100 New York Moving Picture Houses to Show Film on Eichmann

More than 120 moving picture theatres throughout the country are now showing “Operation Eichmann,” the first American-made film on Adolf Eichmann, Nazi leader who directed the mass-murder of 6,000,000 Jews in Europe during the Nazi regime, it was announced here today by the Allied Artists, producers of the film. Showing of this film will start in New York area in about 100 theatres on May 3, the company said.

A spokesman for the producers explained that the showing had been postponed for New York because of changes of the dates of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. He said the bookings originally had been made in theatres outside of New York for March to coincide with the original date for the Jerusalem trial. The change of the trial date to April came too fast to permit shifting of the dates but the distributors had time to arrange the May 3 date in the New York area to coincide with an expected upsurge of interest developing from the first few weeks of trial proceedings.

The spokesman said that the film deals primarily with the hunt and the capture of the Nazi mass murder specialist. The 93-minute film had about three or four minutes dealing with Gestapo killing of Jews and with the Nazi gas chambers.

The film is being booked throughout Europe, the Far East and Central America and Latin America, the spokesman said. It has been scheduled for showing in Britain, where it will open April 17, in Italy, Denmark, Greece, Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, Norway; Finland, Sweden and Holland. It will also be shown in Japan, Hong. Kong and the Philippines.

A private advance showing was held yesterday in a New York theatre and patrons filling out rating cards gave the film an 80 percent good and excellent rating. Some of the cards contained anti-Jewish sentiments, written by viewers, such as “Jewish and Communist propaganda,” and “obviously made in Hollywood by Jewish producers.”