Boxoffice barometer (1941)

( ^e(yi£e Will By RED KANN This is late February. The consent decree was signed in November. The twentieth, to be precise about it. Certain sections went into effect as rapidly as the signature of Judge Henry Warren Goddard and the attorneys for the five consenting majors turned dry. Arbitration became operative, under certain conditions, on February 1 when the American Arbitration Association had promised it would. Lawyers for the "Big Five" have been analyzing, probing and cutting apart the document for purposes of handbooks instructing their sales forces on the decree, how it will work or how they think it will work. Decentralization of distribution machinery has been concluded by several companies. Others are confidently expected to follow suit. Huddles have been the order in Hollywood and more are on the way. Sales managers are trying to piece together odd pieces of a new selling system before that system has been tried. They may or they may not have it, but time will tell about that. Normal procedure at this particular point on the calendar always centers around plans for the following season, of course. But this year it is different. Vastly and intriguingly different, for no one can tell with accuracy what will come out. The big shout where the decree is concerned centers around unwound selling in groups of not more than five pictures, all completed and all screened for the exhibitor who would bother to see before he is asked to buy. If theatre opinion voiced up to this juncture is a criterion of the future under actual operations, that shout will become a roar. The reason is simple enough. After all these years, there is finally something new about to hit the deck. Back in the dim ages, pictures were sold somewhat along these lines, it is the fact to report. But not since the business might be said to have dropped its safety-pin pants has anything like this been made mandatory for five of the majors either to observe or face contempt proceedings under the full spotlight of the Federal law. Because it is new, different and widely removed from the routine — some call it rut — into which this business so nicely and so comfortably has grooved itself for the past two decades, the speculation runs high about the outcome. So do the fears and the misgivings. Exhibitors — and that's practically all of them in a more united front on this one solitary issue than any this writer can recall in his approximate twenty-five years' experience ■ — ^say they do not want to buy in five blocks. Yet it seems more than passing strange that, about to be given the opportunity to see what they get under conditions eliminating blind buying and reducing the full-line sale to a mere shadow of its former self, they turn the other way. They have been making much noise about buying them sight unseen and about buying fifty to get a couple of These and a couple of Those. Now the chance for a reversal of this is on the table. It will be extremely interesting and probably exciting to see what comes out. It is widely accepted that the leader of each block will have to be commercially hot and strong enough to package the trailing four into an attractive and saleable unit. Producers, too, are becoming more and more aware that the days immediately facing them are to be days when merit will count probably to a degree not presently required. The decree may send aloft production costs because the impending and stiffened competition could easily bring about a race for available talent under the onslaught of which even Hollywood will wince. Half dozen "A's" no longer will sell an entire product smear. Each five will have to start off with on "A" or the five block will get exactly nowhere. But, on the other hand, there is no formula by which a plotted "A" comes off its assembly line as an actual "A" and this, of itself, presents a problem not susceptible of easy solution. Sales in one exchange area can no longer be conditioned upon sales of a different, or the same, group in another exchange area. The process so long familiar to this industry and its constituents, therefore, faces dilution, deflation and perhaps even dissolution. Are there any certainties, then, which emerge from all of these uncertainties? One, at least, and of great importance. All indications point toward a wholesale endeavor on the part of the majors to induce a return to showmanship on a broader scale than has prevailed in recent times. Whether they will be successful in transfusing the exhibitor at large with this enthusiasm and this enterprise remains to be seen. That they will, however, undertake to set the pace for more widely flung first-run case windows is as definite as anything in this mercurial business can be. It may percolate thereafter down the line. Exploitation forces, long a general in-and-out affair in this industry, are to become strengthened where they now exist; they are to be created where they do not. Up and down the land exploiteers will stalk, committed to the general purpose of capturing and centering attention for the attractions of the '4142 season. Expected, too, may be localized advertising campaigns tying in with key city runs, a more intensified cooperation generally extended by the distributor to his exhibitor customer and a banging away through all possible outlets in a big push to excite the public's interest. The simple fact of the matter is that, under blocks of five selling, Hollywood goes on trial and New York along with it. Fortunately, if slowly, the picture makers are beginning to realize the test ahead. Complacencies are not as rockribbed as they were six months ago. In fact, there are some fears, but out of them easily may come a re-galvanizing into forthright action. The kind that brings greater results where it counts most — right on the film where all, including the customers, can see it. 4 BOXOFFICE BAROMETER