Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1927 - Feb 1928)

24 By Public Though Thomson, a former minister, is not in the movies to make money, his contract with Paramount should bring him something like $10,000 a week. GET Fred Thomson on our program !" demanded Paramount salesmen, with their fingers on the national pulse. So that quiet Western star, known chiefly in the small towns of the country, was signed by Paramount to produce four specials a year, on a profit-sharing basis that should net him approximately ten thousand a week, at the most conservative estimate. His pictures had only rarely been shown in the big cities. But the outlying districts had spoken. This is just another instance of the power and influence over the movies of the small-town audiences. Will Main Street's idol now also become a Broadway favorite. That question is not bothering Fred Thomson. He signed with Paramount because that company offered the greatest number of small houses through which to release his films. The metropolitan movie palaces are only incidental in his consideration. Neither pull nor favoritism had anything to do with making a big-league star of Fred Thomson. Public demand alone has put him where he is. When nine or t-^n thousand exhibitors had announced that he was one It was in the small famous horse, Silver Fred Thomson, who has always carefully star, releasing through Paramount, simply and for his films that was sweeping over the By Myrtle of their best drawing cards, the producers began to sit up and take notice and, with the termination of his F. B. O. contract, the bidding for his services became brisk, resulting in his alignment with Paramount. The stor} of Thomson's former activities as a minister and his entry into the movies because he felt that through the screen he could reach a broader congregation than through the pulpit, has been told before. A brief reference to this, however, is necessary, because in it lies the secret of his appeal to the public. His program Westerns have taught lessons of chivalry, truthfulness and honesty to numberless boys. That basic thought of teaching something to the boys of the country will be continued, under various guises, in his specials. Indeed, except for it Fred Thomson would not be acting. He is in the movies for two reasons — because he wants to give the youth of the country a form of wholesome entertainment that will have a good influence on them, and also because he gets a great kick out of the M'Oi'k. . ^ Had he been less inclined to be stubbornly idealistic, he would have been on Broadway before now. In one of his Westerns there was a bit of business in which Silver King, his horse, shot Indians as the} popped over a hill by pulling with his teeth a twig which Thomson had arranged in the trigger of a gun. He knew that scene would delight the kids. A wire from New York informed him that the picture would be booked for an indefinite run at the Capitol if he would "cut out that silly business where the horse shoots the Indians." Thomson refused. An executive of F. B. O. came West for the sole purpose of persuadto agree, so that he might "make" the big But Thomson only smiled and said. "I made that scene for the kids. I won't sacrifice it just to please a few city folks." And he remained firm in his stand. towns that the Western star and his King, built up their great popularity. .g, him town.