Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

Facts an d Figures Intimate Items About Pictures, Past, Present And Future By C A M PBELL MacCULLOCH EXPERIENCE, said the old copybooks, is the best teacher. Well, perhaps — but in the light of the recent effort to have the moving picture companies provide stock market facilities on the West Coast, it begins to look as if some of those October scars are beginning to heal. Whatever might have happened to the big industrial stocks, the picture securities are showing signs of life. Here is the result of a recent survey made by the Los Angeles Stock Exchange: Of the total membership of the Exchange, 83% had transactions in RKO Securities, 80% in Eox Film, 79% in Warner Brothers, 69% in Paramount-Publix,67%in General Theaters Equipment, 54%, in Loew's, 49% in Pathe, 16% in Columbia and 14% in Universal. That would seem to show that the picture industry hasn't sunk so low in the affections of the investor as the calamity-howlers would have us believe. ONE of the reasons, possibly, is that the picture companies manage to pay respectable dividends. Paramount-Publix, just as an example, announced net profits for the first six months of 1930 of $8,434,000. Unfortunately for the Gloom Guard, that record is just 65% better than for the corresponding period of 1929. The thousands of stockholders naturally decline to take seriously all the wild tales of disaster that are abroad. AND don't get the idea that better business is confined ±\_ to one companv. It isn't. RKO earned net profits of well over $2,000,000 for the first half of 1930, as against a little more than $600,000 in the first six months of 1929. The quality of some of the pictures may be terrible; possibly the public is getting awfully tired of them; and It may be that the players ought to be sent back to the rolling mills or the soda fountains or whatever, but — somehow the yawps carry little influence in the face of the financial facts. So when someone tells you about the Figures and a fact: when Le Roy Prinz, staging a new revue in a Los Angeles theater, issued a call for chorus girls, more than 500 wanted work. These are the lucky few who found it number of studios and theaters closing down, lift one eye brow and remark: "Oh, yeah.?" THREE bandits fell into one of the most common of errors the other day — the error of believing that a millionaire carries cash with him. They held up Douglas Fairbanks, and in his own home. Douglas had no money on him. He had to brouse and scratch around the house for some and finally rounded up a total of $27. The chances are that a very rich man handles less actual money in the course of a year than the garage man or the dressmaker. He does not need it because the greater number of his business transactions are based on his credit. There was that time when John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had to have $3.75 and could find only eighty cents in his pocket. So, Bandits, don't waste your valuable time on Rich Folks. Go after the Little Fellow. EVERY now and then, some one goes into hysterics over "monopolies" and "trusts" and "octopi" and what not. Usually, it is one of our moronic legislators at Washington trying to convince the folks back home that he is awake and on the job. It is just lately that the Western Electric Company and the General Electric Company have been put in the monopoly class and accu.sed of dividing up all the theaters, to the exclusion of everyone else, in supplying sound equipment. A few days ago, I hunted up a list of all the manufacturers of such equipment. There are just ninety (90) of them. They have the oddest names for their product. For example: Amplion, Beltone, Cinevox, Dramaphone, Electrofone, F"ilmophone, Halgrophone, Kinotone, Lifetone, Mellaphone, Norophone, Orotone, Picturfone, Q-Phone, Radiotone, Speakaphone, Talkafilm, Ultraphone, Vocaphone, Wonderphone. {Continued on page l6) 14