Harrison's Reports (1931)

A NEW SERVICE The greatest handicap many of you find yourselves under when a salesman calls on you to sell you his new season’s product is your inability to offset his assertions that the pictures he is offering you are going to be the best any company, including his own, has ever made. You are aware, of course, that, since ninety per cent of the pictures he tries to sell you are unmade, his sales talk is not founded on facts ; but you are unable to refute him for lack of necessary information. Thus you are often compelled to pay more money than the pictures are worth, as you usually find at the end of the season. To place in your hands information that will enable you to disprove the salesman’s assertions when he resorts to exaggeration and thus to save hundreds, and often thousands, of dollars from excessive rentals, I have founded a special service, to be sold apart from Harrison’s Reports ; it will be known as The Harrison Forecaster. The function of The Harrison Forecaster will be to send to those who will subscribe to it an opinion as to what possibilities there are in the material of the books or plays acquired by the producers, as soon as the purchase of the rights of such books or plays has been made known. It is, of course, understood that The Harrison Forecaster will not be able to supply information on all the pictures the producers intend making; often the picture rights are sold before a book is published and in some cases the pictures are founded, as you know, on stories written specially for the screen, in which cases no copies are available for study. To this category may be added pictures sold in star series. But I feel that if the subscriber receives information on only ten per cent, of the pictures it will be worth the cost of his subscription, for what the exhibitor is mostly interested in is big pictures, because of their high cost; and it is, as a rule, this sort of pictures advance announcements are made about. Reports on such ten per cent will be equal to seventy-five percent of the entire program’s value. The cost of this service will be much higher than the cost of Harrison’s Reports, for the reason that the number of potential subscribers among the first-run independent circuits and individual exhibitors is very small — not more, perhaps, than one hundred and fifty. And of these, only a fraction will realize the value of such a service at once. On the other hand, the expense of conducting such a service is considerable ; a new staff (a member of which is a writer who understands the picture values of books and plays) has been engaged to assist me in the work ; the book purchase item alone will be considerable each year, and I do not mention the cost of linotype work, of printing, postage and one thousand and one other items of expense. The cost will not be the same to all subscribers : those who own a few theatres will not be charged as much as those who own a large number; and those whose theatres are in small towns and in the neighborhood of big cities will be charged much less than those whose theatres are in large towns or in downtown sections of big cities. In any case the charge will not be unreasonable. Just to give you an idea of what kind of information The Harrison Forecaster will contain, I am printing on the back of this sheet a model, treating on “An American Tragedy.” Those exhibitors who will be asked to pay a big price for this picture, with a minimum guarantee and with an “overage,” will readily realize its value. Not all opinions submitted by The Harrison Forecaster will be similar — some of them will be quite the contrary, estimating the picture worth of the book or play highly ; but the value of having the facts at his disposal should be realized by every exhibitor. Theatre operating today has come to be a highly complicated affair ; it requires knowledge. And it is knowledge that The Harrison Forecaster undertakes to supply to the exhibitors. The Harrison Forecaster will not be sold outright ; it will be sent to the subscriber with the distinct understanding that he is not to sell, lease or even lend his copies to any one ; he may lend them only to persons that are closely connected with his company. Its contents will be protected by copyright. Those who are interested in this service may send for terms for the 1931-32 season’s product. The subscription year will not start and end at any specific time ; it will be governed by the picture material for the season the subscription is bought for. Since the price will depend on the number of theatres an exhibitor has, and on the size of the towns his theatres are in, the applicant should send this information along with the inquiry. All communications for this service should be addressed to: The Harrison Forecaster, Room 1866, 1440 Broadway, New York, N. Y. Take immediate action so that, if you should decide to subscribe, the copies on hand may be sent to you at once, and the remainder within about a week after a producer’s announcement is made in the trade papers. The money you will save by the information contained in The Harrison Forecaster will be dozens of times more than the cost of the subscription. Your money will be returned in case you should find that you have not benefitted by it. The Harrison Forecaster, 1440 Broadway, Room 18 66, New York, N. Y. Gentlemen : Please send rate for a subscription for me. I own .... Theatres in the towns of with a population of Sincerely yours, Address