater rentals, according to Variety magazine.

"Nation" (teens and '20s) brought in $10,000,000; "GWTW ('30s)," $79,375,077; "Bambi ('40s)," $47,265,000; "The Ten Commandments ('50s)," $43,000,000; "Sound of Music" ('60s)," $79,748,000; "Star Wars ('70s)," $193,500,000; and "E.T." ('80s), a whopping $228,618,939.

Interestingly, "Batman" jumped into third in the '80s sweepstakes though it's just a year old. It brought in $150,500,000, beating out "Ghostbusters" and all three "Indiana Jones" movies. And that's not counting video sales and rentals.

If there's anything to be deduced from those figures, it's that high-quality family entertainment has a history of selling big-time.

Speaking of money:

Paramount Pictures has given Chatham Hall, the exclusive girl's school near Danville, a $100,000 grant to establish the Paramount Pictures Fund for the Georgia O'Keeffe Chair in the Fine Arts. Once the chair is fully funded, the income will support a faculty position.

Chatham Hall development director Dick Labouchere said the school requested the company create the fund rather than paying a location fee use of the school during the filming of the movie "Crazy People," which was shot primarily at Chatham Hall and in Roanoke. Paramount spent several weeks at Chatham Hall, which doubled for Bennington Sanitarium in the movie.

Chatham Hall is a small college preparatory school and O'Keeffe, the much-acclaimed painter, is its most famous graduate. She was there for two years, graduating in 1905. O'Keeffe, perhaps best known for her expressive abstract paintings of flowers, also spent several years in the Southwest and incorporated bleached buffalo skulls and other objects from that area into her designs.

Jerry Van Voorhis, the rector of Chatham Hall, traveled to Hollywood to receive the grant from "Crazy People" producer Thomas Barad. Paramount also gave the students a special screening before the picture opened.

"It was met with wild and thunderous applause," Labouchere said.

by CNB