Exhibitors Herald (1926)

EXHIBITORS HERALD 53 April 10, 1926 This depsrtment contains news, information and gossip on current productions. It aims to supply a service which will assist the exhibitor in keeping in touch with developments in connection with pictures and picture personalities — and what these a re doing at the box olBce. No prophecies on tee entertainment value of pictures are made. Opinions expressed are simply his contributors and the reader is requested to consider them only as such. — iLiJIIUKi* NUitL. Twice Each Year the World is told facts about pictures and this issue marks the first telling for 1926. If you care to know what pictures are good and bad, turn to Section II of this paper and read about them. What you learn about them there is more than you ever will learn elsewhere. The Box Office Record is a wellnamed volume. The box office record of motion pictures is what it contains. That record is written in theatre ledgers throughout the world. It is written somewhat differently on the books of the film concerns. You cannot examine all the theatre ledgers and it is unlikely that you have access to the books of veiy many film companies, but exhibitors participating in the most unselfish mutual welfare enterprise known to modern business make it possible for you to get the facts in plain words more helpfully informative than any figures. It would be a difficult job to count the individual box office reports which are combined in the Box Office Record. Each weekly issue of the Herald contains from 400 to 700 of them, averaging about 500. Semi-annually these are assembled and set before readers in conveniently accessible form. There is no appeal from the testimony presented. For those who are concerned with the booking of profitable pictures for next week and next month the Recoss is invaluable, of course. That is shown by the immediate influence of each published issue upon bookings, as subsequently upon box office receipts and general tenor of the business. For those not concerned with this vital aspect of the Record, there are other beneficial uses for the volume : No producer of pictures can read the Record v/ithout getting a better idea as to what’s right and what’s wrong with his product. No director can study the columns of the Record without becoming a better director. No player can read the Record without learning things about his work, and the work of others, which raake him immediately a more intelligent and so a better actor. Concerning: The Box Office Record IVIemory Lane Universal Announces School for Caption Writers A Social Celebrity Dog Shy Morals for Men No individual concerned with the picture industry in any of its branches can read the Record without learning more about the great picture public, the largest and most representative segment of humanity, than he has known before. These are generalities. They understate the importance of the Box Office Record. Only by reading it can the individual comprehend its value to himself. Multiplying that by the number of individuals in the motion picture business, one arrives at a conception of the book’s value to the industry and, directly through the industry, to the world. * * * IF You Want to Know the Business facts about “Memory Lane,” in the telling of which exhibitors have told most of the other important facts as well, turn to the Box Office Record. If you care merely to know what I think of it, read on: “Memory Lane” is a John M. Stahl production. Among exhibitors that is almost enough reason for its being. Mr. Stahl’s pictures are very much unlike others. He has a technique peculiarly his own and he departs at will from the accepted order of thingsto-do in picture making. Yet down the years exhibitors hail his successive and too few pictures,^ put them upon their screens with their endorsements and write to this paper about the successful results of their show In “Memory Lane” Mr. Stahl tells a story that doesn’t seem to be a story at all. It’s just a little tale about three young folks, two of whom marry, and what they thought in the beginning and in the end. Conrad Nagel, Eleanor Boardman and Wil liam Haines are the three young folks. Perhaps they should be named in different order, for Mr. Haines gets in his first important work here so far as I’m concerned, but they are so evenly matched and so uniformly good in their performance that one order serves as well as another. As stated above, the story is mainly about what the three young people thought. It is notoriously difficult to picturize thoughts. Here that thing is accomplished, I think, as it may be accomplished more or less generally in some future day of practically perfect pictures. Credit may be due director or performers, but there is enough for all. Producers who haunt the literary highways and byways for things to make pictures of should take at least two good long looks at “Memory Lane.” They will find no wrecks, tornadoes, landslides, not even a good scrap, but they will find a better picture than can be made of these in all their complex combinations. If they will go, then, and make pictures about the reasons people do things, using the things they do only incidentally, there’ll be more reasons for folks going to the picture theatres and more folks going. * * # HAVE Just Finished Reading An elaborate brochure produced by Mr. George Brown, advertising manager of Universal Pictures Corporation, in announcement of that concern’s 1926-27 product, the “Greater Movie List.” The brochure is not merely elaborate, although it is certainly that; it is a triumph in efficient and informative display of facts. Just as the text of the announcement breathes showmanship, so does the manner of its compilation adhere to the best principles of that science. It is a big job to tell the basic facts about thirty-two motion pictures. Mr. Brown has simplified the task by making up his announcement in separate half-sheets on heavy white stock with highly colored pictorial matter on one side and the type purveying essential details on the reverse. Each of these tells all about a single picture, incidentally con