The Moving picture world (November 1925-December 1925)

MoviKg Picture WORLD Pounded in l^OJ hi^ J, P, Chalmers Qiznt\jzmen of the Sales Jury — Two significant messages from two ends of the earth had a common termination on our desk last week within the space of two minutes. One was a news despatcli from a geological expedition, sandbound at Insalah, a French garrison remote in the Sahara desert. The other was a letter from A. H. Higley, an exhibitor in Rushmore, a Minnesota town of four hundred. Now, what has Insalah, Africa, to do with Rushmore, Minn.? And what have they teamed up, to ofter to the picture business? The cable despatch from Insalah described the unearthing by a Franco-American expedition of stone love letters in a desolate part of the Sahara where the prehistoric Sheiks did their stuff. In this particular region around the year 1, the slogan evidently was "Say It in Stone." The rock rhymes, dashed off by ardent swains ages ago, and immensely valuable in their contribution to the history of man, had a peculiar significance to us in the light of the Minnesota letter which we opened directly after reading them. One of the African inscriptions, translated, read: "I Beltaim proclaim love for LUi." Another read: "I surely have said all I can to you." So much for Insalah. Enters now Rushmore, Minn., contributing another human document, not hoary with age, and not dripping honeyed words. AND not carved in stone, but scrawled with a pencil. This is what A. H. Higley, owner of the 260-seat Rushmore Theatre, wrote: "I have closed my theatre for the present, due to lack of patronage, and hardly think I will open again. If the small town theatres want to live, there wiM have to be something done on the part of the exchanges to give us a better rate, because the large towns are getting even a cheaper rate in many instances than we small fry. I CAN PROVE THIS." The Minnesota Melody is not the Song of Love broadcast from Insalah. It is not "I, Higley, Proclaim love for Exchange." The complaint against high rentals, is, according to many, the exhibitor's Song of Songs. We are told on the one hand that the exhibitor can play that song in any key. And on the other iiand we are told that sales forces protesting against this exhibitor resistance to increased rentals will go to a theatre owner who has been "educated" to "reasonable" prices and get his business by cutting those prices in half. This has been a good picture year. The lyric of Mr. Higley's song should have been: "Business is fine. Never better. October, 1925, Avill see the Rushmore Theatre doing the biggest month's business of its entire career." Who is to blame that Mr. Higley's song is written in the off-prosperity key? Is Mr. Higley himself? Or the Minneapolis exchanges which sci-vice his theatre? Did Mr. Higley fail to buy properly or exploit properly? Or did the exchanges figure that the entire 400 souls of Rushmore were the 400 of New York? Yes, Mr. Higley had the outlying country to draw from. Yes, the general store in Rushmore is probably still doing business. But the general store has many commodities to sell. When the demand for gum boots drops off, kerosene, plug tobacco, tar rope, molasses, and ginger snaps remain to be traded in. The exhibitor has only one commodity to sell. And that is MOTION PICTURE ENTERTAINMENT. When he amnot do business profitably in that line the only thing he can do is turn his theatre over to the weekly meetings of the Daughters of the Busy Bee. In the Tate Gallery in London hangs the famous painting "Hope" by G. F. Watts. Hope is the last string left unbroken on the lyre of the world. The exhibitor has only one string to his lyre — SCREEN ENTERTAINMENT. Finding his music financially out of tune, he can buy and sell real estate or run the post office. But the film salesman cannot sell him as a real estate operator or as a postmaster. Only so long as he actively remains an EXHIBITOR is he a BUYER of pictures. There is an empty screen in Rushmore, Minn., gentlemen of the sales jury. What is the verdict? The Rushmore Theatre may not be a first-run house to YOU. But it is THE first-run house in Rushmore. Will Rushmore remain picture-less? And will you have one less BUYER of your product? Or will you sit down with Mr. Higley, analyze his problems, give him new tools, RE-OPEN his theatre — wide open — with a bang Rushmore wiU never forget? Will you help him improve HIS property, YOUR property? In every business, every year, there is a percentage of mortality in distribution outlets. There is NO trade mortality more harmful to the public welfare than a picture theatre mortality. It wipes the smile from the face of a community. And we are telling sales managers nothing new when we say that they ciin sell more i)ictures to theatres with the "S. R. O." sign out than to theatres with "CLOSED" nailed acro.ss Ihv. doors. Tliere is a picture theatre birth rate, and a picture theatre death rate. Let's keep the death rate DOWN. In llie hard hilling business of selling, where VOLUME and QUOTA are the pass words, let's remember that Uiere is going to be a volume and a quota NEXT year as well as this. And next year, you cannot sell a house when it is in the picture theatre morgue. Let's keep sales instructions in this business out of the sheriff's poster "Dead or Alive!" class. It should never be "Bring in the Blank Blank Theatre! If you cim't Continued on Page 23.