Boxoffice (Jul-Sep 1939)

JJARRY ROSE, Globe manager, back from a visit in Atlantic City, the home town. Michael Carroll guested a group of PostTelegram carrier boys at his Ainerican Theatre. Loew's Poll, Waterbury, is holding a state-wide jitterbug contest on the stage. Al Schulman has returned from a motor trip to Alabama. The Empire, New London, is offering five cartoons plus the regular show on Saturday afternoons. Arthur “Otto" Esposito only casualty of the season’s first softball game between the Loew-Poli aiid Globe theatres. Even the neighborhood theatres are beginning to feel the general slump in theatre business here. Strand, Stamford, put on a county-wide campaign for “Race Suicide” and limited the admission to adults. Manager Morris Rosenthal of the Majestic observes a birthday this month. “Bonanza" to Rapf Hollywood — “Bonanza,” a story of Mexico’s silver rush, will be produced for Metro by Harry Rapf, with 'Wallace Beery in the starring role. Fred Zinneman is set to script. PROVIDENCE and Pawtucket theatres found tough opposition in the Shrine Circus held recently at Narragansett Race Track. Show played to better than 200,000 persons during the week. Personnel notes from Loew’s State: Don Farnham, chief usher, recently in St. Joseph’s Hospital, reported on the mend at this writing . . . Leslie Jefferies, student assistant manager, out several days with illness last week . . . Vaughn O’Neill left June 26 for a fortnight vacation . . . Marion Cooper, attractive boxoffice miss, down New York way this week looking over the Fair on her vacation. State has a lobby novelty coming in for a week, June 30, in the person of Maud Mosher, handwriting expert, who will give patrons free consultations. Manager Edward Reed of the Strand is giving the customers a bit of highbrow entertainment on his current bill. To film orchestral music of “Tannhauser” a color accompaniment is provided by the color invention of Prof. G. A. Snook, Ph.D., worked from behind the screen. Novelty drew a good hand. Anthony Romano of Associated Theatres says cooling systems recently installed in the chain’s Palace and Park theatres have proved so satisfactory that contracts have been signed for similar installation in the company’s Bijou, third-run downtown house. Warns Film Producers of Latest Western Efforts New Haven — “This Way No Progress Lies,” Allardyce Nicoll, chairman of the Yale department of drama, warns producers of the latest westerns in an article in Theatre News, New Haven County weekly film and entertainment guide. “We may admire Griffith as a pioneer and recognize the worth of the early westerns without desiring that the latest efforts would imitatively copy early technique, should forget or cast aside a whole series of interesting, exciting and significant experiments in other directions,” Professor Nicoll concludes. He points out that two or three years ago experiments were being made in the “delineation of subjective states of mind; montage of an imaginative sort was being freely exploited, and there were signs that the producers, even when clearly intent upon purely commercial success, were becoming aware of the possibilities of visual symbolism.” The renunciation of these experiments of late he attributes in a measure to the renaissance of the current elaborated western, and the “democratic” film with its insistence upon larger external and objectively presented ideas. “Wuthering Heights,” he states, stands almost alone in daring to dally with symbolic effects, and “even it was not bold enough to go very far.” Columbia Extends Brown Hollywood — Stanley Brown, actor, has been extended for a year by Columbia. Fays Theatre followed its usual custojn of closing for the summer on June 15 with reopening announced for late in August. Despite shutdown of that house and the RKO-Albee, remaining first runs have experienced 710 appreciable upturn in grosses. Theatre-by-the-Sea, legit summer playhouse at Matunuck, R. I., opens for the season this week with Leon Janney guest starring in “What a Life.” Other film folk scheduled to visit this season are Glenda Farrell, Elissa Landi, Edward Everett Horton, Alison Skipworth, Blanche Yurka and Madge Evans. Rhode Islaiid theatremen joined with numerous friends in mourning the death of Eddie Healy, one-time vaudeville star and more recently proprietor of Healy’s Restaurant here. Eddie died June 19 as a result of burns suffered in the fire which destroyed the Roger Williams Manor apartment house here the prevnous day. His eating place was a popular rendezvous for the film fraternity. Manager McGhee of E. M. Loew’s DriveIn is using bumper cards as an advertising medium. Ushers circulate through ramps during evening performance, getting permission from car owners to affix the cards to their machines. Few turn down the requests, with result that hundreds of cars are driving around town advertising the Drive-In. (Continued from page 56) B. B. Gordon, Commodore Hull, Derby; Bob Elliano, Palace, Torrington; Bill Hatkoff, Rialto, South Norwalk; Ted Smalley, Garde, New London; Bob Hamilton, Palace, Norwich; Jack Harvey, Palace, Danbury. Alexander Hamilton, illustriously -named manager of M&P’s Empress, South Norwalk, leaves July 14 for a few weeks at Naples, Me. . . . Bob Carney, assistant at the College, New Haven, will drive off for Virginia Beach July 1 . . . H. H. Maloney, alias “Monk,” now at the Poli, Worcester, will be leaving for the World’s Fair, and then Maine, as you read this . . . Maurice Drucker, assistant at the Maloney house, spent a busman’s holiday making the circuit with Harry Shaw . . . Harry Rose, of the Globe, Bridgeport, is bound for Atlantic City, with Morris Rosenthal looking after the house . . . Joe DiPesa, Boston Loew’s, Inc., publicity director, is expected back at his desk this week after a lengthy illness, which should bring Lou Brown back to New Haven, aiid return Matt Saunders to the Poli, Bridgeport . . . Vic Cusanelli and Marian Salwitz of the Wariier exchange office, are on a Nassau cruise. T. O’Toole and Ben Lourie arranged an evening screening of “(Oood Girls Go to Paris” at the 20th-Fox Little Theatre, with approval of a goodly attendance of exhibitors and their wives . . . E. M. Loew’s, Hartford, plays the feature July 30. With the anti-picketing injunction removed Hartford union operators are again picketing E. M. Loew’s in a squabble between Knights of Labor and AFL. Nick Mascoli of the Carroll and Plaza, Waterbui'y, is teaching the booking game to his family of three . . . Harry Shaw is thinking of selling his color films of his recent West Indies cruise to the circuit as a travelogue with plenty of shots of the Shaw cigar . . . Lewis Ginsberg is having a hard time evading the “shotguns” . . . Danbury is minus two of its theatre managers this week, what with George Harvey of the Empress heading for a Washington vacation, and Irving Hillman of the Capitol, on a Canadian visit. Merrick Lyons, Empress assistant, is subbing for Hillman, and E. J. Harvey, superintending both the Palace and Empress. Theatre-in-the-Dale is a new incorporation in New Milford, with Clifford Edge of Washington, Louis T. Toussoint, Roxbury, and Laura E. Edge, of Washington, Conn., as incorporators. Pappy Howard’s New England Hillbillies, a three-a-week on WBRY, are the stars of the Loew-Poli Hillbilly show, one of the weekly summer novelties at this house . . . Rose Marie was a big attraction at the outdoor vaudeville shows inaugurated last Friday by Billy Madigan of Bridgeport, at the Theatre-in-the-Woods, Norwalk. N. C. Wrisley chalks up the Lawrence, New Haven; Rialto, Stamford; Capitol, Waterbury, and several Massachusetts houses on his list of ovenware deals . . . The Middletown theatres are using Dick Cohen’s offset printing program and cards. PROWIIIIOHIEWCIE 58 BOXOFFICE ;; July 1, 1939