Exhibitor's Trade Review (Nov 1925 - Feb 1926)

JFebruary 20, 1926 Page 15 Fred J. McConnell Joins Review Co. FRED J. McConnell, who has been connected with the Universal Pictures Corporation for a number of years as Sales Manager of serials and short product, is now vice-president of the Exhibitors Review Publishing Company, which publishes the Exhibitors Daily Review and the Exhibitors Review, Mr. George C. Williams, President of the company, announced this week. Mr. Williams also announced that Mr. McConnell has taken a substantial interest in the corporation and would be active in its affairs. Mr. McConnell is widely known in the film business having been connected with both distribution and production ^ends of the business in important capacities. Formerly a newspaper man trained in the Chicago Herald and Cleveland News schools, he knows the exploitation and advertising of pictures intimately. He also is well ac•quainted with the problems and worries of the producer, having been formerly connected with Universal in charge of all short product " production for ^nany months under Carl Laemmle. For four years he was Eastern Moving Picture representative of the Chicago Herald located in New York City, •during which time he was actively connected with such companies as Mutual, Pathe and Universal in the national marketing of serial pictures, putting over newspaper campaigns in the various exchange cities. During this period he traveled all through the United States, calling on newspaper men and exhibitors in practically every city with a population of 25,000 or over. He knows newspapermen, and knows exhibitors, and has worked to help exhibitors get more money out of pictures than they made before. Since his return from the coast studios of Universal in September, 1924, he has been Short Subject Sales Manager for Universal, and also has worked very closely with the studios at Universal City to get the kind of product exhibitors needed. Mr. Williams feels that the entering of Mr. McConnell into the organization of the Exhibitors Daily Review will be of keen interest to exhibitors and distributors as well, since he is a practical film man, trained on the firing line of the business. The film business today is moving ahead so rapidly and such radical changes are being made at a minute's notice, that a trained sales and production executive, put on as a member of the Exhibitors Review personnel, is bound to be of supreme importance to everyone connected with it. With the millions of dollars tied up in theatre properties, in tremendous stu dios, in large distributing organizations, it is important that the Editor of trade papers realize what each move means, and work hand in hand with the progressive men of the industry toward its betterment. The Exhibitors Review is for the general good of the picture business as a whole. It has always stood for progress, honest progress. BOTH Mr. Williams and Mr. McConnell realize their responsibility to the personnel of the moving picture business. They plan to carry the legitimate news of the business to the big distributing organizations, to the exhibitors of the world and to the men located both in New York and Los Angeles actually engaged in the making of pictures. That, in a nut shell, tells the story. While no attempt will be made at this time to give in detail plans under development for the future of the publications produced by the Exhibitors Review Publishing Company, sufficient is said in the promise that these plans will be worked out from the practical standpoint. All of Mr. McConnells' friends are pleased with the big opportunity his new connection gives him. He is now in position to do in a big way many of the things he has been doing for individual companies in the past years, and allow the industry at large to cash in. Making Pictures an Alibi for Crime THE most popular indoor sport at the present time is that of guessing at the causes that produce crime and inventing magical formulae for dealing with them. In getting its share of the blame for the crime-wave the moving picture is only paying the penalty of its enormous popularity. It is a shining mark. No one has attempted to show in what way the movie promotes banditry and bootlegging and the widespread contempt for law, but as everybody goes to the movie it is only too easy to see that the picture show is the guilty party. I wonder that somebody hasn't had the gumption to discover that the newspaper is the villain of the piece. It wasn't the movie but the newspapers that printed all the filthy details of the Rhinelander case and it isn't the movie but the daily paper that day by day dramatizes the sensational hold-up and shows how easy and how profitable it is. I don't know whether there are any newspaper men present or not but I hope this conference will not adjourn without passing a resolution demanding the suppression of the newspapers — all excepting the Christian Science Monitor — or at least the creation of a Board of By Geo. W. Kirchway Head of the Dept. of Criminology, N. Y. School of Social Research Censorship which will render them innocuous to the innocent eyes that peruse Ihem. Our prison wardens are on the right track. In most of our prisons the inmates are not permitted to receive the daily papers until all crime and sex news and the lingerie advertisements have been clipped from them. They are not easy to handle but there will still be the want ads and real estate news and the senate speeches on the World Court. Only the other day I was quoted as saying that I didn't know how to make the world safe for morons. But I take it back. I do. Suppress everything — the motor car, the telephone, the radio, the theatre, the too-seductive symphony concert, the newspaper, the motion picture, most modern books — all that are worth reading — the Natural History Museum, and the Bible. After everything has been suppressed from which anyone can get any harm, the world will be safe for morons. But dumb as they are they won't want to live in it. It won't be a world fit for anyone to live in. But it will be a grand prison. The truth is that the moving picture is for the moment the dramatic point about which an eternal conflict rages between those who see life as a succession of aborted and suppressed desires and those who welcome it as the great adventure. To the one side, the world is a drill ground with the drill-sergeant everlastingly in control. To the other, the world is the field of experience, in which the winning of character through selfdiscipline is the great achievement. To the former of these, the moving picture, with its varied interpretation of life, is a constant menace. To the latter the moving picture is a new opportunity for the liberation of generous emotions and for the better understanding of life. In conclusion let me say that, as a criminologist, I have been carefully observing the sinister aspect of the sun during the last few days. It seems evident that the sun-spots are the cause of the crime-wave. That lets the movies out.