We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Introduction . 3
improve their work. It will short-circuit the road to efficiency for others who lack long years of experience.
It is the purpose of this book to present such information in a way that will prove helpful to theatre managers. No set of "rule of thumb'* principles will be given. Methods and practices will be discussed only to stimulate study and thought. Like any other profession, motion picture theatre management requires constant study. It also requires showmanship.
Showmanship should be considered in its true meaning. It is not a mysterious quality which cannot be developed. It can be developed by study.
There is a much-repeated saying: "Showmen are born and not made.'* Like so many other proverbs that have been strengthened by repetition, this does seem true at first thought. It does seem as if study and hard thinking have no place in showmanship.
If this were so, then the knack of showmanship would be a mysterious ability given by birth to the fortunate few and positively beyond the attainment of others. It can be admitted that the great showman, the eccentric genius, has a gift which was not deliberately developed. Such showmen are rare. Even these resort to study to keep up with the times.
But there are thousands of others who as theatre managers are responsible for building theatre patronage. In these the sense of showmanship exists and can be developed. It is for these that this discussion of theatre management is intended. There are always things to be learned that makes the expression of showmanship more effective. Even the master showmen are, by their own admission, constantly studying, constantly observing what others are doing, and often enough reviving some old time stunt which is "so old that it is new."
In moments of confidence they admit that their eyes and ears are constantly open for new ideas, and that by observation they have built up their fund of knowledge.
One master showman when acknowledging compliments for a very successful newspaper campaign admitted confidentially: "*I got that idea five years ago from the campaign of a small mid-western theatre manager.**