Exhibitors Herald (Jan-Mar 1920)

March 20, 1920 EXHIBITORS HERALD 31 New York Exhibitors In Convention Theatre Owners from All Parts of State Gather for Important Session at Utica— Sydney S. Cohen Attacks "Screen Pledgers Association" In Opening Address (Special to Exhibitors Herald) UTICA, N. Y., March 9. — With exhibitors from all parts of the state in attendance and scores of well known men representing producing and distributing companies in the city, the New York Exhibitors' state convention opened here today. It promised to be one of the most important exhibitors' gatherings in the history of the state. Screen advertising, percentage booking, and the threatened state censorship of pictures were the three general topics of discussion around the hotels Monday evening and this morning before the business session opened. Cohen Flays "Screen Pledgers Association" In opening the convention, Sydney S. Cohen, president of the Motion Picture Exhibitors League of New York, congratulated the exhibitors on their victory to open the theatres on Sunday in the state, and then launched into a scathing attack on what he termed to be the "Screen Pledgers Association." "We owe it to ourselves, to our public, to our government, to proclaim the fact that the screens of the country belong to us, to us alone and nobody else," he declared, and the delegates roared their approval. "The sight of the great oratorical Screen Pledgers' Association going about the country and parading in the public prints, when they are really without title to any screen or any part of a screen, is, of course, amusing, but it is getting the least bit tiresome." he continued. "The pledging of the screens of the country by a man who has no interest whatever in anjr of them may not be imposture, but it certainly is misinformation, and I earnestly hope that this organization and other state leagues will lose no time in starting a campaign of education beginning with the great orators of the Screen Pledgers' Association of America. Let us have no room for any misconception hereafter." Asks National Organization Dujing the course of his talk. Mr. Cohen declared that there is .an urgent need -for a national exhibitors' association and reported that the Xew York exhibitors had received favorable responses from many other states. "I will not venture to predict howsoon we may expect a national body of exhibitors such as at this hour we need more urgently than at any time in the history of the exhibitor," he continued. "Acting under your authority and under the special instructions of your executive committee, I have communicated with many of the men who are active in organization matters in other states, and they tell me to give you this message, 'We are anxious for a national organization.' " 'We are ready to join with you and any other state to bring about such a national organization. We want such a national organization to be absolutely free from the influence of producer and promoter, to be devoted wholly to the promotion of the interests of the exhibitor, to consist exclusively of 100 per cent exhibitors.' Takes Up Advertising Question "From the viewpoint of the organized exhibitor one of the most important events of the year has. been the development of screen advertising and of using the revenues derived from it for the purpose of financing or helping to finance the state organization. I want to say at the outset that there are certain forms of screen advertising that are highly improper and offensive and that must be. and I hope will be, stopped by this convention. "You have frequently observed that every one of the bigger producing companies has an art director. They now have added an advertising director, only they do not carry his name on the introductory chapters of their features. "As a result of the pernicious activities of the advertising director very many of the features we are paying for so liberally have carried more or less thinly disguised advertising messages recommending to our patrons various brands of soap, patent medicines, groceries, drugs, canned goods, tires, automobiles, insurance. correspondence schools, shaving creams, dry goods, soft drinks, hardware, silverware, jewelry, tobacco, underwear, clothing, shoes, hats, restaurants, cheese and so forth. Were Bashful at First "At first this form of stealing a little space on our screens and defrauding our patrons was carried on somewhat bashfully. Perhaps they were afraid of the exhibitor. Finding that the exhibitor as usual enjoyed playing his favorite part, that of the goat, they dropped every attempt at camouflage until they are now going the full limit. Satisfied at first to stick in a few feet of Dr. Hokum's pills here and a few feet of a celebrated brand of suspenders there, the advertising director of today has become as important as the director-in-chief. "Time and again the advertising message has been flashed into the minds of the audience at the tense moments in the play. Thus in one dramatic feature the audience had to divide its attention between a live-saving stunt by the fearless heroine and the merits of an ambitious brand of chewing gum. SYDNEY C. t'OHES W ho opened the convention of >ew Y'ork exhibitors at Utica, with an addrena, in course of which he attacked the "Screen Pledger*' Association" and nrged the forming of a new national exhibitors' league. "Seriously speaking, gentlemen, we must check this fraud, indeed we must stamp it out before our patrons will begin to show their resentment by staying away from our theatres. This practice to trespass on our screen and appropriate its advertising value without the semblance of any legal or moral claim, nay. rather in spite of every legal and moral consideration, is nothing more and nothing less than a violation of one of the best known of the Ten Commandments. The league has taken legal counsel in this matter and we have been advised that this fraudulent advertising practice renders every contract null and void, and that the perpetrators of it may be held to any accounting of their profits in a court of law, that every exhibitor has the right to cut out the offensive advertisements, that whe.i we pay for entertainment we are entitled to entertainment and that advertising is not entertainment. Must Protect the Screen "I trust that this convention will use every lawful means to protect both the public and the exhibitor against this form of deceit, and that other states will follow your example. Let it be established once for all. as a cardinal principle of our business, that we want no advertising of any kind whatever in our dramas and our comedies. "The drama and the comedy are the pillars on which our whole structure rests and we cannot permit these pillars to be used for billboards bv the greed of short-sighted producers. What would the public say if the rostrum from which Marc Anthony addressed the mob of Rome were placarded with handbills and one-sheets announcing the benefits to be derived from the use of a certain brand of cheese, or if the balcony on which the drama of young love makes its progress were covered with the announcement of a sale of neckties and corsets? Let us have an end of this vandalism on the screen."