Motion Picture News (Jan-Mar 1929)

180 Motion I' i c t it r e N c w s Speaking Editorially If This Means You, It Still Is a Fact! WE recently asked the head of a prominent djs tributing company : "Why. at luncheons, does no one e\er discuss the most important subject in the industry'" "\\ hat d( ' yi »u mean ?" and he looked puzzled since the assembled group had devoted nearly two hour to "slid])'" talk. "We mean this — \vc have debated mergers, alliances, theatre circuit-, executive changes, censorship and Wall Street, but we haven't given a moment to the one subject that is more important to the present and future of this business than all the others combined— and that is production." And it is true — of every assemblage of motion picture executives in the East. They are men with vision, imagination, and a good knowledge of the type and kinds of pictures thai will attract the public. Some of the energy they burn up in useless conversation about the financial and administrative possibilities in motion pictures, could be devoted to conceiving ideas for pictures. These, relayed to the production executives in Hollywood or the Eastern studios, would go farther, in screen form, toward making the industry prosperous than all the pie and coffee rumors combined. A Shrewd Choice FXCHANGE managers have something to sell i in addition to film. If anyone doubts, C. R. Beacham, of Atlanta, Ga., will prove it. For years Beacham was manager of First Nation al's Atlanta exchange. He numbered his exhibitor friends by the score. 1 [e won their confidence by honest representation, their friendship with friendliness and their regard with loyalty to his company. Frances Klein Resigns F FRANCES KLEIN, who has been with Motion Picture News since almost its beginning, leaves us this wreek. The separation is exceedingly regretted by the paper and by myself. She has been with us so long, so loyally and so actively that she has grown, it seems, a part of Motion Picture News, and a very large part of the trade, I feel, think of her in just this way. She had and has the very spirit of the business; she has always made its interests hers, its trials and its successes. I doubt if any one has a deeper interest in or a wider knowledge of its affairs and its personnel. We cannot but always regard her as she has been, a part of Motion Picture News. WM. A. JOHNSTON. Something happened. Firsl National's Atlanta branch had a new manager. Beacham was out. Something else happened. Firsl National's home office received letters — one in particular — from a leading Southern exhibitor. Beacham was in, but as a special representative. Exhibitors in the Atlanta territory have never agreed with the action of First National's home offi< c. That has been their right, just as it is the privilege of a home office to reconstruct its organization according to its own ideas. Now Beacham is once more manager of an Atlanta exchange. Joseph Skirboll, general sales manager for World Wide Pictures, has shrewdly appraised Beacham's assets. Skirboll apparently has considered the confidence, friendship and regard Beacham enjoys among exhibitors in the Southeast. In appointing Beacham to the position of manager of the Atlanta branch of World \Vide, he has obtained not only real selling ability but those other assets which have an important value in any merchandising' effort. Higher Admission Prices (Continued (nun preceding page) "How easy it would have been to have only installed one or, at the outside, two equipments in each big town, and how easy it would have been to charge 6/ or 8/ and make it something entirely new. They could have packed them in at every performance, and with such few houses they could have picked the very best in talking entertainment, and God knows they need the very best over here, where they are none too struck on the American manner of speech as it is. The runs would have been long runs and I do not doubt that a good talking picture would run 4, 5, or 6 months. That would have kept the talking entertainment entirely separate from the silent, and would not have jeopardized the tremendous interests of the silent theatres. It would have also determined whether the 'talkies' were successful, and if so, it would be possible to wire all of the theatres they could and bring the prices down to conform with the present day motion picture houses without upsetting the whole industry. "As it is they are going to open with some all-talking pictures and others just synchronized, and there will be silent pictures running all for the same price. The people are going to be fooled and bamboozled into believing that pictures are all talking, when some of them are merely sound pictures and others are silent pictures with a talking news reel. All of which lets the public know they are being taken for suckers, and they wake up to the fact that they have been taken for suckers and then they find a different form of entertainment."