Exhibitors Herald (1927)

September 17, 1927 EXHIBITORS HERALD 43 rHIS department contains news, information and gossip on current productions. It aims to supply service which will assist the exhibitor in keeping in touch with developments in connection with pictures and picture personalities — and what these are doing at the box office. No prophecies on the entertainment value of pictures are made. Opinions expressed are simply those of the author or of his contributors and the reader is requested to consider them only as such. — EDITOR’S NOTE. GRAB THIS IDEA HE “Little Cinema” idea broken upon the Chicago scene last week by the Mindlins, who’ve been doing the thing in New York for some time, has a few good points and a lot of weak ones.. The good ones, of course, are as good for genuine exhibitors as for others. The weak ones can be sidetracked by the exhibitor, however, whereas the Little Cinema folks can’t very well get away from them. It stacks up like this: The Playhouse, a small theatre formerly devoted to stage plays, is well situated on Michigan Avenue, supposedly the “class” street of this city. In this place the Mindlins are presenting such pictures as “Potemkin” with trick house decoration, coffee and cigarettes in the lobby, admission prices raised to suit and (this is the important item) good ad copy. Without the latter they would have nothing. With the latter, and with such good pictures as the commercial exhibitor has at his disposal, they would have everything. They lack the good pictures, which is tough for them but okay for the majority of my readers. The show at the Playhouse opens with a leader announcing the policy. Whoever wrote this is the chief attraction the project has to offer, for the gags are good, the attitude is smart, the effect is excellent. After this announcement, which is quite long, nothing save a good picture is needed to slam the project over with a bang. Then they show “Potemkin,” which is the sort of thing you’d expect it to be when you are told that it carries the hearty endorsements of Theodore Dreiser, Fannie Hurst and that most deadly of all hearty endorsers, Douglas Fairbanks. And it really isn’t that bad, it’s just a badly worn picture of Russian manufacture that might have been a knockout had James Cruze produced it with Paramount backing and the Messrs. Beery and Torrence at his disposal. It sheds slightly less blood than the Battle of Gettysburg and imparts the unforgettable impressions of an appendectomy. However, and I seem to be running to howevers this morning, it would be a mighty good idea for exhibitors to sign up such men as the one or ones who write the ad copy and screen announcements for the Playhouse. They have the rank and file of trailer people skinned to death. Apply such talent to the individual theatre presentation of pictures bought in the regular market and you can increase your earnings and the prestige of your playhouse greatly. By T. O. SERVICE In closing, don’t worry about a possible spread of the Little Cinema idea cutting into your gate. ANOTHER GILBERT OHN GILBERT is quite another and better actor in “Twelve Miles Out.” And he has the benefit of that excellent screen foeman, Ernest Torrence, in the bloody and exciting convolutions of the very broad yarn which is the picture. It all works out to compose an excellent hour for such bloodthirsty individuals as your reporter. The story opens in Spain, moves to Holland, then gets into its stride in New York. Gilbert and Torrence are tough eggs who have their humorous and their valorous sides for relief. Joan Crawford is a tightly restrained society girl who gets into and out of the mess that the two eager scrappers brew. It is a hotly boiling mess, interesting all the way and ended a bit unexpectedly and quite dramatically. I’d say it is as good a picture as anybody should demand for the change he passes through the wicket. There’s a prohibition angle, of course, but it isn’t featured very strongly and if wet or dry sees fit to claim the picture as propaganda the wet or dry is wetter or dryer, as the case may be, than even the newspaper reporters make them seem to be. But I started out to say that Gilbert is different in this and so I’ll finish with a repetition of the statement and the added comment that I like him a lot better in this kind of thing. Of course it doesn’t look reasonable when he clouts the towering Torrence wtih perceptible effect (he doesn’t whip him! but at this point in the proceedings nobody does (or should) care whether anything looks reasonable or not. UNFAIR WENT to the Oriental last week, to see Milton Sills in “Framed,” with the unusual and highly objectionable aid of an advance report from other parts ringing in my ears. I was urged to see the picture by a house guest who had seen it in Des Moines (the guest invariably pronounced it Dead Moines) and liked it so well as to want to see it again. And so, we went. What followed was disaster for the guest. The story, as you may know, is about a fellow who gets all sorts of bad breaks until the final fadeout, said breaks including dis honorable discharge from the French army, imprisonment for diamond stealing, neardeath in a diamond mine disaster and kindred unpleasantnesses. Midway down the picture, and later, he has emotional scenes with a young lady they tell me is Natalie Kingston and it was in these sections that the balloon went up. The young folks who attend the Oriental theatre took one look at Miss Kingston’s slowly blinking eyes, another at Sills’ intensely sincere expression as their lips came slowly nearer until Sills’ caress seemed inevitably destined to land upon the young lady’s chin (as it did) and they shrieked. Sennett never made anything that seemed funnier to these young people than this love affair. And, of course, there is no resisting young laughter when it bursts in upon an emotional encounter that isn’t hotter than its pseudo-African locale at best. Well, as the inveterate story teller says, the kids had their way and the picture got over big as a comedy. Of course that wasn’t the idea at all, and the guest from Des Moines promptly decided to believe that all the newspaper headlines about Chicago are correct, but I get out of the whole incident the impression that either (1) it isn't fair to run drammers in a theatre patronized mainly by people who want to hear a jazz band work out, or (2) it isn’t much of a picture. Which brings up again the subject of parts for stars like Sills and Meighan, who has the Oriental screen this week and whose experience thereupon will be reported to you in due course. If the powers that be have a little idle time some day when the golf links is out of commission or there are no conventions or conferences to be attended, it would be an excellent idea to figure out what kind of pictures these adult performers should be given. I’ll contribute as a starting point the statement that I haven’t the slightest idea. FISHY STUFF NE redeeming feature of the film bill at the Playhouse (mentioned otherwise at beginning of this epistle) was a short feature from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in which an octopus and a giant lobster fought to the death after several other members of the finny family had done similarly. The title of the feature had been lost in the folds of a drape that didn’t function as it should, but the picture is (if I may use the word in talking about a fish picture) a whale.