The Film Daily (1934)

THE REINKE REOPENING 2 K. C. THEATERS Kansas City — M. K. Reinke, who at one time operated 50 Universal circuit houses from this city, will defy superstition and reopen the old Pantages on Friday the thirteenth with a policy of first-run pictures and stage show. The Twelfth St. burlesque house next door will be opened on Saturday as a subsequent run under the name of the Downtown theater. Barney Joft'ee, former manager of the Uptown, will manage both theaters, which have been newly renovated and are under ten-year lease. Eighty-five will be employed in the operation. Admission prices will be 10 and 25 cents, with weekly change. Magazine Readers Favor Movie Stories A wide demand for fiction stories with motion picture background exists among magazines of national circulation, according to Verne Porter, literary agent. He says the reason for the demand is that editors, impressed with the industry's recovery, the way fan magazine circulation held up during the depression and the fact that screen names are front page news, believe that circulation gains are possible by playing up movies and movie names in stories. Ruling on Cleaners Due Today The Policy Board at Washington, which handles disputes between Codes, is expected to rule today on an appeal by the American Building Maintenance Co. from the decision made this week by Division Administrator Sol Rosenblatt that cleaners employed by independent contractors in motion picture and legitimate theaters come under the film and legitimate theater codes and cannot be worked more than 40 hours weekly, it was stated to The Film Daily on Saturday by L. R. Shapiro of the American Maintenance Co. Enforcement of the Rosenblatt ruling has been held up pending a decision, Shapiro said. Archie Mayers Back on Job Archie Mayers of DuWorld is back at his desk today after bcinK out all last week due to the death of his father. Asks Control of Electrics Speculating from angle of theatrical 'elevision, industry executives on Satday displayed considerable interest in commendation of Walter M. W. Spl recently appointed to the In t Commerce Commission, to the Houi imerce Committee that a new comm. n be created to exercise strict controi vire communication systems. He advc:, d a thorough study of A. T. & T. as well as other big companies and their subsidiaries. MOVIES and CHILDREN Talk by Gretta Palmer, Editor of Women's Page in New York World-Telegram, before National Board of Review Conference. "VTOU remember, perhaps, an -* interest that swept the country last year which was technocracy. At that time we heard a great deal about technological unemployment which was applied mostly to industries. Well I think there has been a good deal of technological unemployment in the home, especially technological unemployment for mothers as compared with the mothers of preceding generations. For instance, our grandmothers and great grandmothers had really so much to do with their housekeeping, their baking and their making of candles — with all of those duties that the scientists have relieved us of — that they didn't have much time to worry about how their children were growing up. They also had more children and so they weren't permitted to devote the search-light of their entire interest on the intelligence of two or three small children. Well now-a-days mothers have more leisure to consider the influences that are affecting their children. They also have studied psychology and have, I am afraid, taken alarm by discovering from the psychiatrists all the dreadful mistakes that they might make about which their grandmothers were lucky enough to know nothing. This has inclined to make parents today a little bit panicky. It has given them a certain timidity about the influences which might be wrecking their children's lives. I believe that human nature is a good deal more robust than many mothers give it credit for. But it is none the less alarming to them to feel that after all some little mistake the„v may make in subjecting their child to a certain book or moving picture today may warp his life when he is thirty-five. I believe that a great deal of the alarmist attitude toward the motion pictures that has come up in the last year or two may be traced to this parental panic and that it is on the whole quite unjustified. The psychiatrists are pretty well agreed now that a child's life pattern for good or evil is fairly well deter mined by the time that he is five or six years old. Some even put it earlier. If it is an unfortunate life pattern it can be corrected later but if it is a fortunate one and if cne child has chosen a normal, wnolesome goal, then you may trust mm pretty well to go round the world witnout your guidance and to pick up from the things that he contacts only tnat material which is going to feed him in the way ne ought to be fed. in other words, you can take him to a moving picture, no matter how bad a one, and trust him to absorb from that picture notmng that is at variance witn the lue pattern that he has already selected for himself. Therexore l think that the idea of protecting the young is largely a mistake; that the parents' attitude should be rather ot arming the child so that when he goes out in the world he can courageously face any influence no matter how bad without being damaged by the contact After all, parents who attempt to shelter their children may get away with it for a very little while, but you can't live your child's life for nim and you cannot keep him between cushions for his whole life. Some day he is going to have to run up against destructive influence if not in the moving picture, then in books or in human contacts or in some way. This question of the destructive influences of literature, offers a rather interesting parallel to the alarmist attitude oi the day toward moving pictures in some circles. I believe that most men here when they were seven or eight years old either with their parents' consent or without it read the Deadeye Dick stories and the most lurid and bloodthirsty volumes which they could possibly get hold of, volumes which no well-thinking librarians would ever have allowed to get into their hands, and I suppose that for a while their thoughts were filled with the most lurid and completely unsocial points of view. They glorified the gunman and they thought that Jesse James was just the kind of man they would like to be when they grew up. But I think they recovered from it; that eventually they righted themselves and passed through that phase. In the same way the boy of today who goes to see a gunman picture may get the idea that a gangster is a pretty fine fellow to be and his sister may look upon the siren as her ideal. While children are passing through these phases they may be very trying to have around the house. But on the other hand, children are trying when they are teething too, and would be extremely trying if they went on teething for fifty years. But I think you SUNDAY SHOWS GET BY INPENNSYLVANIASPOT Monessen, Pa. — After presenting regular shows on Easter Sunday and playing to capacity without interruption from the police, managers of the Star and Manos theaters plan to continue the Sabbath performances. The Ministerial Ass'n held a meeting last week on the Sunday show matter, but gave no intimation of its plans. Speakers for Boston Council Meet Boston — Among the speakers at the conference luncheon at the Somerset Hotel on Saturday to mark the start of a membership drive in New England by the Motion Picture Research Council will be Mrs. August Belmont, president of the Council; Dr. A. Lawrence Lowell, honorary president; Stephen P. Cabot, chairman of the Council's New England committee; William H. Short, director of the Council, and Henry James Forman, author of can trust them to recover their equilibrium and to get rid of these extremely trying points of view when they have passed through that period of adolescence, with which these are always associated and seem to have been long before the movies were a primary influence in adolescent life. I said that you take out of the moving picture or out of any other cultural unit whatever you are prepared to take, but of course you jem't take it unless it is there. And so that brings me to the other phase of the subject. While I think it is quite safe to forget about censorship and to expose your children to any pictures or any play or any book that they may get their hands on, on the other hand it is obviously desirable that they should have a chance to reach the best in every field so that they may draw from that the best food for whatever life pattern they have selected. But I think that the most important thing to say to parents today is not to tell them necessarily to have faith in the moving picture. Work toward making the moving picture better, of course, but even if they have no faith at all in the moving picture to have faith in their own children to take from the picture those things which they are prepared to receive and which will make them grow up into well-rounded and healthy normal human beings. Roach Making "Lysistrata" West Coast Bur., THE FILM DAILY Hollywood — "Lysistrata," the Aristophanes comedy which created a furore when produced on the stage a few years ago, will be filmed by Hal Roach with an all-star cast. Production is expected to get under way by mid-summer.