Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (Sep 1935 - Aug 1936)

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1935 9 Hearst Quits California; Revives Film Exodus Threat HOLLYWOOD.— Warning that film players are seeking engagements outside the state and film companies may move their studios elsewhere for the same reason, William Randolph Hearst wrote to the Daily Variety last week to tell the world that he was compelled to close his California places and move to New York because of the California income tax. The immensely wealthy newspaper publisher and film financier complained that between the Federal and California State income taxes he was paying out a large portion of reputedly enormous income. Film stars were finding, too, that it is wiser to earn their money outside of the state and "are accepting engagements in the East or abroad." ''I am inclined to think," he wrote, "that if some alert motion picture company should establish studios in Florida or Delaware or New York City, or some suitable Eastern place, they could get many of the most valuable stars away from California." Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-GoldwynMayer, commenting on Hearst's letter, stated that it was "inevitable that others will be obliged" to quit the state, thereby intimating that the threat of an exodus of film companies was being revived in an effort to have the state income tax revised downward. NEW RELEASES EASTERN PA., S. N. J., DEL. Major contracts provide for a ten per cent cancellation privilege for exhibitors. If you desire to cancel a picture, you must notify the exchange by registered mail WITHIN 14 DAYS of the date of general release. Latest releases are listed below. Send in your notice NOW! COLUMBIA Superspecd Oct. 21 FOX Music Is Magic Oct. 31 Metropolitan Oct. 31 METRO Rendezvous Oct. 25 Perfect Gentleman Nov. 1 Mutiny On the Bounty Nov. 8 A Night at the Opera Nov. 15 Ah! Wilderness Nov. 22 Riff Raff Nov. 29 PARAMOUNT Eagle's Brood Oct. 25 Wings Over Ethiopia Oct. 25 Peter Ibbctson Nov. 8 RKO Hi! Gaucho Oct. 25 Three Musketeers Nov. 1 UNIVERSAL Affairs of Susan Oct. 21 Inside Out Oct. 21 Remember Last Night Oct. 28 East of Java Nov. 18 WARNER'S Case of Lucky Legs Oct. 24 MERUIT CRAWFORD OBSERV1NQ THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY NEW YORK. The death in England on September 30, of William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, chief of Thomas A. Edison's technical staff at the time the "wizard"' was experimenting with animated photography, turns a page in motion picture history. Out of these experiments came the kinetoscope camera and "peepbox," w which were to form the foundation of the film ^^^fl * .1 industry. It matters little now that the courts later ruled that Mr. Edison had only taken and commercialized the inventions of others and so could not correctly be called the "inventor of the motion picture," nor that the "screen machine" which neither he nor Dickson could evolve was devised by others. His fathership of the industry cannot be denied. And in this paternity, Dickson deserves indisputably an equal share. The Eidoloscope projector of Eugene A. Lauste, who died last June, showed motion pictures on Broadway and in Coney Island in May, 1895, nearly a year before the Vitascope, the projector devised by Thomas Armat, of Washington, D. C, and adopted by Edison at the plea of his agents, Raff 8C Gammon, showed "peepbox" films on the screen at Koster 8C Bial's 34th Street Theatre in April, 1896. Lauste, also the pioneer sound-on-film inventor, is credited with the invention of the so-called "Latham Loop" and second sprocket, the essential patents around which Edison and the Biograph Company sought to establish a monopoly of the motion picture when the Motion Picture Patents Company was formed in December of 1908. In France Louis Lumiere and his brother Auguste, inspired by Edison's "peepbox," and the film of Eastman, brought out their justly famous "Cinematographe" camera-projector, which, using the Edison film, ante-dated by months the Vitascope of Armat, although its appearance here at the Union Square Theatre came a few weeks after the Vitascope showing at Koster dC Bial's. The Eidoloscope, with its film nearly 2 inches wide, was destined to pass into oblivion as far as the industry's progress was concerned and now occupies a place of prominence in the exhibit of early motion picture apparatus at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D. C, where are also displayed the models of Mr. Lauste's early sound-on-film experiments, which have had a vastly more important bearing on the modern movie. But the Lumiere machine, patented in France, February 13, 1895, and Armat's Vitascope properly may be said to be the ancestors of the modern projector, with the priorities going to Lumiere's "Cinematographe," although patent applications for numerous other projects were made in England, France, Germany and elsewhere almost concurrently with these. Out of all this confusion of invention came innumerable litigations and eventually the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company, wherein Edison and the American Biograph Co. pooled their patent interests and sought to control and license all motion picture activity. The story of the fight made by the "independents" of that era to get a place in the sun is too well known to need repetition hero. Eventually, the United States courts declared the Patents Company illegal and in restraint of trade and their "patents" invalid, and fined them heavily. Thereafter, the industry was to go forward, regardless of camera or projector patents, to work out its destiny. At least until the era of sound and scene, Wall Street and the big "electrics" seized upon it. Conditions today in the industry are, of course, vastly different than they were twenty-five years ago. Film business is far more complex and immeasurably bettei organized, than it was then. The capital investment is hundreds of times greater. (Continued on Page 10)