Motion Picture News (Oct-Dec 1929)

1242 Motion Picture News THE BULLETIN BOARD Notes, Reports and Ideas That Keep You Posted on the Trend of the Trade from Month to Month ANEW peak for theatre attendance during summer months is the publie 's response to current policies and the present standard of the motion picture and allied entertainments offered at the de luxe first run theatres in key cities. Naturally, the general prosperity enjoyed by America's population is an important factor in bringing this condition about. However, the fact remains that the picture shows have succeeded in winning a new degree of interest and patronage. There is no escaping the significance of this great display of box office strength as a reflection on policies which have materialized as a result of the era of corporate consolidations on which the motion picture industry entered only a comparatively short time ago. When mergers elbowed one another in the rush some time since, it was said in many quarters, mainly financial, that the Spring and Summer of 1929 would tell a great deal about the wisdom, and practical value of these consolidations. The national chain, expanding and acquiring great numbers of big houses put theatre operation on a scale of unprecedented proportions, and the movement was viewed skeptically by many in the industry itself. The answer is found in the business done at the box offices of the leading key city theatres — the vast majority of which are associated directly or affiliated with the largest circuits, ruder the conditions it clear that the new order of big business in the movies has been tested and proof has been obtained. Thus the way opens to to further developments along the same The theal i big chain offers to the public a quality of entertainment at an admission price so low in nparison harl it hecii attempted only a comparatively few years A have brought gasps from showmen themselves and very probably quick financial ruin to any 30 daring as in try the experiment. Palatial theatres, luxuriously equipped to afford the greatest comfort and convenience; screen, stage and musical presentations of a quality that a few shorl years ago 1 ■ only to the few ; now bad in 1 1"' de luxe picl ore hou 1 rom one dollar down to thirty-five cents. Therein lies the answer to the question now rathi 1 an absence no! at all characteristic oi il only a year or two since "how tar Can the chains got" Grouping Amusement Lines BASED on reports current in connection with reported new mergers and expansions the ultimate set-up will find the biggest organizations embracing three lines of amusement enterprises into which the American public pours a total of $2,500,000 annually, and the bill is increasing. These are Motion pictures, for which the public spends $1,500,000,000; Radio, the bill for which amounts to $750,000,000, and for which the disposition it seems is to spend even more each year; and Phonographs, pianolas, etc., which accounts for the other 5250,000,000. All three tie in under the present scheme of things — talent, advertising, popular songs and music, etc. The effect of expansion along these lines, on the motion picture theatre, will be to bring it into even greater prominence and importance, and strengthen the position of the chain-operated theatre. The Small Unit ■"P HE evolution necessarily does not mean *■ the elimination of the independently operated theatre, any more, it would seem, than the chain store would end independent operation of small retail units, and Dr. Julius Klein, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, insists that mortality in that field is due more to incompetence than to sup»Teompetition from the chains. Dr. Klein in an address last August before the Chicago Association of Commerce stated that a recent survey showed that competition accounted for only 3.6 per cent of business failures in 192S, and that 31.4 per rent are charged up under the heading of "incompetence." Lack of capita] he said is responsible for 35 per cent of American business failures, constituting the largest single fac tor among them. The cure for the major malady of incompetence he prescribed for the American retailer was: "more rigid dosages ol facts, and in particular of thai carefully compounded, wonder-working pair of c i"!' market surveys and cosl is. " He ail\ Lsed 1 etail store owners to their shop, attractive to womei bi ■ "with s"> percent of the buying in retail stores today being done by women the far-sighted retailer is commercially at least, graciously considerate of milady's whims and foibles." The embarrassment of capi hortage, which is the cause '■!' .:."> per ccnl of t he bnsim 1 ailure . he aid "arises 1 1 rom shorl sightedness, 'starting on a shoestring,' 'trusting to luck that the break may come.' They often do, but not always from the right direction." Grandeur Stirs New York THE most important trade event of the month, no doubt, was the public presentation of the Fox Grandeur wide film at the Gaiety Theatre in Xew York. Though demonstrated under conditions that hardly can be called ideal (the main offering was the Fox "Follies" picture which was shot by Grandeur cameras merely as a side issue of a production staged with lighting and composition designed for the 35 mm cameras) the comment by reviewers, critics and the public was sufficient to show that the film wider than 35 mm stands in the wings, as it were, ready to march upon the stage and bow to the pieturegoers of all cities and all lands. There seems little question in the minds of picture men that the 35 mm film is to be superceded — cast into the discard as has been the silent film — and that the time is not far distant. What this change in the existing standard will mean to the industry is something that now appears in huge and almost grotesque proportions. Xew studio equipment, new projection equipment, a radical change in auditorium design, with the need for changed proportions in proscenium arches an immediate necessity for successful presentation— these are things that will have to be solved by the studios and the theatres. Wide — But How Wide? T'HEEE has been much discussion of the * necessity of "standardization" of wide film, serious proposals to that end being urged upon the producer, and the experimental engineers now working on methods to produce wide film pictures. However, desirable that might be, however, much 11 ran be urged that tin industry will save millions of dollars by standardizing, the suggestion 1, highly impractical. As a matter i't' tact, there 1, as yel nothing mi which to standardize. The picture producers know it is necessary now to enlarge the space in which picture, air composed. The sound engineers know thej are cramped ami the potentialities of sound are handiled by the present size sound track. The laboratory men work under very trying conditions due to the proximity of sound Macks and scene. But there lies ahead in hi ni exaol ly how much more space is required for these particular (Continued on page 1250)