Motion picture news booking guide (1929)

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Col. W. S. Butterfield President W. S. Butterfield, Inc., and Michigan T heatres Co. J 0* ONE of the outstanding figures in the motion picture exhibition field is Col. W. S. Butterfield, whose name is synonymous with the finest class of entertainment. He has been operating in the Michigan theatre field for twenty-one years, and during that time has built up a circuit of eighty theatres in twenty-eight principal theatres outside Detroit. Col. Butterfield’s career in the show business covers forty years. He began, in the legitimate end, first as a treasurer, in which capacity he served for eight years, subsequently becoming a road manager for fourteen years. As a result of his wide experience in the legitimate, he entered the popular -priced field of theatre operation, equipped from every angle to cater to the public. He was one of the first men to grasp the great possibilities of the motion picture as a form of entertainment, but he has continued to play other classes of attractions in his houses. As the president of W. S. Butterfield, Inc., and the Michigan Theatres Company, he operates one of the country’s biggest chains. Besides presenting de luxe picture entertainment, he offers his public the whole range of attractions from ten-cent vaudeville to grand opera, and he is equally successful as a showman in all of these departments. He holds franchises for Erlanger and Shubert road shows, as well as for Keith vaudeville and books the pictures of all the leading film concerns. It is a well-known fact throughout the industry that Butterfield is another name for expert showmanship. The Colonel is a progressive in every sense of the word. He has kept pace with all the changes in the theatre world over the forty-year stretch of his career and was one of the first to combine pictures and vaudeville. His theatres cover the whole state of Michigan, being located in the following cities: Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Bay City, Flint, Saginaw, Niles, Pontiac, Grand Rapids, Ionia, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Owoso, Port Huron, Ypsilanti, Hillsdale, Adrian, Alpena, Jackson, Manistee, Benton Harbor, Big Rapids, Cadillac, Ludington, St. Joseph, Traverse, Grand Haven, East Lansing, Monroe, Mt. Clemens. 20