Motion Picture Theater Management (1927)

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18 MOTION PICTURE THEATER MANAGEMENT with the fundamental theory and practice of the procedure involved in management. To this end, Publix Theatres, Inc., which is an important motion picture theater circuit, conducts a school whose specific purpose is to teach the essentials of theater management. As has been indicated, the principal reasons for the step are : the increasing importance of motion picture theaters everywhere, the large investment represented, the great number of theaters now in operation, the thousands of persons whose livelihood depends on the industry, and the important relationship of the theater to the public. For the same reasons, and with the same end in view, this book will endeavor to present an analysis and exposition of the details of theater management — functions and procedure — based on practical experience. It is not intended to tell any one how to operate theaters successfully. Success in the field can be acquired only by practical experience and by those qualities which make for success anywhere and at any time. The aim of the text is rather to give necessary information drawn from reality, to marshal a vast array of miscellaneous fact in orderly form. In this way, the book may be of genuine guidance and of economical instruction to the right sort of candidate for managerial status. It is hoped, likewise, that executives at present in charge of individual theaters may find in these pages the clarification of this or that problem arising out of the nature of their work. Yet the writer cannot too emphatically repeat that success is based on level-headed capacity. Modern theaters, large or small, cannot be run on chance or guesswork. What this book has to give, together with the contributions of experts in various divisions, must be combined with acute personal intelligence. In order to facilitate the most efficient presentation of the subject, the present text has been so ordered as to group the problems for convenient reference, without diminishing the emphasis on the prime consideration of management. Accordingly, the chapters are gathered into Parts, as follows : Part I is a bird's-eye view of the entire industry as an introduction to the place of the theater. Part II goes directly to general phases of management, in its relations with public, employ