The theatre of science; a volume of progress and achievement in the motion picture industry (1914)

304 Cf)e Cfjeatte each seven days as long as its regime continues as it started. One of the Mount Vernon, N. Y., theatres — ^The Crescent — is under the management of S. Lee Kohn. This house has had about as checkered a career as any within one's recollection. Forty years ago it was "the twon hall." Well do I recall the village constable who was wont to collect the nightly rental and various other sums due local people with warrants — to gain time. So accustomed was the officer to jailing the showmen that he always prepared the warrants ahead in any event. This old hall has been used for every type of show imaginable. If any one prospered there up to 1911, there is no record of it, until that year, when a stock company attracted crowds for several months. It was a public created by moving picture shows that finally solved the problem. Out of 25,000 persistent photoplaygoers one-fifth were enticed into a "regular" theatre to see plays acted by players in the flesh. Surely this is an interesting revelation, for what can be done in a suburb of New York long known as a theatrical graveyard should not be impossible anywhere else. Now the Crescent Theatre is quite an institution. It is rare indeed that its capacity is not tested at last twice daily, a condition due solely to Mr. Kohn's policy — a two-hour show of association films with no seat costing more than ten cents. The career of many leaders in the amusement world furnishes very interesting reading, and also very instructive. In but very few^ cases do we find the men at the head of our various amusement enterprises other than self-made men. Invariably the man who had