Exhibitors Herald (1925)

July 4, 1925 EXHIBITORS HERALD 43 |TH E THEATRE! QHSDepartmmt of Practical Showmanship ^ ATTENTION THEATRE EDITORS Chicago Film Shows At the Chicago Last week the Griffin Twins, used previously in other Balaban & Katz theatres, were brought into the Chicago and gave the show its highlight. They are splendid dancers, girls of perhaps eleven or twelve years, who open with a neat Fauntleroy number, using a curtained panel at back to good purpose, and finish with an Egyptian number done in better style and unison than any of the adults who have tried these things hereabout lately have shown. The act is billed as America’s or the World’s “Most Loveable Entertainers” and they not only live that down but almost convince you of it. The Piano Trio which played the house a year or two ago was back again last week with improved technique and (if memory serves) a practically unchanged routine of numbers. They were splendid before and they are better now, using three grands as before and getting the same uproarous approval. At McVickers Paul Ash has gotten his band in working order now and the seat holders ate out of his hand last week. He’s got the crowd so it applauds or is quiet, as he orders with a gesture, and after the first number he’s directing the payees as well as the playees. They billed his stuff as a Novelty Concert last w,eek and it was just about that. He tackled something too big for him to open with but got by. Then he let his excellent cellist, flutist and pianist do a trio which plumped across. Next Milton Watson sang an operatic thing in an elevated panel set, followed by a jazz blonde who did a sugar blues and another, with gestures. The girl moppd up. A little later he brought on a visitor from the Congress Hotel contingent of Paul Whiteman’s innumerable orchestras who sang “Katrina” (or however you spell it) until it looked as if police reserves would be necssary to restrain the celebrants. Ash closed with the snappy little drinking song, “Have a Little Drink,” currently sung wherever drinking is done, the gang sneaking off down a WeberFields (wasn’t it?) stairway seeking the accompaniment. McVickers theatregoers are weakening the stanchions with their applause for Ash’s stuff. It must be, therefore, good ; for that is what it’s for. At the Pantheon Billed as “Easter & Hazelton, formerly of the Ziegfeld Follies,” a beautiful dancing act was staged this week in “The Cat and the Canary.” The male dancer was in a black cat’s costume and the female dancer was in a frilly yellow and white canary costume. The number opened with the girl perched in a large reed bird cage whose doors soon opened and freed her from her bondage into the cat’s paws. The “cat” played with her for a few minutes, then, proceeded to gobble her up. The second piece was the four Robini sisters. One played a flute, another the piano and the other two, cello. The Theatre Herald Your House Organ Exhibitors, here you are ! This week you get what is intended to be one of the greatest time savers and labor savers that has come your way in a coon’s age. On the third page you’ll find it — it is the first page of your new house organ all worked out and ready to reproduce. If you have not begun printing your weekly house organ or your bi-weekly (or whatever you plan) you have the excuse no ionger that you don’t know how to go about it. In the miniature page supplied here is everything you need except a date line and a few ads. The best of it is that this page is going to run each week (we hope) to replace the column of house organ copy that has formerly run on this page. Of course, the same kind of copy will be provided in the Theatre Herald but there will also be additional copy. News items, studio notes, intimate bits of life from the homes of the players, short editorials with an appeal to your patrons, and just about everything that you would have planned to need. Send in Your Idea If there is anything left out of this plan that you believe a house organ needs send in your idea. If your argument is sound a new item will come into this service. The value of house organs is being realized more and more. Not that only the showmen are waking up to the value of them. Patrons are waking up to it. In a 76 apart building of the Edgewater Beach district of Chicago last week note was taken that each letter box of the 76 contained the weekly house organ of one of the neighborhood houses. It was further noted (with the aid of the janitor’s watchful eye) that people who lived in the building passed the letter boxes, saw the leaflet and took it away. When the janitor was asked if he had watched carefully, he said : “Yesir, yesir. I saw ’bout 20 of ’em.” “How many threw them away?” “Nary a one, sir. All went on readin’ ’em.” That tells the story. If a house organ contains what it should; if it is made up attractively readers will be waiting for the news of the shows. If you print the copy patrons will read it. There is an objectionable way of publishing house organs. That is by filling all