Motion Picture News (Jul - Sep 1930)

Vol. XLII NEW YORK CITY, JULY 5, 1930 No. 1 LEVEL HEADS ROUND OUT A SQUARE DEAL THEY sweated and they toiled. Out of the 5-5-5 conferences — squabbles notwithstanding-— will emerge a new standard contract if the exhibitors of the nation ratify it. It is this writer's opinion that the approval necessary to make the instrument operative should be forthcoming. The faster, the better. After all, distributors, bulwrarked by the security of their theatre holdings, are cracking the whip. The trade knows, sometimes to its sorrow, that they are in a position to do pretty much as they please. So it is in the matter of contracts. Yet, conferring and battling' with Abram Myers, a new draft is being evolved. Myers has done well in protecting the independents5 interests and, while whatever agreement formulating from the meeting will fall far short of the ultimate in buyer-seller pacts, in concept it will be squarer and more equitable than any of its predecessors. Consequently, it rates support. Sit and Hold Tight THE jury is still out. And will be for some little time. Therefore, exhibitors, don't get excited about who owns what in the patent fight now raging on several fronts. De Forest claims one thing and may be right. Western Electric insists its calm remains unruffled. That, too. may be correct. The point for the showman to remember is that his principal job is to keep the box-office flooded with dollars. Which means cobwebs out of his brain and full attention to the many immediate problems at hand. That's a man-sized job these days. Right Under Their Very Noses RGHT here in New York, Paramount Publix, strong plank in the Hays structure, has daily been demonstrating that which the much-advertised advertising code urges not to do. The theatre is the Rivoli; the picture, "The Bad < )iic" and the display a graphic lesson in choice anatomy wrestling between Dolores Del Rio and Eddie i-owe. Yet the purity complex is whipped into a froth and dished out for the newspapers to print and for the ever-watchful reform element to make capital of. It's amazing how silly this business can be. One Mind Production THE Hollywood type of genius: a lone, solitary figure controlling the manufacture of anywhere from thirty to seventy pictures a year. Watching them from the purchase of raw material through the factory and so eventually into distribution. Little reason production is stereotyped and dull. Little wonder the public is choking in the mastication process. An impossible set-up, yet it persists because the leaders of the business persistently avoid the vision that leads to the light. A change in the system is vitally necessary. Xot next year. Today. The Cowardly Way DISTASTEFUL stories are reaching Xew Ycrk concerning the tactics used by at , least one big chain in annexing new theatres. Gag rule of the most virulent type is the procedure. The independent exhibitor is being coaxed, then cajoled and finally threatened. He is being told he has to give up — at the chain's price; that if he doesn't, he won't get pictures; that the buyer will build if he can't buy. And in Washington FODDER for the official critics of the picture, business in Washington. A perfect case ot the giant attempting to swallow the pygmy and an excuse to unloose an entirely new flood of agitation against this industry. As unwarranted as it is stupid, this is the type of business tactics which can engender nothing but hostility and wreak nothing but havoc on the heads ^)\ an industry that should know better. K A X X