Canadian Moving Picture Digest (Jul 31, 1948)

RAY LEWIS EDITOR AND PUBLISHER FILM BLDG. 277 Victoria St. TORONTO THIRTY-THIRD YEAR OF Vol. 40, No. 14 TORONTO, CANADA CANADIAN MOVING PICTURE 260 PUBLICATION 1915-48 July 31st, 1948 Steve Broidy Plays Ball OU have often heard it said that “Steve Brodie” took a chance. He jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, but in Motion Pictures, we too, have a Steve Broidy, who has, for 16 years, been building bridges with Monogram. His idea was to bridge the gap between the big pictures, and to fill in with features which never could be anybody’s headache, in production, or exhibition. In other words, Steve Broidy, Lou Lipton and _ their associates developed Monogram Pictures by playing ball, until, to-day, we find Monogram, in company with another producing trademark, Allied Artists, a trademark which Monogram has itself created for “Bigger and Better Pictures’. In the words of Steve Broidy, perhaps, the policy of “Playing Ball” was the spark which set into action the idea of “The Babe Ruth Story”, and which gives Allied Artists, at its first base, a home-run. To a sales meeting, in Toronto, Steve Broidy | came, in person, and told his Canadian sales force a “straight from the shoulder story”. At a luncheon on Tuesday, July 20th, at the King Edward Hotel, Steve Broidy had the opportunity of meeting representatives of the Film Trade, including the press. Oscar R. Hanson, who has nursed, tended, publicized and sold the Monogram pictures, in Canada, for years, introduced the guest speaker, and in the same forceful style, Steve Broidy presented the Monogram and Allied Artists story, without any fireworks, without any hokum, nor any of the familiar bunk, to which we are, on occasion, subjected. Precedent is somewhat similar to "a rut”. A company which has furnished an even diet of pictures, which has sold them to exhibitors, for breakfast-money, finds it difficult to get the exhibitors out of a rut in their sense of the valuation of a trademark, and even when such a producing company presents a box office builder, which outgrosses the product of a major company, taking into comparison the cost of the picture to the exhibitor, the exhibitor feels that the producer should get the same price as he previously received for his program pictures. This is one of the explanations for the formation of Allied Artists. The officers of Monogram Pictures, after sixteen years, in production and distribution, have learned to make “Bigger and Better Pictures”, but, also, have learned, that such “Bigger and Better Pictures” cost more to make, more to sell, and bring in more at the box office. Consequently, “bigger and better” prices are imperative. Steve Broidy made no pretense, attempted no camouflage, in his presentation of Allied Artists. He put his pictures on the table, and revealed four aces in his hand, with “The Babe Ruth Story”, which Motion Picture Daily reviews as “money in the till for exhibitors anywhere and everywhere”. Joseph Than and Leonard Fields, of Allied Artists, are at the Renaissance Studios, Montreal, and were introduced at the King Edward luncheon. Fields explained the set-up, through which ten pictures are to be made in Canada, and which would be distributed through Monogram Pictures and Allied Artists, for world markets. Monogram has many friends in exhibition, and we feel that if the Exhibitors will do, for Allied Artists, half as much to help them grow, as Monogram has done to keep the little exhibitor in business, our motion picture Steve Broidy will continue to build bridges, without the urge to jump from any one of them. —EDITOR. SSS SeSSssasssasnssssersnnansneaes PUBLISHED BY CANADIAN MOVING PICTURE DIGEST COMPANY LIMITED 277 VICTORIA STREET TORONTO