Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

Facts. And Figures {Continued from page 14) WHAT I said above about the movie business being owned bv so manv people also is interestmg. when we look at the latest M-G-M financial report. They footed up the business for twenty-eight weeks, ending March 14. 1930, and discovered that the gross profit was $9,163,203. That runs better than a million and a half a month. Of course, there are a few trifles, such as operatmg expenses and taxes, to be taken out of that, but, even so. it looks like a nice, pleasant autumn for the shareholders. 1\ST month, I said something about the J Warner Brothers contract with Western Electric having brought them in a handsome income in the last two years. Well, that contract now has not quite two years to run, and I have what Joe Weber used to call "inside inflammation" that it will not be renewed — by mutual agreement. Gossip in the trade is that the Warners were not given as much consideration as they might have had. However that may be, when you read stories of Warner purchases of interests in TobisKlang-film — which is a German type of talking picture apparatus — and their acquisition of Brunswick Phonograph business, keep that Western Electric contract in mind. When the wise man is about to move, he prepares himself another home, perhaps ? can do worse than look us over and ask how the picture folk do it. Shoo these long-faced yawpers out to Hollywood, Mr. Hoover! SERIOUSLY, let us shed a tear for Douglas Fairbanks. Poor Doug! Two or three months ago, he announced that he had given up his plans to make a new picture. Said he didn't know what the public wanted. Guessed he'd just sit around and play golf and wait for something to turn up. But Joseph Schenck had a picture written by Irving Berlin, and he needed an outstanding personality for it, so he chased Douglas into his private swimming pool and before Doug could escape, Joe had his signature on a contract to play the lead. M. Fairbanks gets $30,000 a week for ten weeks. O' If you like caricature, just cast an optic at Helen Kane in "Heads Up." Them eyes, them cheeks, them lips have funny lines again THE calamity howlers are doing the best they can to promote a financial panic, and the motion picture industry seems determined to knock their prophecies galleywest — wherever that may be. I said that M-G-M had been having a good half-year — since the fateful October, 1929 — and now I find in the morning paper the financial prediction for Paramount-Publix. Their earnings — net this time for April, May and June, 1930, will run considerably better than last year, reaching about $2,550,000. And that's a new high-water mark. PERHAPS this industry of ours is destined to be something more than just an amusement provider. It is even conceivable that it is going to be the big stabilizer of American business, holding things steady while the business boneheads and political pushers are trying to rock the commercial craft so hard that it ships water. Any enterprise that can extract $1,560,000,000 — yes, 1 mean more than a billion and a half —from the public each year is a whale of a big business, and the fellows who make steel and box cars, and refine oil and provide transportation and build motor-cars and what-not NCE there was a time when every studio had to have its own laboratory to develop and print the thousands of feet of film it turned out. Then, a few gentlemen merged themselves into a company they called Consolidated Film Industries. Here and there, they picked up a laboratory, and soon they had everything in Hollywood and New York except two small concerns. But they decided that there were still some outlying trifles they needed, so they bought up a lot of patents covering film processing machines. Then they went in for color, and these recent acquisitions run into about $2,000,000. SOMEBODY figured out the other day that a pretty fair grade of motor-car can be bought tor 22 cents a pound. That sounds fairly reasonable. But when the picture statisticians get down to business, they work differently. For example: You sit in a theater and watch a 7,000-foot picture unreel on the screen. It takes just about 77 minutes to run it off. But did you ever know that for each two and three-quarters minutes of time that picture is on the screen, nearly 300 people worked a full day to make it possible ? SHORTLY after "The Birth of a Nation" made its appearance in 1915, Harry E. Aitken dreamed of a string of theaters reaching all across the land in which super-pictures —like "The Birth"— would be shown at $2 admission. He come near to putting it into execution. He acquired three houses — in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, and they operated for six months at the $2 scale. I mention this because the $1,560,000,000 theater receipts I mentioned a few paragraphs back were contributed by 5,980,000,000 people. 16