Exhibitors Herald World (Oct-Dec 1930)

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December 27, 1930 EXHIBITORS HERALD -WORLD 23 J. C. Jenkins — His Colyum MY WISH FOR YOU IN 1931 As we come again to another year, I feel the urge to write each oj you a personal note to express my thanks for the many kindnesses you have showered upon me in the past year. To write each of you personally would be an insurmountable task, so I am taking this means to convey my message of thanks and to express to each of you the earnest hope that you are enjoying the holiday season and that there will come to you much prosperity in the coming New Year. Should I, in my Colyum, have said ought that could offend. I most humbly beg your pardon and assure you that it was an error of the mind and not a desire of the heart. Should I have failed to give credit where credit was due, it is but another evidence of the frailties of the human kind to which we are all heir. Let's forgive and forget the past and go forward with renewed hopes and renewed energies for the future. I am sure the HERALD-WORLD staff joins me in this greeting and the hope that there will come to you and yours in 1931 that full measure of happiness and prosperity which we feel sure your rightly deserve.— J. C. JENKINS. OMAHA, NEBR. Dear HERALD-WORLD: We have got something we want to say to you exhibitors, so if you will draw your chairs up close and make yourselves comfortable we will proceed. If you were readers of this Colyum last spring while we were in Michigan, you will recall that we told you of the activities of the organization known as "The Copyright Bureau Association," and that this association was interesting itself in exhibitors regarding the holding-over of film for an extra day's run without written permission from the exchange and without having this privilege embodied in the contract. • We told you that exhibitors were being penalized all the way from $400 to as high as $1,500. You were told at that time to look out for this and to make sure that your contracts provided the exact number of days you were to play the picture, and to be sure not to exceed those days without the proper authority. We also told you that if this bureau was not already operating in your state, that it would be and that your accounts with the exchanges would be checked. In Kansas a large number of exhibitors are listed for examination. Your state will be investigated, perhaps, and you had better get in the clear, for we now learn that this bureau is operating in Nebraska and that some settlements have already been made, and also that there is a large number listed for investigation, just how many we don't know. We are not going to pass an opinion as to the legality of this procedure, for we are not a lawyer, but if we could be sent to the penitentiary for our opinion as to the justice of it, without having expressed our opinion, our great-great-grandchildren would be asking when they were going to let grandpa out. We know from talking with a lot of exhibitors that the action has scrambled a lot of eggs out here, and these exhibitors are swearing vengeance, and there is already a move on foot to have the next session of the legislature of Nebraska pass a censorship bill, one that will have teeth in it. They are going to do this as a retaliatory measure. They claim that censorship will be a benefit to the small exhibitor because it will eliminate a lot of pictures they are required to play. It was suggested that passing a censorship bill might be a case of cutting off their nose to spite their face, and one exhibitor replied, "Well, our noses have been too damn long, anyhow." When these shorthorns get their necks bowed, something is going to happen. Heretofore, these same exhibitors have made a winning fight against censorship, but now, with them united for it, there is a good chance that the industry will have censorship saddled on it. It has been a common trade practice for years that if an exhibitor wanted to hold a picture over for an extra day's run, he would, in most cases, get oral permission from the exchange to do so and he didn't know there was anything crooked about it. Some have done this without permission and without accounting to the exchange for the extra day, and this can be construed in no other way than dishonest, and for this the exhibitor is entitled to be punished. But the injustice comes in where no exception is made and where the innocent is punished with the guilty. We have no sympathy for an exhibitor who knowingly violates his contract. We have no sympathy for a film salesman who will encour age an exhibitor to violate his contract by promising him an extra day's run on his picture not included in his contract, just to get his signature to a contract, and this has been no uncommon practice with salesmen. We have no sympathy for an exhibitor who signs contracts for more pictures than he can play. All of these things he has been warned against time and time and again. And there's another thing, as Andy Gump says. Who knows but what some of the talking devices that are being operated over the country may not be an infringement on somebody's patent. And who knows but what some day some bureau may come along and demand an accounting, what then? You buy a patented threshing machine and you can thresh wheat for the Hoosiers or Jayhawkers, for the Badgers or Gophers, and it will be all right, but you buy a piece of music and play it without license and it is all wrong and just too bad for you. Well, that's that, and that's all we are going to say about it at this time, except that if you want to run pictures beyond your contract dates without written permission, go ahead and run them and help yourself to the prunes. If you want to contract for more pictures than you have playdates for, go ahead and contract for them and then work yourself out of the jam. We have repeatedly warned you against these things and have tried to protect you the best we knew how, but maybe we don't know how. At least our advice hasn't helped some of you. • * • There is a law in Nebraska which provides that where deposits are required, the money must be placed in some Nebraska bank in escrow to remain until the completion of the contract. It also provides that each party to the contract must put up an equal amount. This being the case, it is quite likely that the proposed deposit system will not cut much alfalfa out here in Nebraska. Sounds like a good law, don't you think? What's sass for the goose ought to be <ass for the gander. • * • We were talking with Sam Steinburg in the lobby of the hotel last night, when somebody called him on the phone and told him if he would come out to the corner of 24th and Ames streets and stand under the Christmas tree, a friend would bring him a bottle of Christmas cheer, and Sam said, "Say, what's the matter with you? Whoever heard of a Hebrew boy standing under a Christmas tree?" Sam is awfully funny that way. J. C. JENKINS, The HERALD-WORLD man. P. S.— The HERALD-WORLD covers the field LIKE AN APRIL SHOWER.