Motion Picture Herald (Apr-Jun 1931)

May 2 3, 1931 MOTION PICTURE HERALD 61 MR. THEATRE MANAGER. GIVE YOURSELF THE DOUBLE-CHECK! Says LARRY WOODIN Wellsboro, Pa. DEPRESSION vs. PROSPERITY! WHAT IS THE ANSWER, SHOWMEN? By JACK O'CONNELL Managing Director Vita-Temple, Toledo, Ohio MR. Theatre-^Manager, you are always analyzing your business. Have you ever analyzed yourself? Given yourself a good double-check as far as your job is concerned? Given yourself the once-over? Some of you who have been using red ink for the past year might find the way to black ink and a profit for the business if you will stop and analyze yourself as far as your job is concerned. You may find the whole trouble with your business is you, and not your business. Mr. Theatre-Manager, you are an executive of one of the biggest businesses in the world. Why not take time right now to take inventory of yourself on the job? Put yourself on the spot for the moment and see if you can come out of it. Here's the formula. It's a stiff one and if you can honestly find yourself among the proper type of manager in regard to each of the questions, then the trouble is in the business and not in you. As a theatre-manager you must have mental equipment as well as sound equipment. It must run as smothly as your sound equipment. Does yours? Here are a few questions that will help you to find out ? How are you at figuring out a plan? Are you excellent or scatterbrained? Do you draw sound or pathetic conclusions? Can you decide in a hurry what to do and do you stick to your decision? How is your imagination? Can you do the same old thing in a new way? Can you see what is ahead in your business? What is your attitude toward changing routines? Are you narrowminded? How long does it take you to get your business running smoothly under changed conditions? Do you have pet ideas? Does anyone have to tell you always what to do? Can your firm rely upon you to act wisely? What Kind of a Boss? Now, Mr. Theatre-Manager, just where do you stand as the boss ? Are you always able to tell your employees clearly and concisely just what is expected of them? Do you sell the idea of cooperation to all of your employees ? Do you ever antagonize them? Do you know a good employee when you see one? Are you the "big cheese" or do you make your employees all feel that they have some responsibility? Have you ever consulted your employees on anything or do you place yourself on a pedestal? After answering those questions you may find yourself one h of a boss. Now give your personality the once-over. How do you stand up under opposing judgment on the part of your superiors? What is your attitude toward your employees' ideas? Are you able to realize the probable reaction to your own personal actions? Before you make a move do you look ahead and see just how that move will affect business? The last question that concerns your mental equipment is to me one of great importance. Here it is. How do you act under the stress of emergency or unusual conditions ? Do you ever go up in the air? If you do your business probably goes with you. Now for a few more that can be answered more quickly but are nevertheless just as important in this examination of yourself on the job. Do you learn the new methods and ideas of the business? How long does it take you to do your work? Is your job done as well as other managers you know? Do you stick to I know that your Managers' Round Table Club Anniversary Number is going to be a huge success. I've read it faithfully since you first started it and I have received genuine inspiration from the enthusiastic contributions of our fellow wide-awake members. Your leadership in this worthwhile movement has been dynamic, your logic sound and the sympathetic interest you have shown in the problems confronting the members has awakened in every one of us a whole-hearted desire to cooperate with you. With a membership as large and varied as the Managers' Round Table Club it would be hard for anyone to write about a subject relative to our business that has not been written about many times before. Perhaps it would be well if, instead of attempting to find such a subject, or write interestingly about an old one, we reviewed the progress of our industry during the last year and tried to find from the experience some thoughts that will guide us in the future. .•\n industry growing as fast as ours is bound to make many mistakes — it is bound to suffer with growing pains in its effort to anticipate the demands of its patrons. Most of the mistakes that have been made have been honest ones, therefore let there be no bitterness in our minds as we look back and reckon the consequences. Rather let us put those mistakes beneath us as another stepping stone in our march up the path of progress. "It's An III Wind—" Nothing brings out the weaknesses of a man or a business like a depression or a reverse. The things that we did wrong in good times and never paid any attention to are glaringly thrown up at us in poor times because of their dire consequences. In a way the present -business depression has been a boon to the motion picture industry and to every individual connected with it. It has taught us the value of the dollar. It has brought home to the producer the utter fallacy of paying exorbitant prices for talent and then shouldering the cost on the exhibitor. It has taught the producer who also operates theatres that he can not keep his seats filled unless he makes the right kind of pictures. Becoming a buyer as well as a seller has made him realize that every picture he makes is not suitable for his own theatres (and therefore not suitable for an independent exhibitor). The depression also has sobered up the producer after his mad the job day in and day out? Do you go ahead without being told every detail? How do you get along with your employees? Do you know your job? Can the company always depend on you? How successful are you io directing your employees? If you were somebody else what would be your opinion as to just how you measure up to what is expected of you, taking into consideration all the questions asked above ? Do you belong to the Managers' Round Table Club? If not, you are missing the best opportunity afforded you to rub elbows with theatre managers the world over. You are missing an opportunity to really see where you stand when you see what the other fellow is doing. It is the voice of the manager, regardless of his theatre or location. It is his source of information, his means of learning new tricks, the medium by which he can tell the world what he thinks, does and would like to do. The Managers' Round Table Club pages constitute the showman's encyclopedia, which is revised and made up to date with every issue of Motion Picture Herald. theatre-buying spree of a year ago. It has brought him to a sudden realization of a very important fact in this business, important as well in any other business, that competition ceases to be the life of trade when it shuts off the source of supply of the competitor. The depression has brought out forcibly the weaknesses of long-distance management, or chain operation. It has proved clearly that theatres are operated primarily on impulse and that the good idea of today is a dead letter tomorrow. Reports may be all right but receipts are better. Many a genius in a chain organization has been slaughtered mentally because his idea had to go down many little rivers of investigation and approval before it reached the ocean of achievement. There Is No Substitute Bad times have made some of the leaders in our industry forget that we are in the entertainment business and that there is no substitute for that commodity — at least several thousand desperate theatre men have not found any substitute for entertainment so far — and that the coffers of the producers can not be replenished permanently by throwing the screen open to advertising. A shortage in profits is no valid reason for this industry to antagonize the newspapers and magazines which have so generously helped nurse this infant up through the lean years to its golden maturity. The few extra dollars that producers can get from advertisers will never compensate for the loss of public respect. It will not repay them for the resentment of the patron who pays his money at the box office to obtain entertainment and when he gets inside finds they have sold him sugar-coated advertising. W e have had many months of this depression— we have watched its cleansing influence on our business and we have profited, I hope, by the weaknesses that it has brought out. Looking on the brighter side of the last year, there has been marked improvement in the production of sound pictures from a mechanical standpoint. There seems to be a concerted effprt on the part of leading producers to develop a technique that will be suitable for talking picture production and to discard the bastard form of art found in the early talkers for a faster and smoother flowing tempo similar to the motion of the silent picture. Better Run Theatres There has been a general improvement in the management of theatres, especially in regard to the matter of accommodating patrons with all moderiT facilities. The catch-as-catch-can methods of the early store show are being replaced, even in the smallest towns, with de luxe operations. The art of exploitation also has come in for a general cleaning up during the last year. The raucous blare of the irresponsible exploiteer is being replaced by strict adherence to truth in advertising copy and publicity methods. Independent theatre owners throughout the land have made strides to combine their buying power and associate with one another to procure better conditions, both from outside the industry and from within. And most of all, the last year has proved, in spite of the depression and terrific losses, that the men and women in this industry have not lost faith and that they are looking forward with heads held high, confident that this industry, before any other in America, will reap the rewards of a new and greater prosperity.