Exhibitors Herald World (Oct-Dec 1930)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

30 EXHIBITORS HERALD-WORLD November 8, 1930 Code Is Effective Step for Educating Public, Says Hays (Continued from page 21, column 3) ity than the public demands, reaps no immediate reward in dollars and cents. He may be making an excellent investment in futures, but at the moment his only reward is usually personal satisfaction. The motion picture industry has created more wealth in less time than was ever amassed within the same period by any pioneer intelligence. But it has thrown more gold in the junk pile than it has put in its treasury. And the millions in that junk pile keep increasing year by year, because the industry's constructive discontent with its own standards, its own achievements, and its own successes has always been greater than its selfsatisfaction. When extra quality does pay, it is not because the employer or the public at once appreciates or likes it or wants it or is willing to pay for it, but because he unconsciously learns to like it and afterward will accept nothing that fails to measure up to it. The education of public taste in motion pictures is one of the great problems and one of the great constructive efforts of this industry. No producer or distributor or exhibitor can continue in business unless he gives the public what the public will accept and pay for. But I do not know a single individual of importance who is content to have this great industry held down to the levels which would be indicated by an unqualified acceptance of what might be termed "box office standards." One step we have taken, and in which all of you here are playing an important day-to-day part, is the agreement upon minimum standards of good taste, which we know as the Code. Good taste is good business, and to offend good taste is to fortify sales resistance. Nothing unclean can maintain growth and vitality. When a tree begins to collect blights, it begins to wither. So does reputation. So does business. The Code is a splendid and a very effective step. I want to take this opportunity to tell everyone here how thoroughly I appreciate the way in it is being made a reality in all your work. But, if we were to stop with minimum standards, we would be looking through only one glass of our spectacles! Only insofar as the general level of public taste rises to higher standards will it be possible for this industry or any other industry to bring the general level of its product up to the standards cherished by the makers of the product. Again and again in the motion picture industry the world has witnessed the spectacle of the courageous and idealistic producer bringing forth a screen drama that was so far above the levels of general public taste that only extraordinary efforts kept it from being a complete failure financially. Again and again these dramas that reflect new standards of art and good taste are brought forth, and time after time the results are disappointing to their producers. And yet that inner urge which marks every one of our producers as true artist causes him again to make the trial. Obviously, to any scientifically-minded observer, every picture that is produced will meet the highest standards of today only when public taste of tomorrow has been educated to the point where it demands and will patronize our best. There are many methods of attacking this problem of educating public taste, and progress has always been made in a number of ways. As many of you know, it is a matter very close to my heart, and one to which the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America are devoting a very large part of their effort. But when you come right down to it, there is nothing which educates public taste so effectively and so rapidly as watching and listening to talking motion pictures which in every phase of their production are a little better than the public expects or demands. Every one of these courageous productions which are thus disappointingly far ahead of their time, accomplishes at least this much — that thousands of those who see it acquire, unconsciously, new standards of taste for themselves. But even these magnificent pioneer productions, which are missionaries of our highest ideals, mean less in the education of public taste than do the countless individual contributions made by the members of this Academy to the high standards _ of every single picture in which they participate. We can never measure the value of the contribution of a single individual, a single artist. A little better acting here, a more effective touch in direction there, an improvement in the sound effect of this picture, a more artistic result in the lighting of the next picture — these contributions which each one of you as individuals makes to the forward progress of the screen — these, it seems to me, are the most effective educators of public taste which we have. It is when these separate excellencies of the different elements simultaneously find their maximum expression in the same picture that we have the really great production. Thus it is that the inner artist in each of us — that hidden voice which keeps saying to us, "Better yet! Better yet! Better! and Better!"— is carrying the motion picture art forward and is making it more than ever the foremost instrument for public amusement, public education, and public leadership. It is this, as I see it, which is really recognized in the Awards that are being made by the Academy this evening. I want to congratulate, if I may, those who are receiving the Awards. Theirs is the outstanding accomplishment. Theirs is the well-earned recognition. The Awards themselves, given as the result of your choice by vote, .tell the story of their achievements — of which we are all proud. What I want to tell you is that I appreciate deeply the splendid work — the high standards and the accomplishments— of every member of this Academy. I believe thoroughly in the spirit which has banded you together, and I know that with each succeeding year the work of the Academy is going to mean more to us all, as the standards of excellence recognized by the annual Awards reach higher and higher levels. I leave it to you — artists all! — to glimpse at the future which such a prospect ensures for this wonderful art of the motion picture, this fascinating amusement industry, this extremely important public work in which we are all engaged. Know Your Exchange —Managers— The exchange manager is the direct contact between exhibitor and distributor, and therefore it is to their mutual advantage to know each other. The Herald-World presents a series of brief sketches of exchange managers and their outstanding activities in the motion picture field. HARRY F. CAMPBELL, New England district manager for Fox, was a college football manager, assistant manager of a summer park, school teacher, advertising man and in the roller skating rink business before he undertook the management of the Star theatre in Boston, following by purchasing the Princess at Marlboro, Mass. Then he added to his holdings by forming the Boston Film Rental Company, independent corporation handling Warner features. Harry F. Campbell When a disastrous fire wrecked a new theatre in Salem, Mass., Campbell sold out his eight houses ENTERING the motion picture selling business seventeen years ago, S. W. Fitch, now manager of the R K O office at Omaha, undertook film sales first for the Laemmle Film Service in 1913, and the place was Omaha. Leaving Laemmle's organization for a time, Fitch cast his lot with the Nebraska State Feature Film Company but rejoined Universal. This step sent him into the Northwest, because he was placed in charge of the branch office at Sioux Falls, S. D. S. W. Fitch So well did his books show during his five years there that Fitch was offered the job of opening the Sioux Falls branch for F B O Pictures Corporation. A ANOTHER exchange executive who began as an exhibitor is J. J. Milstein, branch manager for M G M at Los Angeles. Milstein was an exhibitor at Denver and "after a hectic career," as he puts it, he joined V L S E in the capacity of salesman. Following service in the World war Milstein went with Associated Producers as manager of that company's exchange at Pittsburgh. When the concern retired from the field, he joined the F. B. Warren Corporation as its Philadelphia manager. This company also went out of existence, so Milstein's early experience in distribution paralleled that in exhibition for rapid developments. J. J. Milstein