Motion Picture Herald (Oct-Dec 1956)

Have Changed ...HAVE YOU? Sure, you're still selling entertainment, but what else do you offer? Smart exhibitors have profited by letting us freshen-up their theatre seats . . . replacing all worn and broken parts. It costs so little and there's no interruption of your show schedule. Call today for a free estmate. M ay we give you an estimate ? WRITE, WIRE or PHONE ALPINE 5-8459 MANUFACTURERS— Foam Rubber .V Spring Cushions, back ami seat covers. DISTRIBUTORS— Upholstery fabrics ami general seating supplies. theatre seat seruice to. 160 Hermitage Avenue Nashville, Tenn. FABULOUS NEW FILM CEMENT New York, N.Y. — It wos announced today that a revolutionary new type of film cement for all 16 and 35mm film has been developed by a leading laboratory. The ability of this cement to prevent splices from pulling apart and peeling far surpasses anything previously tested. A limited amount has been released for consumer use exclusively to FLORMAN & BABB Movie Equipment Distributor 68 West 45th St., New York, N. Y. Prices quoted for FOB cement: 1 oi. 40c, Vi pi., St. 50, pf., $2.50. Free sample of FOB #66 sent on request. II Ghosts of Yesteryear; or What Makes Charlie Run by . . . owner-manager of the Northwood theatre in Northwood, la. dog days have come and gone this year and I just got through them by the skin of my teeth. An exhibitor don’t need Dog Days to drive him mad. If it isn’t the heat, the humidity or the mosquitos, it’s the terms, the policies or the bats in the auditorium. I hey’ve all had me down at one time or another the past month. That’s why I took a whole weekend of! and went back “home” in Southern Iowa to my high school class’s 25th anniversary reunion. Going back to see a bunch of people you haven’t seen for 25 years isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s unbelievable the way that cute little mite of a brunette, that we never had nerve enough to date, has spread all over the place. And it’s amazing how some of those guys could have lost so much hair in such a short time. We were a depression class and jumped out of school into the deepest economic pit this country had ever known. I had a moral victory that weekend. I had more hair than anyone in the class, had sired more children, and had had more fires. I was dragging my feet, though, when it came to the grandchildren. Some of ’em had grandchildren older than my eldest girl. I wasn’t about to start digging my own grave back in those days of the ’30s with a family, a war coming on and all that. Oh, no, I was smart; I waited until times were good to dig mine. If things don’t improve this winter over last I may have the janitor push me in it, too! • While I was back home I went to visit the old theatre that first dampened my soles in this great big wonderful wacky business right after 1 got out of school. As I toured the old place I thought of a thousand things that made me attach myself to it. If you don’t mind a personal review of some highlights oi what is almost industrial ancient history, we’ll go back to the early ’30s in the Broadway theatre in Audubon, la. Harry Pace, who recently retired at I Sumner, la, after 35 years of nightly standing in the foyer, owned the theatre in Audubon in those days. He fell heir to a run-down place with no business, and along with it went a small battalion of high school graduates all out of work. We used to have nightly bull sessions up in the office after the second show until it’s a wonder he had any home left to go to. His wife always beat him home by five hours and would sometimes lock him out in an effort to break him away from his juvenile delinquent friends. We delinquents learned to diagnose trade papers, investigate the yearly deals, criticize the pictures (there’s nothing smarter than an 18-year-old even today, you know), and sit in on the salesmen’s pitch much to their chagrin and sometimes sorrow. • I suppose six or eight of us young blades screwed up more deals for salesmen back in those days than the most imaginative sales manager could dream up. Salesmen had to sell to a gang of at least six and sometimes ten. When you’re trying to sell “Barrets of Wimpole Street” or “Queen Christiana” or “Smilin’ Through” to a bunch of teenagers who wanted to see Eddie Cantor, W. C. Fields and Jean Harlow, you were bucking a pretty tough iron curtain twenty years before it descended in Europe. A salesman had leeway in those days or he didn’t sell Audubon. • I remember the film companies used to put out fancy books telling of their coming year’s product. One of our gang who professed to love opera talked Harry into buying “One Night of Love,” starring Grace Moore. That was probably the only picture Columbia got played off the whole year deal. Great show, at that. Remember it? Another production I remember was “Ivanhoe” —somebody listed it for about three years straight but never got it produced. Old Harry was never one to hob nob with the literati and kept asking, “Whatinell’s ‘Ivanhoe’ about?” I still wonder, and I’ve both seen it and read it! MOTION PICTURE HERALD, OCTOBER 13, 1956