Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1951)

A Movie Man With Faith CITY j EDITION ! gSS m.t oute (Blobc-Ucmorrat. f'Z TO MARKET COLLAPSES AFTER RECORD DAY Goldman Forms $1,000,000 Theater Company a. U^^W i^,^,^.,,^$1(10,000.000 Power Stone from St. Paul's Presented . !Fw Qatstiooed b MQTUiS LEAD t*l2Z£ "TZ^TZ* Plant Cwnbmarioo to Missouri Journalism College Fergasarfldfo*. 411 SHARES M <*» r^A;„ TJ~. k„ RL„U; " J»T Probe ^jjj^jj, DtdbeFillanPsM lb. Cor I MARKET CRASHES, GOLDMAN CONSTRUCTS His Daring Made Headlines in 1925, Too (Continued from Page 9) the industry. The Warner outfit had a stranglehold on all the first runs and most of the key runs in the city, and all theatres were having a hard time staying open in that era of the Great Depression. On top of that, Goldman's experience in the affiliated chain's management assured him that it would be next to impossible getting product from the big film companies with the powerful Warner circuit enjoying first call. His friends looked at him askance. But both his well-intentioned advisers and his powerful adversaries underrated his wealth of experience, his canny understanding of the movie business and his bulldog determination. He bought up several neighborhood theatres in Philadelphia and its environs, acquired a tiny newsreel-reissue house in the central city sector and a deluxe theatre, the Erlanger, on the fringe of the midtown area, which had played roadshow movies and legitimate shows — when it was open. After exhausting all avenues of obtaining product, Goldman methodically set out to break up the first-run monopoly. Using the Erlanger as his legal lever, he filed an anti-trust action against the Warner chain and the major distributors, uncovering a mass of evidence, carefully documented from negotiations with the film companies. The rest of the case is industry history. He was awarded $375,000 in damages, first-run product, and, in a subsequent action against the same defendants, received a settlement reputedly around a million dollars in cash and theatres. Defies TV Spectre Bill Goldman's continued reaffirmation of his faith in the industry reached its high point in recent years. When the spectre of Television scared most theatremen into the doldrums, and post-war manufacture of TV sets reached a mass level, Goldman constructed the first new Philadelphia central-city theatre in more than a score of years, the Goldman. Within the last year, he has opened two more beautiful mid-city first-runs, after a complete remodeling job on each that ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars. The first, the Randolph, was opened one year ago. His latest deluxer, the Midtown, made its debut on the past Christmas weekend with the world premiere of "The Goldbergs." The Midtown opening was another example of Goldmans aggressive showmanship to back his faith with action. The campaign preceding the opening was aim ed at a renaissance of midtown moviegoing. Sedate Chestnut Street, shopping center of the central area, became a blaze of lights as the town's most prominent citizens, including the mayor and the president of the Chamber of Commerce, inaugurated a drive to dub the stem, "The Gay White Way." Hundreds of thousands of Christmas shoppers basked in the festive lights and were reminded that it's nice to "go out." Even the choice of the picture that was to open the house was made with an eye to recapturing the hibernating video addicts. Thousands of erstwhile TV fans thronged the premiere and were impressed with the sumptuous appointments as "The Goldbergs" TV show plugged the opening and the cast appeared in person at the theatre. The pros and cons of the television vs. movies arguments are well known to Goldman. As a theatreman who has time and again demonstrated shrewd, often uncanny, judgment in plotting his future course, his opening of three new deluxe theatres within four years is a compelling answer to the TV bogey. While he doesn't deny video's initial impact on moviegoing generally, "you can't just wash out 50 years of motion pictures," he points out. "The assets are there, the know-how, the background and technique. Motion pictures are still the greatest form of mass entertainment." Always A Crisis TV, Goldman feels, will gradually find its level in the entertainment scheme, just as radio has. "The mounting cost of TV is going to make it possible for say only about ten of the biggest businesses to put on the top network shows," he says. "The rest will be what we call 'B' pictures. That brings TV down to radio's selective audience and people won't stay home if they can't see what they want." As for the so-called "crisis" that many industryites are wailing about, he can't remember a time in his 40 years in movies when there wasn't one. "We cried in our beer over radio," he recalls, "and awoke one morning to find it had become the right and left arm of our business. They were plugging our songsr they fawned over our actors and actresses." TV May Prove Blessing The TV scare can well turn out to be another blessing in disguise, he believes. "It's making our producers hustle. They're like big league ballplayers with hundreds of eyes keeping track of their hits, runs and errors. The profit and loss sheet points out the producer that fails, and he doesn't continue unless he can give the public something it wants." Exhibitors, too, must "fall in line" by refurbishing their moviehouses and service so that a theatre "is more than just a place you go to see a movie," Goldman advises. "It's comfortable, glamorous, it makes the little housewife feel like she's really had an evening" when going to a well-appointed theatre. As for talk that Hollywood producers will switch their allegiance to the TV market, Goldman tersely sums up: "Exhibitors still flash most of the green at the cash register." It's difficult to argue with success. William Goldman's ability to measure the future, and come up with the right answers, gives his faith in the motion picture indusfry an aura of authority that should give heart to the doubting Thomases who fear for the future of the movie business. 20 FILM BULLETIN