The Film Daily (1935)

14 THE IfftJ*^ DAI DAILY Tuesday, July 30, 1935 » » » EXPLOITETTES « « « » » » TIMELY TOPICS « « « "Lamps of China" Bally Sells Feature Big AN exploitation campaign, featuring exclusive tie-ups with book and chain stores and a special tie-in with the public library, put across "Oil for the Lamps of China," a Cosmopolitan production for Warner Bros, release, for Arthur Barry, manager of the Capitol theater in Macon, Ga. Barry's "house advance" plugs consisted of the standard trailer, three sheets compo board panels and one sheets distributed around the lobby, stairways and foyers. He used a red and white color scheme for an attractive front featuring title and cast with catchlines. A pergola-like structure supporting a Chinese gong sounded by a little Chinese boy who distributed programs, was placed at the curb. The library tie-up was an unusual one and Barry took full advantage of it, spotting a three-sheet display of stills with adequate billing in the Main Room and getting the Circulation Department to distribute 3,000 bookmarks plugging the picture a week in advance of the opening. A chain of grocery stores installed displays six days prior to the opening and used the grain of rice guessing contest. Boys also distributed 4,000 special heralds, one side blurbing the film and the other blurbing grocery specials for the week. The Macon "Telegraph" went over big for a six-day classified contest a week prior to the premiere. About 12 inches of display was given the contest film daily. A "Chinese story" contest suggested in the Warner Bros, press-book was planted with the Macon "News," also a week in advance with guest tickets for prizes. — Capitol, Macon, Ga. Special Screening Aids "Public Hero" HPHE highlight of H. E. Rice's campaign on "Public Hero," scheduled for the Empress Thea ter, Laramie, Wyo., was a special screening, held in advance of the premiere, for the local police chief, the mayor and other law enforcement officers in the county. Local business and professional leaders also were invited. Their comments were used as part of the lobby display. Rice was assisted by an M-G-M exploiteer. Three days in advance, the cashier of the theater called all patrons listed in the telephone book and advised them of the picture, the cast and the playdate. Ten days in advance a new Buick car paraded the streets of the city with a banner on each side carrying copy on the picture and the automobile. A police display was used in the lobby of the theater. All taxi cabs carried back and front bumper cards, starting three weeks in advance of playdate. — Empress, Laramie, Wyo. B IG NEWS sst> AS SEEN BY ■wi THE PRESS it lT/~7 AGENT M ^k__y "No matter how late Grace Bradley is required to work in a picture — and it's frequently until 2 A.M. — her little blonde secretary, Mickey McKillop, remains on the set with her." — PARAMOUNT. Radio Tie-Up Aids "Escape Me Never" 'T'HE premiere of "Escape Me Never," Herbert Wilcox production starring Elisabeth Bergner and released through United Artists, was ushered in at Loew's Grand Theater in Atlanta with a number of outstanding window displays and an effective radio tie-up. The entire campaign was handled by Manager Ed Melniker. Newspapers played up the engagement with art work, advance and feature stories on Bergner. Through the co-operation of radio station WJTL, an "Amateur Critic Contest" was arranged and the writers of the best letters on "Why I Think I Can Qualify as a Critic to Review 'Escape Me Never'?" received guest tickets to see the picture. This stunt kept the title of the picture and playdate before the radio audience five days prior to opening. A 15-minute musical program, giving the picture several plugs was obtained through station WGST. Five hundred special announcements were sent out on the local Who's Who list and another batch of letters was circulated throughout the business districts of the city. One thousand tally cards, with strong selling copy on "Escape Me Never," were distributed at more than 100 local bridge clubs. Leading merchants displayed special stills of Bergner. — -Loew's Grand, Atlanta. College Ties in on "Escapade" Campaign ^VJHEN A. H. Bencent, manager of the Sterling Theater, Greeley, Col., put over his campaign on "Escapade," he contacted Dr. George W. Fraser, Dean of the Colorado State College of Education and arranged Theater Manager Discusses Acting CIXTY per cent of the action in the average Hollywood movie consists of people coming in and out of doors. Notice this sometime. And yet, there is but one film director in Hollywood who should be allowed this dramatic device and he only because he can make the device dramatic or comic, as he chooses. If you know your movies, you have already guessed it — Ernst Lubitsch. Lubitsch uses doors as integral parts of his action, they are not just incidental to it. Witness his delicious use of this device in "The Merry Widow" and "Trouble in Paradise," and in his early sex comedies where doors, forgotten hats and canes, doorbells, windows, winks and leers were all scrambled together in a veritable "ballet mecanique" to make for hilarious pantomime. There is i-eally no room for superfluous action in the film. The true film crystallizes action for us. "To see eternity in a grain of sand" a poet said. "To see a life cycle in an hour and a half" is the modern screen parallel. That is why "The Man Who Knew Too Much" is a true film. That was the merit also of "Waltz Time in Vienna." Both exquisitely chiseled with not a superfluous word, scene or gesture, both using dialogue — crisp, smart and crackling — as percussion, both utilizing the actor as part of the general pattern and not as a highly publicized mannikin mouthing facile lines. In "Waltz Time in Vienna" the actors were used as in a ballet, their entire persons were thrown into the percussive shocks of the Strauss waltz rhythms. In "The Man Who Knew Too Much" the highly geared machinery of director Alfred Hitchcock's violent continuity pivots and is made to "dance" around the person of Peter Lorre, the arch-criminal, who acts as a sort of high powered gear to set the various cogs in motion to produce a desired and planned result. As to place special lobby display material in the various assembly rooms. Special letters were posted on the bulletin boards. Dr. Fraser made a personal announcement on the picture. Bencent was assisted in his campaign by an M-G-M exploited*. Several spot announcements were made daily for a week in advance of the opening over a local radio station, with a 15minute special broadcast each evening from the stage of the theater, with the theme song of the picture, "You're All I Need," being played nightly. — Sterling, Greeley, Colo. great an actor (though I prefer the term, "film player") as Jannings is, he never insists on dominating a film at the expense of continuity and dramatic purpose as do so many of our own Hollywood "stars." .Tannings gave a magnificent performance in "Variety," probably unsurpassed by any living actor, yet the thing you carried away with you from "Variety" was that ever-present, yet actually invisible, "fourth dimension" which the director imparted to the film, i.e., the high irony that came at cross-purposes with the lives of the three aerialists and which led to the destruction of them all. The function of the actor is to be functional. Everything else is interior decoration. — Herman G. Weinberg, Little Theater, Baltimore. Director Lauds Leading Men, Calls Stars "Specialists" CTARS come and go but leading men start young and continue their careers before the camera usually to a ripe age. Male stars are men with peculiar characteristics which provide them with unique appeal in certain kinds of roles. They usually fail when presented to fans in other than their natural fortes. Leading men, on the other hand, are the utility men of Hollywood, masters of acting technique. They must be able to step into any kind of a story or any type of character, and make good. They must be able to make convincing love to anything in skirts. In other words, they are, and always will be, Hollywood's only real representatives of the histrionic art. Naturally, film producers cannot afford to sacrifice leading men for the specialty work of stardom. It is just a case of once a leading man, always a leading man. I, for one, however, hope to be going strong as a leading man twenty years from now. — Aubrey Scotto. FACTS ABOUT FILMS Move houses in Greece showed for the first six months of this year 65% German films and 30% American films.