Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

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K-08, 85J Broadway, ^^ew York, ________ N Y. {Continued from .page 25) longest purse has an advantage. Two years ago the motion picture wallets were wrinkled and flat. Even to-day, with color and widefilm sitting on the doorstep, more outside capital is needed, and money for commercial expansion can come from but two directions. The picture companies may go direct to the public with their securities, as Fox did last autumn with such negative results, or they may invite the investment bankers to underwrite stocks and bonds, or to make loans. In either case, "terms" will be exacted, and — since the Fox experience — backed with adequate guarantees. If those terms are agreed to, one may wonder where the present group of picture executives will be five years hence, for Wall Street does not willingly let outsiders run its enterprises, and particularly unsympathetic outsiders. Three years ago, such a possibility as the present one would have been unthinkable. But to-day the Wall Street interests have control of patents without which it is almost impossible to make a talking picture, or, having made it, to project it upon a screen. These patents fundamentally are radio and telephone inventions, among the most important of which are the "C Battery" patents, and they are held in the names of the General Electric, Westinghouse, American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and Radio Corporation of America. The gross capitilization of this group of interests runs into the billions, and they have pipelines leading direct to the treasuries of Wall Street. Unheard Of Until 1890 IT is comparatively recently that gentlemen of similar nomenclature to the present picture barons broke into the amusement business. Can you recall one in the circus enterprises among the Barnums, Baileys, Ringlings, Forepaughs, Sellses and Robinsons? And what were the great theater names of three or more decades ago? Were they not Daly, Palmer, Hoyt, Sinn, Macauley, Abbey, Niblo, Stetson, Pope, Hamlin, Henderson, Hooley, and so on? And in vaudeville did we not have Keith, Proctor, Albee, Pastor, Murdock, Castle, Considine, Sullivan and Sun? Not until the 'Nineties did there arrive on soft shoes the Frohmans, Haymans, Erlangers, Klaws, Shuberts, Meyerfeldts and Becks. But by the turn of the century they were in full control of the American theater — big and little! In the very middle of those same 'Nineties, there appeared an interesting toy, showing pictures in motion. Wall Street probably heard of it — since the first exhibition occurred on Nassau Street near Maiden Lane, and later in the building where the Guaranty Trust Company now holds forth — but dismissed it to lie with the baby's rattle or the latest block puzzle. But a reporter on a New York newspaper, a fire chief from Kansas City, a planter from the South, together with a few other visionaries for the moment at a loose end, began to pioneer the new contraption. Anglo-Saxon Pioneers SOON, others joined the Messrs. Blackton, Hale and Latham. These newcomers had names like Long, Dickson, Koopman, Marvin, Kennedy, Smith, Rock, Aitken, Meek, McKinley, Jefferson, White and Spoor. The clothing, glove and fur industries had not yet been drawn upon. The gentlemen just mentioned organized little picture companies with odd names, such as Biograph, Kalem, Solax, Essanay, Polyscope, Majestic, Reliance, Eclair, Bison, \ itagraph, Keystone, Rex, Imp and so on. Their business grew amazingly, and about 1910 these Saxon entrepreneurs suddenly discovered a number of strange names in their midst. A clothing store manager from \yisconsin, Laemmle by name, and an eyeglass maker from Philadelphia, yclept Lubin, demanded to be counted. Next, quietly arrived the Messrs. Lasky, Zukor, Goldfish, Fox, Loew, Abrams, Kessel, Warner, Bauman, Selznick, Dintenfass, etc., and most unobtrusively, but effectively, took charge of the new picture business, and have continued since to govern it. This is. not a history of the motion picture, so suffice it to say that for one reason or another Latham, Long, Smith, Rock, Dickson, Kennedy, Hale, Marvin and the rest have dropped out. Only one of them discovered Wall Street. Harry E. Aitken organized Mutual Film Corporation in 191 3 and got his money down there, enticing a member of the House of Kahn aboard with him. Perhaps no one was more astonished than he to obtain a million. Seven figures had never before been used in the picture business— save in dreams. Wall Street Steps In BY 1914, the company names were Famous Players, Lasky, Universal, Fox, World, Selznick, etc. Of the old group Biograph, Mutual, Edison and \'itagraph were all that were left and they were dying. By now Wall Street had discovered the picture business. J. P. Morgan & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Knauth, Nachod & Kuehne, and E. S. Smithers & Co. had made loans and underwritten securities. An occasional bank lent against negatives or contracts, and picture stocks began to appear on the exchanges. In 1915, the public was invited into Triangle and went with a rush — temporarily. Fox had found a new vein of capital over in New Jersey and had become a five-milliondollar concern. Famous Players and Lasky merged. Edison and Biograph quit, Luhin failed, Kalem dissolved and Vitagraph was getting into shoal water. With them went the old names, and by 1920 none was left. About this time, Wall Street discovered that the annual picture income needed nine figures for its expression. It had topped a billion dollars a year, and ranked fifth or sixth iri the industrial list! Radio's Effect THE next year, radio was born and with it came the principles that made talking pictures a possibility, though they did not appear for a half-dozen years more. The big electrical companies quietly gathered up the patents expressing these principles and eventually worked out the precision apparatus that gave a voice to the films. Forthwith they were launched into the picture business. It may be said that the picture industry is an important link in the gradual erection of the electrical vertical trust. The vertical trust is an industrial plan which begins with the control of certain industries intimately related and starting with raw materials. For example, copper mine, wire mill, rubber plantation and factory, electrical machine works, electrical railways, telephone and telegraph companies, radio stations, railroad block signals, power companies, radio tube and lamp factories, all work harmoniously together, passing a finished product straight on up from one to the other. In this way markets are stabilized and profits virtually guaranteed. The motion picture business, almost entirely electrical, fitted in like a block in a puzzle. You see, television already had been provided for, so the thing {Continued on page /oj)