We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
The Outlook for 1926
Adolph Zukov
BANNER YEAR IN SIGHT
With the country in he prosperous conditio which prevails today, I expect that 1926, so far as the motion picture industry goes, will he one of the banner years in the history of the business.
However, all prosperity in the motion picture business depends on one thing— -the quality of the pictures.
This brings into sharp focus a weakness in the picture industry which has grown up because of force of habit through the years. This weakness is the belief that good pictures cannot be profitably made and shown during the Spring and Summer.
A little thought will show the fallacy of this reasoning. There are no seasons in the motion piclure business. The public has shown repeatedly that it will patronize good pictures just as well in the Spring and Summer as in the Fall and Winter. We know this as a result of our experience in our own theaters. We know it also from the testimony of those progressive showmen who have refused to believe that the public cannot be attracted to the theaters in the Summer, and, by installing cooling plants, have made their houses the most attractive spots in town even in the hottest days of mid-Summer.
Therefore, Paramount this year proposes to take another great step forward and, beginning February 1st, will release a group of thirty pictures, which in investment and screen value represent the best that this company has ever put out for any season of the year. We do this in the firm belief that progressive showmen will appreciate our efforts toward raising the income of the picture business in the Spring and Summer to the high peak of Fall and Winter.
We are making this heavy investment in negative and we aTe making this extraordinary effort in exploitation to correct a habit of mind which has cost this industry millions of dollars. We are making this negative investment because we appreciate thoroughly that if theaters are to be as prosperous in the Spring and Summer as in the Fall and Winter, they must have pictures that represent the best in screen entertainment.
We expect — we hope — that other producing companies will follow our example. If they do it will mean that once and for all the bugaboo of poor business in the Spring will be killed. However, whether other companies follow our example or not Paramount is committeed to this new and progressive policy, which can be summed up in the words, "There are no seasons in the motion picture business."
But, as I said in the beginning, the basis of boxoffice prosperity in this business — whether it be in the Fall or in the Spring — depends entirely on good pictures. That is what we propose to give the motion picture industry for this Spring and Summer.
CHEERING
Viewed from where I sit, in just one small coiner of the industry where I, a doctor of economics, think my prediction for the future of the industry from a business standpoint would be "Gradually gaining strength (particularly with the public) every day. Little possibilities of a relapse. For exhibitor organization, "About the
same, thank you, with a possible slight turn foi the better. Patient still suffering from bad advice from its former physician who refuses to be discharged. Liable for a relapse but hoping for the best."
For distribution, "High fever, patient can nevei be entirely well until it comes down. When he knows that it takes $3.50 to deliver a feature to a little exhibitor in a town of under 5,000, gets pretty sick. If the small exhibitor is the back bone of the industry as he has been called, we better look to our backbone."
General diagnosis, general condition good. If those in charge will just look to the future with wide open eyes, not attempt to force on the exhibitors a contract the equity of which cannot be found with a magnifying glass, if all elements of the industry continue to cooperate on common problems as they have been doing in the majority of cases, the future cannot help but be bright in this, the newest essential industry. — H. M. RICHEY, M. P. T. O., MICHIGAN.
ROSY!
The outlook for 1926, as far as our business is concerned, has never been more rosy.
I am quite sure that applies to the greater part of the industry.
Marcus Loew
BETTER UNDERSTANDING COMING
(By Cable)
More big pictures and fewer small ones, consolidation of the position of producing, distributing and exhibiting organizations, and a more general feeling of accord and a better business understanding from the international standpoint are the things that I look for in the film year of 1926.
From the experience which Universal has had Carl Laemmle this last year, I am con
vinced that the moving picture audiences of the United States are responsive to the more elaborate, more costly and more ambitious efforts which have marked the year 1925. So thoroughly convinced am I of this support on the part of theater-goers for more costly and more elaborate pictures that I am putting four such pictures out in 1926, and possibly five. They arc "The Midnight Sun," "The Flaming Frontier," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Les Miserablcs" and "Gulliver's Travels," which we are preparing either for 1926 or 19.27.
In response, also, to this demand, I am putting Reginald Denny in a new type of picture which I am sure will meet with popular approval ; and we expect now to release six such Denny pictures.
737