Famous News (Mar-Apr 1982)

Spotlight on our Partners: Port Alberni Theatres Limited umbia had Frank Gow and Maynard Joiner as manager and supervisor; booking was done locally by a succession of the late C.S. Neville, Lou Karp, Ted Ross and Barney Regan. I negotiated the film deals. All deals were made at the Vancouver exchange as was the booking. It was a good system — noseto-nose deals — and, with some teamwork, the Vancouver booker and I ended up with good results. Famous also kept a building and maintenance office manned by Doug Gow and Jack McCausland. That was good — it kept some semblance of order in the ongoing job of maintenance and made things look better. Theatres were well attended in the post-war years and our largest, the 450-seat Capitol, often had line-ups. We built a larger place, the Paramount (over 700 seats) in 1952, and a drive-in later in 1955. Then came television and re-trenchment of operations. J.J. Fitzgibbons, Sr., was then President of Famous Players and Rube Bolstad was Vice President and Controller. Larry Bearg, the Western Division Manager, a man with a Bob Hope style of humour, used to call Rube ‘‘Mr. Bolstad of the pencil and paper.’’ The partners usually dealt with Rube. He was very good at stretching the dollars, hence he had some rapport with the partners who almost all got where they were by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. Two other names from Toronto stick out in my memory. They are W.E. Kerr and N.L. Jackson. Those two accountants were prompt and accurate. Of course the Canadian mail service used to function then — before its staff was put on permanent pension. Kerr and Jackson had your errors corrected for you within four days’ return mail, and there wasn’t an IBM machine anywhere within sight of them. At this point I would like to refer to my mother who is now 88 and 10 March/April, 1982 Mrs. Louise Warren, the main foundation of theatre business in Port Alberni. still well, considering her age. Mother was indeed the main foundation of theatre business in this town, and she played some considerable part in the operation after the Famous partnership was established in 1947. Movies were her life so that into the late ’50s and ’60s she was happy running the concession stand at our Paramount Theatre and supervising the concessions staff. Between times, she managed to ‘‘encourage’’ audience manners — if some punks were acting-up in the theatre, they paid strict attention to her interventions. The photo of mother shown on this page was taken during the time she served so ably in her sixties by supervising concessions and keeping the kids quiet. Now back to the early ’50s and the desperation that confronted exhibitors with the onset of television — there were a few desperate moves with a high incidence of error. Most unfortunate of all was the panic surrounding the installation of equipment for Cinemascope. We recklessly threw away the one overwhelming advantage that the movies had — those 35mm prints could be shown in every country in the world. We had what many other industries strive for — _ standardization. Cinemascope did not save the industry, it didn’t even save Twentieth Century-Fox. All it did was leave us all with a crazy mix-up of moveable maskings and changeable lenses, and with patrons who don’t know the difference. Paramount came out with the best plan at that time, Vistavision, which was still 35mm with a new aspect ratio. These pictures still do every bit as much business as any other mode. Magnetic sound was the big gift of Cinemascope, but we let it get away. That’s all there is about the hindsight I have developed in this exciting business, but it had to be said. While my active entry into this business was more circumstantial than by design, I must say that it was at a time when the intensity of interest in the new ‘‘talking pictures’? captured the imagination of everyone — and of me in particular. I am still thrilled when I read about some substantial new technology related to the movie industry that is either available now or in the not too distant future. I like to look down the line as to what’s coming instead of reviewing the past. Here’s a glimpse of one such look into the future: The Japanese have done the technical work with 1,000-line projection television equipment which is equal to movie film in quality and is now in operation. They have also just completed the work on those giant, stadium-size, super-bright, television projection screens. It’s just a matter of putting the parts together. ‘‘Reds’’ can go out of Hollywood by way of satellite to 20,000 screens at the same time and, if we are suitably equipped, the cashier can press the button to start the show! (The payrolls won’t be as complicated.) In conclusion I would like to say that it is my pleasure to accept the invitation to contribute to Famous News, and I acknowledge the many expressions of goodwill that have come from George Destounis and his executive assistants. Good Corporate Thinking! To get employees to work on time, a Michigan company provides 45 parking spaces for 50 cars.