Building theatre patronage : management and merchandising (1927)

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40 Building Theatre Patronage the unusual, when he ties it in with something of live interest at the moment. So it is he capitalizes on already awakened interests or deliberately stimulates an interest which he can guide to his own advantage. Showmanship has been called genius. Yet genius is not much more than a capacity for hard work at work that is liked. The manager who does not like his work so that he dreams of it at night, will not be a showman. If he does not get real pleasure from selling smiles and romance, adventure, happiness, thrills, laughs — making people happy — with a product that appeals directly to the heart and imagination of people — then showmanship is not for him. Real love of the theatre and what it does for people is indispensable. It is real love of the work that drives to efforts which are finally tagged with the word "showmanship.* * Is showmanship inherited, or can it be developed, is a question often in dispute. If it is inherited, then love of the work is part of the inheritance. If it can be developed — and it can — then love of the work is the motive. The Business Man. There was a time when they spoke of it as "The motion picture game.** The word game implied the elements of luck, chance, gamble, haphazard, hit-and-miss operation. To-day, theatre operation is not a game, but a business that is coolly and calculatingly well-planned. The glamorous side of theatre operation is less prominent in the mind of the manager who is a business man. The manager is a business man with both eyes on profits. Every wasted penny in operation is eliminated when operation is efficient. Friction and duplication is eliminated because they mean waste and waste has no place in business. There is little guesswork. There is less groping in the dark. There are guiding precedents. There are figures and charts for comparisons. There are facts for calculating. There is system. There is planning. There is budgeting. There is the constant effort to check up expenditures and trace their influence right back to the box office. There are surveys that show possibilities, and well-planned activities to achieve them.