The Exhibitor (1959)

January 7, 1959 MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITOR 41 Years of Service to the Theatre Industry Founded in 1918. Published weekly by Joy Emanuel Publications, Incorporated Publishing office: 246-248 North Clarion Street, Philadelphia 7, Pennsylvania. New York field office: 8 East 52nd Street, New York 22. West Coast field office: Paul Manning, 8141 Blackburn Avenue, Los Angeles 48, Calif. London Bureau: Jock MacGregor, 16 Leinster Mews, London W 2, England. Jay Emanuel, publisher; Paul J. Greenhalgh, generc* manager; Albert Erlick, editor; ‘Chick") Lewis, associate editor; George Frees Nonamaker, feature editor; Mel Konecotf, New York editor; William Haddock, Physical Theatre and Extra Profits departmental editor; Albert J. Martin, advertising manager; Max Cades, business manager. Subscriptif"’*: S2 per year (50 Issues); and outside of the United States, Canada, and Pan-American countries, 55 per year (50 Issues). Special rates for two and three years on application. Second class postage pend a* delphia, Pennsylvania. Address all official communications to the Philadelphia publishing office. VOLUME 61 • NO. 9 JANUARY 7, 1959 WHY EXHIBITORS STEAL This department has no desire to defend, or to sympathize in any way with, men who take the law into their own hands and attempt to settle inequities by picking pockets, by using a gun, or by cheating their “partner” in a percentage deal by under-reporting a gross. To so defend or sympathize would be to contribute to a major breakdown in the law and order on which our country and our industry are founded. But every now and then we must recognize and understand the frustration, and the bitterness, that forces a small businessman to accept jungle methods as a last resort. Personal bankruptcy, and the loss of a means of livelihood and support for a wife and children, can be pretty unattractive too. A case in point is the lessor of a single theatre in a small town whom we chided recently for underreporting activities. He is his own manager seven days a week, and he is even his own projectionist on the regular man’s day off. He works hard. He drives an old small car. And for the last six or seven years he has been barely managing to keep his business head above water. He got caught cheating several years ago and we helped him to get a settlement; but now he has been caught again. “And I’ll keep right on doing it!” he told us. “I’m a free American, and I am entitled to run a business, and to make a living as profit! Every last dime I own is invested in this theatre, and it is only useable for showing saleable films. The owners of those saleable films have benefited by numerous drive-in theatres that cropped up all around me; but they continue to increase demands for a share of my declining grosses, to the place where I can’t live and pay them. The owners of those saleable films dictate how much I must charge, how many days and which davs I must play their films, and then they demand that I pav them prices and scales that are as much as 80 per cent to 150 per cent of my gross income, or thev won’t sell me. Of course I cheat and under¬ report! And I’ll do it again, and again, and again! Distributor confiscation of my business started the jungle methods. I’m only defending myself!” Turning sadly away from such a situation we bump squarely into some current sales demands that are guaranteed to turn even much bigger operators into cheats and thieves. Percentage-of-the-gross deals rule better than 90 per cent of all important film transactions today. And percentage de¬ mands have risen to 40, 50, 60, and 90 per cent-over-actualaudited-house-overhead-plus-advertising costs. No one can object to paying such percentage terms if a given picture does a correspondingly high gross. But the recently introduced floors, or guarantees, demanded under percentage tenns, have turned them into instruments of confiscation that are guaranteed to breed the strife and “cheating” of the future. Floors turn percentage “partnerships” into one-way holdups! And scarcities load the gun! Again, a case in point is a soon to be released important cartoon feature, the terms for which are being quoted at “90-10, with a 60 per cent floor.” Another way to say this would be: “We want 90 per cent over actual audited house overhead plus advertising costs, BUT in no case will we take less than 60 per cent of the gross, even if you do not get back your actual audited house overhead plus advertising costs.” Let’s figure it out. Let’s suppose that a given theatre has a $3,000 overhead and that on a given picture it spends $500 over and above its regular advertising, for a total of $3,500 out of its pocket. On this picture it grosses $12,000. So it gets back the $3,500 it has laid out, plus 10 per cent of the $8,500 remainder, or a total of $4,350 (36fi per cent); while the dis¬ tributor gets $7,650 (63/1 per cent). But what if, in this tricky market, a fairy-tale cartoon does not do $12,000, but even at the demanded admission price increases does only $8,000? At an $8,000 gross, on the same quoted “90-10 with a 60 per cent floor,” the distributor is always going to get a mini¬ mum of $4,800 (60 per cent). That leaves exactly $3,200. Where is the exhibitor to go for the $3,500 he laid out, or for his 10 per cent of the profit on the engagement “partnership”? So the gimmicks and “floors” that strive for “the edge” only make bad customers out of good ones, and reflect on the avarice and amoral thinking of the seller. Maybe two wrongs never made a right; but one wrong has certainly made an¬ other. Another, and possibly more evil one! MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Apropos of comments on this page (Dec. 3, 1958) about the “spontaneity” and “unanimity” of that Catholic Central High School (Springfield, O.) boycott of all motion picture theatres, it now develops that the Chakeres Circuit, which was its intended victim, did not make it a policy to play “C” (Legion of Decency “Condemned”) pictures. It also devel¬ oped, according to Walley Allen, the circuit booker, that no attendance decline was noted other than that caused by sub-zero weather. Also that: “There was no point to the boycott, and the students were not in sympathy with it. They had been told to vote for it.” So no one was very surprised when a delegation from the 600 pupil school called on Mike Chakeres to announce that the bovcott had been lifted. The announcement, it seems, was accompanied by a request that no “C” pictures would be shown, and that the teen-age price concessions that have always been extended to teen-agers should be continued. Mike could just as readily have promised not to beat his mother, and not to shoot himself with a 19 calibre pistol. Do you think the newspapers that praised and publicized this “spontaneous and unanimous” boycott will be equally generous in debunking it? You know damned well they won’t! They never do.