The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 244 The Educational Screen him. If the effort succeeded, the proper earnings would be made up. The personnel, with only one exception, I believe, voted to stick, from the tele- phone operator up. And stick most of them did, without salaries, for approxi- mately one year. The non-theatrical field has no finer story of faith than this. Wythe, heartened in the midst of his setback, characteristically surveyed the ground to make the absolute most of what remained. This philosophical habit of his always made me think of the cheerful attitude of the clergyman head of the Swiss Family Robinson, when he, his wife and four sons were shipwrecked. Wythe went to the land- lords of the Masonic Temple Building and told his story. Whereupon another miracle happened. For that same period of one year they gambled the suite of offices rent-free. There was a telephone switchboard, with a num- ber of extensions. The New York Tele- phone Company, hearing the circum- stances, gambled the phones. A situa- tion possibly unparalleled in American business. The only day-to-day hope of income was to give shows. Harry Swartz, Larry Fowler, Jack DeMarr and Herbert Stephen took their turns at that work. Ward Wooldridge, his wife and his boy undertook the same labor with the machines and programs we had. Wythe and I, in the mean- time, worked long and late to build fresh programs out of the films we had in the vaults maintained by Walter Yorke. Bill Briggs visited the adver- tising agencies on the possible chance that they might somehow help. Eustace Adams had at length been obliged to leave us, not until he also had tried again. Wythe scribbled columns of figures on every envelope in his pocket, every clear scrap of paper in mine and on every luncheon tablecloth, working out new ways to finance the project. He determined that with only $50,000 we might make a go of it. That was en- couraging. We were sure that we could raise that nominal sum. A few millionaires were stirred up here and there, but they pooh-poohed the thought that anything requiring less than five times that amount could be worthy of their attention. We sought interviews then with men of comfort- able but less ample means. Most of these, however, were fearful of any- thing so speculative as motion pictures, and the others dilly-dallied with the idea until it was too late. When the original programs had played the metropolitan area so far as they might, there were no others to replace them. Equipment depreciated with use and we could not afford ma- jor repairs. But we all obtained first- hand experience with non-theatricals which we would neither trade for much money today nor wish to repeat be- cause the Screen Companion, for very honest reasons and with no denial of the essential merits of its plan, went into such marked decline that it was folly to continue. We moved out of our office suite and, for a temporary refuge when the second-hand-furniture man came for the desks, downstairs to where Walter Yorke and his Edited Pictures System went steadily, de- pendably on. Walter made us wel- come and gave us repeated practical evidences of his sympathy. But even yet Wythe did not give up. There was Herman De Vry. The De Vry Company, which had per- mitted us to have a number of its standard projectors "on consignment" and therefore had that much equity in the project, agreed to wipe out the obligation and assume whatever else was owing on film rights if they could have the remaining materials for use in promoting their own sales. This was at least a kind of settlement, and it was accepted. Wythe, himself, went along to make the most of it. There wasn't room for anybody else. It was "every man for himself" then. So, about 1925, in the De Vry New York office on West 42nd Street there arose on the ashes of the Screen Com- panion a modest phoenix called the Neighborhood Motion Picture Service. With that unassuming rebirth, Fred Wythe—single-handed, doing all the creative work himself—built eighteen exhibition circuits extending as far west as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and as far north as Binghamton, New York. He had three advertisers, in- cluding that blessed standby, Mueller's Macaroni. Hope springing perhaps more eternally in his breast than in the bosoms of some others, he present- ly began to see renewed opportunities for the resurrection of the larger idea. He was so sure of it, that he tried to corner the non-theatrical rights to the more important stocks of film. He took options and made heavy commit- ments to theatrical exchanges for their used reels. But, after about a year, the great improvement in 16mm film stock made 3Smm equipment and theatrical prints useless for this purpose. He wriggled free from the now burdensome con- tracts, but how he did it is a compli- cated story which he must tell him- self. It is sufficient to say that he eventually came through intact and personally still owning the idea of the Screen Companion. If you will think carefully about all this, you will see that it was and is an idea worth clinging to. It was dis- tinct from the theatres; it provided an outlet for exhausted theatrical material and circulation for industrials; it stim- ulated the market for equipment; it made school subjects available without strain; it supported non-theatrical ex- changes and projection services; it provided well-balanced programs for the "entertainment fringe;" it made available needed funds for non-theat- rical production; it established a con- tinuing, steady market. Where is there another plan which can do so much? And now a little postscript to es- tablish the whereabouts, a dozen years later, of some of the pioneer band not otherwise accounted for. Ward Wool- dridge, in failing health, went west- ward to Arizona and died. A fine fel- low. The world was decidedly better for having had him. Herbert Stephen joined Carlyle Ellis and me for awhile in non-theatrical production, then founded and long conducted the "Ad- vertiser" column of the New York Evening Post. After that he formed his present connection as a staff writer for Printer's Ink. Bill Briggs became an account executive with the New York advertising agency Buchan- an & Company and, years later, with Weiss & Geller, Inc. Eustace Adams developed into a voluminous short story writer and has attained the Saturday Evening Post level. Miss Kastl be- came a successful writer on fashions. Larry Fowler is on the New Rochelle police force, not far from New York City, and Harry Swartz, when last I saw him, was a picture projectionist at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. And Jack De Marr? Well, I have lost track of Jack; but I do know that for a long time he was first assistant to the amiable Major Arthur Procter, long executive head of the Boy Scout Fed- eration of Greater New York. Complaints Motion Picture exhibitors have long looked askance at activities in the non- theatrical field, and this should, of course, be quite understandable. Showing pic- tures for admission prices is the thea- trical manager's livelihood; it is not that of the churchman or school teacher. He has much money invested in his theatre building; he has been to serious trouble and expense to conform with various laws and regulations which demand especial construction—surrounding alleys, lobbies, aisles, exits, projection booths, storage cabinets, ventilators and many other architectural necessities. He has taken out expensive licenses and pays ex- traordinary taxes imposed on his par- ticular kind of business—all for the privilege of carrying it on. Naturally he resents competition by untaxed organi- zations which have not been obliged to meet the structural demands, to pay for similar licenses and, in general, to assume responsibilities such as his. It stirs his indignation to see a large part of his heretofore regular audience going off, on what ought to be his most profitable evening of the week, into a tumbledown, firetrap church across the street merely that the minister or priest may keep the young persons of the parish under his eye. He resents the free show which draws the crowd at the automo- bile salesroom. He is openly disturbed by the ten-cent movie at the school audi- torium by means of which the students expect to buy new uniforms for the hockey team. And, even when the minis- ter counters (as he frequently does) by charging that the theatre decimated his congregation first, the exhibitor seems to have the weight of argument with him