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.
92 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT
pennies; and notwithstanding the heavy overhead incident to starting such an enterprise, the Penny Arcade returned twenty per cent, net profit on the investment. They had, it seemed to them, the long-sought showman’s formula for getting all the people all the time.
Now, a quarter of a century afterward, both Kohn and Zukor laugh when they remember how the Penny Arcade, a small flier in comparison with their established fur business, absorbed from the first their attention and interest. It was the blood working in them. “Every Hungarian is either a peasant or an artist; often both.” And every Hungarian, be his origin Magyar or Semitic, has something of the showman. All through Europe, Hungarians sprinkle the theatrical and amusement business; in some countries they dominate it. Kiralfy, our first imaginative showman, belonged to that breed. Kohn and Zukor were drifting toward the vocation for which they were bom.
But presently, the Penny Arcade generated an interest far less remote. If it paid so well in Fourteenth Street, why not in Harlem, the Bowery, Second Avenue, Eighth Avenue, all quarters where simple people hungered for cheap amusement? And beyond that lay a thousand American cities, each an unworked gold mine. They formed a kind of subsidiary company to exploit the idea in other Eastern cities. And now, Marcus Loew enters the show business. He had of late struck up an acquaintance with David Warfield, come under fascina