Year book of motion pictures (1925)

D. C. and a warm advocate of juvenile matinees, a story teller is provided as part of the performance, and special educational pictures are shown in cooperation with the school authorities. Jt need not be imagined that because these plays are given at such reduced rates or for no rates at all they are a losing business for the exhibitors. Far from it. Mr. Harrison, of Waco, whose methods have already been described, says that his are always financially successful; "I have often said that clean shows and the children built my theater." Another exhibitor who has cooperated wholeheartedly with the local Better Films Committee declares that his house has been lifted from a daily loss to one of the best paying of its capacity on the West coast. Some pictures which have proven especially suitable for juvenile performances are "Little Lord Fauntleroy;" "Grandma's Boy;" "The Three Musketeers;" "School Days;" "Penrod;" "The Printer's Devil" (Wesley Barry) ; "A Sailor Made Man" (Charles Ray;) "Huck and Tom;" "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm;" "Down to the Sea in Ships;" "The Little American," and a score of others. All the efforts for movie betterment already described involve close and friendly cooperation between public and exhibitor. With the right kind, and with an increasing number of theater owners, this is possible, providing always that the wouldbe reformers approach the question understanding^ and remember that the exhibitor is in the business primarily to make money. However, a variety of other solutions have been attempted, — and some with considerable success — whereby the exhibitor's place is, to some extent, taken by a school, a church, community center, recreation commission, or town, county, or state government. In this way the quality of the film is controlled, as far as practical renting conditions permit, by groups whose main idea is clean entertainment and uplift, rather than money-making. A successful example of school control may be found in Backus, Minnesota, a community with a population of only three hundred, which has no commercial moving picture house. Here the school superintendent, feeling that the new school auditorium should he put to use as an entertainment centre of the town, has established and run successfully community movies of a high grade, whose admission price — 10, 20 and 25 cents — paid for all the equipment and slight overhead expenses in a year and a half. Pictures are shown here once a week. An example of extraordinarily successful church ownership of movies may be found in Bloomfield. New Jersey, where for over twelve winters the Men's League of the Westminister Presbyterian Church has been conducting a series of motion picture entertainments. A committee is in charge, with a chairman who takes his job very seriously and personally views in nearby towns a large number of the pictures used before they are ordered, depending for information about the rest on the advance reports of the National Committee for Better Films. The entertainments, which include music and fifteen minutes of community singing, are given every other Friday night, from November 1st to May 1st. They consist of eight entertainment programs and four strictly educational programs. The hall used seats approximately 800 people and is always full. Subscription tickets are sold for the season, costing $2.00 for adults and $1.20 for children; even at this figure the venture nets the Men's League a tidy profit each year. There is one motion picture theater in the town, hut since the owner of it is a member of the Men's Club there has been no friction there, only the friendliest cooperation. Movies in connection with playgrounds and community centers, to which children may safely be taken, are becoming increasingly common, being now a regular part of the public program of recreation in a great number of towns, large and small, including such representative ones as Chicago, Boston. New York, Philadelphia, Detroit. New Haven, Los Angeles and a host of others. For example The Playground tells us that a cost of $175.77. exclusive of the original expenditure for equipment, Community Service of New Haven entertained more that 25,000 people in the summer of 1922 at outdoor moving picture shows. Miss Maude Wright, of Community Service, who was in charge of the shows, carried her screen projector and stand in a Ford car and herself operated the motion picture machine, which was taken around to 12 different neighborhoods. A number of agencies cooperated to make these outdoor performances successful — among them the motion picture theaters and film exchange companies, the Police Department, the Superintendent of Parks, the Superintendent of Lamps, and the United Illuminating Company which supplied the electricity for the high-powered light required by the modern projector used. The first municipal playhouse erected in the United States was the handsome Auditorium which is the pride of Red Wing, Minnesota. This 'ar .sighted cemmunity gift, a bequest to the town from Theodore B. Sheldon, was opened in 1904, and in the twenty years following has kept an i.cnorable record of clean plays and moving pictures. In this municipal house no individual receives any profit of any kind, all the money made above expenses going into an operating fund for its endowment, with the aim of further reducing the already moderate admission prices. A board of five men appointed by the mayor runs the theater, as well as another small moving picture house — the only other one in the town — which is also municipally owned. The direct control is in the hands of a salaried manager hired by the board. The long continued success of Red Wing's experiment seems to prove that community ownership of moving picture theaters in small places is not only feasible but a possible solution, for some localities at least, of the motion picture problem. North Carolina has gone into the showing of moving pictures as a state enterprise. In 1917 the General Assembly of the state decided on moving picture units which should pass from one small village in a county to the next, giving in each about two shows a month, and making the occasion a time for a community get-together with the opportunity for a discussion, after the pictures, of community problems or other topics of local interest. This work, which has grown tremendously since it was begun, is managed by a Director under the State Department of Education, and one-third of the cost is paid by the state, the rest coming from the admission charge of ten cents. Due to the difficulty of renting the right kind of pictures, North Carolina has decided to buy its own, a plan which has been financially possible because of the large number of localities in which each picture is shown. Those in touch with the moving picture situation as a whole seem to feel that the tide has definitely turned against the sex picture, featured as such. While there are always certain persons and certain audiences which will demand this kind, many exhibitors feel that in the long run they do not pay, and that a reputation for showing such movies will ultimately injure a theater. The great body of public taste is fairly sound and clean. Note, for example, the ten best drawing pictures for the past year at the Eastman Theater, in Rochester. There are only two, and those far down in the popularity count, which might legitimately be questioned for even the adolescent audience. The two top liners are positively juvenile: Harold Lloyd in "Why Worry?" lackie Coogan in "A Boy of Flanders." "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." "The Eternal City." Harold Lloyd in "Girl Shy." Lillian Gish in "The White Sister." Corinne Griffith in "Black Oxen." Norma Talmadge in "The Song of Love." Ramon ftovarro in "Scaramouche." Gloria Swanson in "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife." For those who are concerned about the influence which the movies are having on young people, the message which all these facts carry is quite plain ; the place to better the moving picture show is at the source, by our own intelligent cooperation and interest. Boost the knowledge and patronage of the best pictures either by a 47