The Film Daily (1918)

Sunday, December 1, 1918 MS2 y» DAILY will get pictures just half as good as those they are receiving today. Can't you see that this result must follow? If the producer makes a picture that he knows will ; take in altogether .$100,000, it is certain that he is not | going to spend $125,000 to make it, even if the type of subject requires that amount, or a greater sum, for adequate treatment. This inevitably means deterioration of quality, and therefore retrogression of the entire industry. If the exhibitor, therefore, who can afford to pay more for pictures than the price he would like to pay, faces this fact and is content to accept a less quality for less money, he may and can have his desire fulfilled almost immediately, and he may even make more money temporarily by such a change. I am prepared to go even this far in order to frankly face his view ; but will he retain his present public and attract a new following to his theatre if he does not show better and better pictures all the time? This statement is not unsupported by actual fact. Take the history of the industry — look back upon the producing concerns who started out with a very promising producing program, with ambitions to produce an excellent quality of pictures, and many of whom indeed actually produced excellent pictures in the early stages of their existence. The exhibitors began cutting their rentals, and the quality of the pictures began to drop just as quickly and as surely. The high salaried technical experts were discharged ; men of lesser ability replaced them — and trademarks that bade fair to challenge the world's attention as representative of a high quality product, deteriorated, and in many cases have become a joke in the trade and to the public. It is not necessary for me to mention names to establish that fact. Every exhibitor in the country will think immediately of at least three concerns that entered the business under very auspicious conditions and with a high quality product to present to the trade. The exhibitors have driven these concerns to the minor posi-. tions they occupy today, only because they recognized their power to obtain that product for less money. They paid less and they got less. Not only did they lose in this respect, but they deprived themselves of a much bigger benefit by destroying a producing competition that would have exerted a much larger influence upon their business by creating a stimulus for better quality that only serious competition can make certain. Cheap pictures are more easily made than good pictures because they do not require the same amount of heart=breaking thought and energy, aside from the dif= ference in money, but a series of cheap pictures today in the majority of theatres throughout the country would kill the industry more quickly than it would have been killed five years ago but for the advent of better pictures, for the reason that the public now is more discriminating than it was then, and would, therefore, tire of the' cheaper product far more quickly and permanently. Upon what does the future of the motion picture industry depend? Upon the man-power and womanpower engaged in it. Do you recall what Andrew Carnegie said when he was queried as to which he would rather lose — his organization or his plants? He replied that he would rather lose his plants ten times than lose a single part of his organization, for without the latter the plants would be idle, but with it he could build his plants again in a year. Drawing a little analogy, when the Famous Players studio burned down on September 11, 1914, the company could not have proceeded to rehabilitation if it did not have the loyalty of a splendid organization with special abilities. Such an organization develops only from the principle of specialization. Every man knew the part he was to play in any emergency and was equipped to perform it with speed and accuracy. The fact that this organization was equipped so perfectly and manned so well made it possible for us to keep on the supply of pictures to exhibitors without a moment's interruption, thereby protecting him from loss or even inconvenience. This was a direct manifestation of the power of good t<> the exhibitor himself in supporting fully the plans and policies of reputable producing companies. Such results are built only upon concentrated efforts. Upon the men and women, the boys and girls, in the studios, theatres, exchanges and executive offices of producing and distributing companies, depend whatever greater glories are yet to crown the motion picture art. Let them grow and develop in one sphere of activity, let them become experts, specialists. Do not let them scatter their energies and distribute their talents over so wide a field as to have no weight in any one. This appeal extends to the leaders as well as the followers, to the chiefs as well as the subordinates, engaged in whatsover^ branch of the industry. Let us co-ordinate all our work,* producing, distributing, exhibiting, to the best of our mutual interests — which all the better elements of the trade are now trying to do — but let us avoid such a close unification that the exhibitor becomes wholly or partly a producer, or the producer slightly or extensively an exhibitor. For then it will be nobody's business! Another important defect in the present relations between exhibitors and producers emanates from a tendency on the part of exhibitors in certain cities throughout the country to dominate the business of exhibitors in smaller surrounding communities, creating for themselves an artificial power over these smaller exhibitors, and in this manner limiting their choice of subjects. Already there have been evidences of dictation to the smaller exhibitors as to which pictures they should or should not be permitted to procure. I have always been unalterably opposed to this dictatorship because it is bound to limit the natural growth and independence of the smaller exhibitor and therefore hinder the advance of the entire industry. If the business is to progress it must advance upon the basis of free and unhampered selection of product for exhibitors, large and small, and the exhibitors alone can cure this evil by a resolute refusal to be drawn into any allied booking scheme, even if the results promised are of temporary benefit to themselves. It is only the man who looks ahead who will be in the business a few years hence, and all temporary profits should be measured by what his status in the trade will be months after that profit has been made and spent. I see it today as clearly as I saw the need for better pictures in 1912 that if the producer and exhibitor do not co-ordinate their interests and permit full and unlimited activity in their own spheres, the industry will drift into the same chaotic condition out of which it emerged only in recent years. If exhibitors establish or rent studios for the production of pictures, the producers will have to build theatres, not in order to rebuke the exhibitors, but for the simple reason that that will be the only means open to them to protect their producing investments. Such a condition would result in ruinous competition in both branches of the industry — but the producer would have the advantage because he would already have the goods to sell, and the ability and experience to make the better pictures. I hope the situation never develops to such a point. So does every one else who has analyzed the business and looks forward to a brighter future for it. Every branch of the motion picture business is big enough, at present and for future growth, without seeking new worlds to conquer. There are only a few men in each generation who are possessed of inordinate ambition, and it is a curious fact that invariably they fail. Let the motion-picture industry, which has become a symbol to the world of Twentieth Century industrial organization, which within the span of a few years has taken its place among the old and foremost industries of the