Motion Picture & Television Fund

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Motion Picture & Television Fund , abbreviated to MPTF, is the name of a fund that takes care of needy members of the film industry. Charlie Chaplin , Mary Pickford , Douglas Fairbanks and David W. Griffith called the organization in 1921 under the motto We Take Care of Our Own (mutatis mutandis We take care of our own people ) to life. When it was founded, the fund was called the Motion Picture Relief Fund (MPRF). The first president was Joseph M. Schenck , Mary Pickford was his deputy, and Reverend Neal Dodd, who had pastored over 300 films, was the executive director.

The Board of Trustees was soon able to count important filmmakers such as Cecil B. DeMille , Jesse L. Lasky , Harold Lloyd , Hal Roach , Donald Crisp and Irving Thalberg among the fund's supporters. The transition from silent films to talkies brought about radical changes for many filmmakers, which resulted in a wave of requests for support. In order to be able to cope better with the tasks, charity events began to be organized and money to be collected at premieres , fashion shows and sporting events. In 1932 Mary Pickford suggested that anyone who earned more than $ 200 a week in Hollywood should donate 0.5 percent of their income to the MPRF. This proposal entered the organization as a Payroll Pledge Program . From 1938 onwards, training centers, producers and trade unions also joined this program. The Screen Actors Guild also got involved. The high-profile Screen Guild Show owes its creation to the efforts of those responsible at the MPRF to find additional sources of income. The show, which was subsidized by Gulf Oil and broadcast by CBS , first went on air on January 8, 1939. It ran into 1952. The show offered the audience radio versions of current and popular films, mostly with the original cast. The actors, all of them great stars, waived their usual fees. A total of $ 5.3 million came together.

The Motion Picture & Television Country House, inaugurated on September 27, 1942, was founded as early as 1940. In 1948 the foundation established a hospital.

The MPRF was renamed to its current name in 1971, as television professionals also had to be taken into account. Jeffrey Katzenberg is a co-founder of the Motion Picture & Television Fund Foundation. The goals have remained the same as when the original form was founded in 1921 when there was no television yet.

The foundation committee includes such well-known names as Warren Beatty , Annette Bening , Michael Douglas , Heather Locklear , Kevin Spacey and Steven Spielberg .

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Motion Picture Relief Fund (MPRF) at filmlexikon.uni-kiel.de. Retrieved January 11, 2014.