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.Issue of November 21, 1931.
^ettedhedtres
AN INQUIRY ABOUT AN ELUSIVE ANSWER
an editorial
T,
HE other day one of our more prominent theatre operators — the head of a circuit, though not of a great producer-owned chain — remarked with some Impatience, according to published reports, that the depression was evidently scaring many exhibitors Into letting their houses get "run-down at the heel."
It is natural enough, of course, when local or general economic adversity appears, that a policy of retrenchment be adopted. Cloth must be cut according to the size.
There Is, however, a distinction between necessary planned economy and mere unsystematized penny-pinching. For example, what happens:
When seating is allowed to become loose and ragged? When carpets get shabby?
When poster frames acquire scratches or tarnish?
When projection apparatus struggles with worn-out parts?
When the theatre, at these and scores of other points, is permitted to take on the drooping air of a sick enterprise?
A month or two ago we clipped this out of Warner Brothers' theatre circuit house organ for Warner managers:
"It is all right to practice economy, but wisdom Is necessary in the application thereof. It is far better to expend a few judicious dollars than to have a theatre front look like a relic of better days."
An old-timer In exhibition big and small — Dan MIchalove — said that, semi-confldentlally addressing his house managers. And he added, quite reasonably:
"You would not exhibit a Rembrandt In a Woolworth frame, nor must this season's product suffer from lack of attention to that first rule of a showman to 'keep my house inviting'."
Consider the theatre costing many thousands of dollars, the product of an Intricate process and time and effort, at last a respected medium for the most popular of the arts — being allowed to deteriorate! Two questions are in order:
What is the effect on that theatre's box office today?
And what will be the cost when, all of a sudden, the accumulation of worn-out furnishings and equipment will simply have to be replaced?
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