The Exhibitor (Aug-Nov 1948)

THE EXHIBITOR NT-3 TRAVELLING AROUND WITH LEW HERB (Lew Herb, THE EXHIBITOR’ s travel¬ ling ambassador of good will, once, more returns to the New England ter¬ ritory, and reports on his trip. Watch for him. He may be coming your way. -Ed.) Well, here we are again in New Eng¬ land, after a very hectic trip, which started from our base in South Jersey, when we hooked up our “rolling home”, and headed north. Traf¬ fic regulations re¬ stricting trailers on the Merr.it Parkway forced us to enter the metropolitan area, and buck the much more heav¬ ily travelled route on U. S. 1. However, early evening found us within commuting distance to New Haven, our first stop, and we were able to secure park¬ ing space near Milford, Conn. , where we settled down for a few days. Prom here we journeyed into New Haven, Connecticut’s only film exchange cen¬ ter, and our first stop took us into the Republic exchange, where we re¬ newed acquaintances with Jerry Lewis, branch manager, who has been in this territory for the past four years. He is a veteran in the industry, and came here from Philadelphia, where he tra¬ velled the Scranton territory for many years. Crossing the street, we dropped in at U-I, where we expected to greet another ex-Philadelphian, Arthur Greenfield, but learned that he was on vacation. A visit to Columbia dis¬ closed the fact that Tim O’Toole, branch manager had stepped aside, and his duties were being handled by Wal¬ ter Silverman, former salesman. O’Toole remains in an advisory capacity, how¬ ever. Silve-rman, a former Bostonian has been with Columbia for 16 years, and came to New Haven four years ago. He knows the business and territory, and should be very successful in his endeavours. This same building, 134 Meadow Street, also houses several other ex¬ changes, and, while inside, we dropped in next at RKO to say “hello” to Bar¬ ney Pitkin, branch manager. He is also Chief Barker, Variety Club, organized about two years ago, and which has finally secured quarters at 1166 Cha¬ pel Street. He and his cohorts were very busily engaged in shopping around for furnishings for the new club rooms, and between this and his duties as branch manager of a major exchange he was kept mighty busy. He does, however, find time to devote some of his energy and enthusiasm to local civic duties, and is a past president of the probus Club, having relinquished the gavel within the past fortnight. He has been active in the industry for the past 28 years, 21 of which have been with RKO. A few steps away, we entered the MGM office, and received a cordial handshake from Harry Rosenblatt, Mor¬ ton Katz, and Phil Gravitz, branch manager, salesman, and office manager, respectively. Gravitz, incidentally, is one of seven MGM employees through¬ out the country selected to receive executive training to be given in the New York office, and goes there for a month, early in September. The radiant enthusiasm emanating from all depart¬ ments of this exchange gave evidence to the fact that “Leo” is on the march again, MGM’ s recent releases, “Easter Parade” and “A Date With Judy”, have done much to create this feeling of optimism for the industry’ s future. Eagle Lion, under Max Salzburg, was also looking forward to a good upsurge in business, and was very pleased with returns on some releases, such as "Mickey” and “Canon City”. Both the Lou Phillips Theatre Sup¬ ply and the National Theatre Supply reported business as being fairly stable, with many of the former hardto-get items now becoming more plenti¬ ful, exhibitors throughout the terri¬ tory being in the process of replacing old, worn-out equipment. At National Theatre Supply, we renewed acquaintanceships with manager Bill Hutchins and his “right-hand man”. Miss g.E. Rocks. He is still kept busy handling both this and the Albany branch, and was installing the equip¬ ment at a new drive-in going up in North Haven. This will be the second outdoor theatre in the New Haven area, the fourth for the state. The other two are located near Hartford. Having thus far confined our visits to distributors and supply houses, we started making the rounds of local exhibitors, and dropped in first at the Fishman office. We met Dr. Jack Fishman and his brother, Ervin, who operate six neighborhood theatres. Dr. Jack is another industry veteran, and has been associated with exhibition for the past 30 years. While in this office, we also met several other members of the organization, including Phil Saslau, vice-president; Henry H. Cohan, manager, Dixwell Playhouse; Sol Ripps, who recently took over as manager, Rivoli, and Jack Post, booker for the organization for the past 20 years. Heading next into the downtown area, we visited Loew’ s Poli, where we found that M. Rosenthal, manager, was on vacation, and Tony Massella, assistant, was in charge. He is a very capable exploiteer, and turned out several good campaigns. On "Port Apache”, he was able to dig up an old-time covered wagon, which he put to good use by having an aide, dressed as a frontiers¬ man, drive through the busy downtown streets. The wagon was, of course, ap¬ propriately fitted out, and received considerable attention, plus a good mention in the most widely-read column of The Evening Register. For “The Pirate”, and “Night at the Opera”, he promoted about 50 pounds of peanuts from a nut shop, and gave them away in bags plugging the at¬ traction. In addition he staged a cos¬ tume contest. The rest of the downtown area in¬ cludes two more Loew houses, the Bi¬ jou, under Bill Brown, and the College, under Sid Kleper. He, too, is an active exploiteer. He admits, however, that if "the picture hasn’t got it, no amount of exploitation will pack the house every night. He related a sad ex¬ perience with a certain “documentarytype” picture which was expected to really clean up, and an all-out cam¬ paign, including a personal appearance by the “star” of the film, failed to get results. As Mrs. Mary C. Vuone, who operates the Palace, Stamford, Conn. , said, when I spoke to her on film row re¬ cently, “My business is all right when I play good pictures, but if the pub¬ lic doesn’t like the picture, you can’t drive them in.” That just about holds true every¬ where today, but from what we’ ve seen thus far in this territory, ' exhibitors here have at least had the weather in their favor this summer. The usual summer exit to the beaches, etc. , has of course taken its toll, but this is to be expected, and cool nights have helped keep business on the upgrade. The other two theatres in the down¬ town area are the Roger Sherman, a (Continued on page NT-4) September i, 1948