Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

What Can The Movies Do About It? From an investment standpoint, they cost less than even the most modest theater. As little as twenty-five hundred dollars will equip one. The usual practice is for the intending operator to seek out the owner of a suitable plot of vacant ground, offer him a percentage of the receipts in lieu of rent, and wait for him to say "Yes." A week or two is sufficient for construction. And there are plenty of vacant lots! Some of the courses cost large sums, being ornate, elaborately landscaped and ornamentally lighted. Flashing fountains, rocky dells, rustic bridges and shady nooks are provided. A marquee with soda fountain, hot dog facilities and a barbecue sandwich kitchen can fit in nicely and add to revenue. The larger courses even provide small clubhouses with easy chairs and a rudimentary veranda. As much as twenty-five thousand dollars is spent on these. Los Angeles, about the time this sees print, probably will have a course costing a quarter of a million; but then, California permits all-year playing. Defense Measures lERHAPS the thing is JPmerely a passing fad; but, even so, it is causing the movie men acute discomfort. The West Coast Theater chain has been meeting the menace by buying up or even startingminiature golf-courses close by their theaters. Some of the larger movie houses offer a ticket to the nearest pigmy golfcourse for ten cents more than their movie admissions. Harold B. Franklin, president of the West Coast chain, is credited with the conviction that the picture theater and the little golf-course may be contributing factors in each other's welfare. Play golf awhile and rest in the theater. See the picture and later stretch the muscles by playing a little golf. Approach from either end. Well, that remains to be seen. Anyway, West Coast is trying it out. Installation of indoor golf-courses in unprofitable movie theaters throughout the country is being considered by Fox, Warner Brothers and Paramount-Publix, it is said, as one way of capitalizing on a craze which in some places has robbed the movies of twenty-five per cent, of their patrons. An elaborate indoor golf-course may be built in a former theater for about twenty-five thousand dollars. The first of these playhouses to be converted into golf houses is scheduled for an early opening in New York City. Wanted: 80,000,000 People FTER all, we should sympathize with the picture Above, a spacious California course offering not only a game, but plenty of walking exercise. The daily average attendance at such a course is about a thousand. But even simple vacant-lot courses (like the one below) draw their crowds million dollars yearly — which means that, in order to pay the interest bill, close to eighty million extra patrons a week are needed in the picture theaters. And this is a sinful lot of folk, when you consider that you must extract an average of a quarter from each of them! But let us get back to the golf business. How well are these courses patronized.^ How badly are the picture men worried.'' First, a friend of mine who owns one of these — and he used to be the general manager of a big Hollywood studio — says his modest course enjoys a patronage of from eight hundred to a thousand people a day. He charges a quarter for a round in the afternoon and raises the price to thirtyfive cents at evening. If the player wants a second round, the price goes back to the quarter. He has one "fan" who every day for five weeks has played nine rounds! Which sets him back only two dollars and thirty-five cents. Allow that the average patronage IS three hundred a day — which is believed reasonable, since some of the big courses enjoy a patronage of two thousand players a day, or even more — and with thirty-seven thousand courses the daily play reaches more than eleven million! How many of these players are escaped from the picture houses? If we suppose that the average charge is a quarter, the daily take of the miniature golf-courses is more than two million, sevej hundred and fifty thousai dollars! The Surest Remedy OING back to Sid Cii.uman again for a mo i A' folk. The public demand for picture improvement has caused the industry to spend more than three hundred million dollars in the last two and a half years. The little item of interest on that sum is not less than eighteen 26 G ment, I asked what he thought would happen — how the picture men would meet this condition. "Better pictures, and perhaps lower admissions to the theaters," he said. "I'm not sure about the latter, but I am about the quality. You have to meet competition by improvement. Talkies are waning in popularity — perhaps not because of the talk, but just because their novelty is wearing off. In any case, we must have a finer grade of product." And we have another factor that is a parallel menace: Night sports! Cheaper electricity means greater use. Better lighting equipment means wider application. Until the last year or two, the artificial lighting of large outdoor areas has not been general, but now that we are being introduced to night baseball, night horse-racing and night football, it is no wonder that the movie brow is wrinkled. The movies have been top-dog in the amusement world for quite a while. In the last few years, the picture man has sympathized in a superior sort of way with the dram {Continued on page g2)