The story of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation (1919)

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Personnel of Pittsburgh Exchange exhibitor is just as important as the manager of the big city theater. In order to give him the same grade of service it has established two large renovating plants in New York. Minor damages to a film can be made good in the exchanges ; but whenever a film is no longer in first-class condition it is withdrawn from circu- lation and sent to New York where damaged portions are replaced and the rest dipped in a revivifying solution which cleans and freshens it so that the restored film cannot be distinguished, when projected on the screen, from one fresh from the labo- ratory. Before this system of renewal was instituted by the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation pictures in poor condition were circulated sometimes even in second and third-run houses, due in part to heavy bookings which made demand urgent on the one hand, and careless, not to say reckless, operators who rushed films through the projecting machine regardless of the speed limit, tightening the tension spring to hold the picture steady, with the result that all the sprocket holes were torn out and the film ruined. Not infrequently the operators punched holes in the film as a labor-saving way of providing themselves with operating cues. Again, care- less handling allows grains of dust to get on the face of the film which are shoved along as the film runs through, causing long scratches known in the vernacular as "rain." The rental proceeds from the smallest theaters do not warrant the expense of making new prints; so patrons of these theaters only too often had to put up with inferior shows until the ingenuity of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation provided an economically practicable solution of the renewal problem. ^^^^^^^^^ After every department of the exchange has done its full _ duty it sometimes happens that trains fail to make connec- JPfc^ tions. There may be a collision or a derailment or a washout, * but, however legitimate the excuse, it doesn't help the exhi- bitor who is faced with the prospect of a dark house and a dead loss for a day or more. Again, an exhibitor may delay a return shipment or mis-send it. Whatever the cause, the branch exchange must get the film to the next exhibitor on time. This is where Service, spelled with a capital "S," comes in. For example, a few weeks ago a film was shipped by an exhibitor from Omaha to Wayne, Nebraska, that was due at Sioux City, Iowa. The moment the "miss-out" was discovered, as it inevitably had to be, thanks to the automatic system of cross checks and counter checks at the Omaha branch exchange, the long distance tele- phone was set to work. An automobile was hired to get that film over the precipitous hills of northeast Nebraska and the gluti- nous gumbo of the Missouri River valley on the home stretch to Sioux City. That auto- mobile trip cost almost the total amount IVI H. H. Buxbaum Special Representative Headquarters at Pittsburgh Frank C. Bonistall .Manager Pittsburgh Exchange H. P. Wolf berg Manager Cincinnati Exchange Main Offices,Cincinnati Exchange If^Tft^ >'■■ ij^xM*'^ Personnel of Cincinnati Exchange