Motion Picture Herald (Nov-Dec 1946)

URGES PUBLICITY WAR ON ADMISSION TAXES by HUGH G. MARTIN [Mr. Hugh G. Martin is general manager of the Martin theatre circuit, operating 85 houses in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee, one of the sections' of the country where local municipal admission taxes are increasingly prevalent. He advocates opposing local taxes with publicity, a method open to exhibitors in any municipality where local taxes are or may be a problem.] Each week I note where some new town or city has enacted an ordinance taxing theatre admissions various amounts from one-half of one per cent of the gross to teji per cent. I have been connected with one of the largest circuits in the Southeast for the past eleven years, am part owner of some few theatres, and as general manager of Martin Theatres I have experience with some twelve towns and cities imposing a tax on theatre admissions. I have never seen such a tax taken off of but one theatre in my section of the country, that being a small town of some 2,500 population, where the theatre owner lived in the city and fought the measure. One Effective System I have never seen a theatre tax removed from a circuit or for an individual provided the owner did not live in the same city with the officials who imposed the tax. I have known theatre owners to close their theatres for six months ard create opposition and the ill-will of the city officials for life. I know of theatre owners who have closed their theatres within the city limits permanently and built in an adjoining community to evade the tax. In fact, I have known many systems of fighting and have decided on just one system that can be effectively pursued. It is mean and will create some enemies, yet it will win for the theatre owner who follows through. Most city councils or bodies governing a town or city pass an ordinance overnight at a special called or secret . meeting, dispensing with rules, and reading the ordinance three times in order to make it a law. In so doing they duplicate the Pearl Harbor "stab in the back." Therefore, I suggest fighting with similar methods. Some Work Entailed Have separate tickets printed for the city tax, giving the ordinance number and date passed. You can, if you wish to go this far, print the names of the Councilmen or Commissioners who voted for such a tax. Pay your cashier or cashiers an extra salary worthy of the work necessary in selling these separate tickets to each patron and naturally collecting the pennies necessary. Deduct from the city tax each month, week or daily (as the ordinance designates payment) the cost of printing tickets and the extra salary you actually pay your cashiers for handling the sale of these tickets. Must Pay for Service Legally the city must pay for this service as you are being designated tax collector for the city, and no city can legally force you to collect such a tax without refunding the necessary cost thereof. This will be considerable trouble and naturally will make you some enemies ; however, it is impossible to have a tax ordinance revoked unless you create the hatred of the tax in the heart of the actual voter, the person who elected the city officials, in order that the voters will tell the officials in no uncertain words how unfair such a tax is to them. You must create a desire in the voter to fight the tax. As long as the tax is hidden in the admission, as has been done in the majority of the instances where the admission has been raised possibly five cents to cover the tax and also a penny or so for the theatre owner, then you are doomed. Any city or town can legally designate your theatre as a tax collector or agency. It is up to you to make your patrons, including those who vote for the officials, to want to have that tax ordinance revoked. As long as you, as the theatre owner, make the tax easy to pay, the public will accept such taxation as fair, and forget about it. One town where I own the theatre building and half interest in the theatre operation (DeFuniak Springs, Florida) is by far the worst situation I know of. Their tax is three cents on each adult ticket — balcony 25c, downstairs 35c, including all taxes. The tax averages 12 per cent of the gross ! Every effort on my part has been made to reduce or revoke the ordinance to no avail except the one way I suggested. Inclusion a Mistake When the ordinance was enacted we started by including the tax in the gross admissions. That, in my opinion, was a mistake. I wish I had started using separate tickets for the tax instead of the system we agreed on at that time. This town has each year since the ordinance was enacted collected many times more money from the one theatre than has been paid to the town by all the other merchants combined in the form of business licenses and taxes. In fact, the theatre tax furnishes 80 per cent of the town's payroll each month ! Unless the theatre owners get together and agree upon and enforce measures that are drastic, city taxation will grow in leaps and bounds. Closing your theatre will not solve the problem. As long as city officials are elected by voters your only method of attack is through those voters. Don't make it too easy for your patrons to pay a city tax. DOPE PROTEST {Continued from preceding page) gestion is the nudge to destruction. Addict, ex-addict and the addict-to-be are all reminded. This code amendment should be reconsidered and killed — immediately ! [Copyright 1946 New York Post] DOPE AND COMPROMISE Under the heading of "Dope and Compromise," Motion Picture Herald in its issue of September 21 discussed the drug amendment to the Production Code in an editorial, which said, in part: "Little by-paths of evasion and compromise are feeder lines to the high road to hell. Corrosive forces of temptation beset the Production Code of self-discipline by which the organized motion picture industry has these many years operated with a minimum of conflict both with the various censorships and with the moral standards of decent America. "Softly, quietly, an arrangement to open the screen of the entertainment theatre to pictures dealing with the traffic in dope was maneuvered through a meeting of the Motion Picture Association in New York last week. "The Code, from the beginning, had said : 'Illegal drug traffic must never be presented.' "Last week's amendment removes that prohibition with weasel words : 'The illegal drug traffic must not be portrayed in such a way as to stimulate curiosity . . . nor shall scenes . . . show the use of illegal drugs or their effects, in detail.' "That, obviously enough, lets the narcotic theme into the picture and leaves the matter of treatment open to the typical Hollywood sea-lawyering and debating of opinion about what is meant by 'in such a way' or by the phrase 'in detail.' "For many minds in travail, suffering the ordeals of difficult living in a difficult world, the suggestion of escape, at whatever price, encouraged by the vicarious experience before them on the screen, is inevitably a great and immediate peril. "The motion picture will be well advised to avoid assuming the responsibility that this entails." Exhibitors Discuss Taxes With Local Authorities Theatre owners of two Oklahoma cities met with their respective civil leaders in the past week and discussed local theatre taxes. In Tulsa, action on a proposed occupation tax against the city's theatres and other amusement places was postponed by the city council following an informal discussion with theatre owners. The exhibitors protested against the proposed tax on the grounds that it was discriminatory. In Little Rock, a sliding scale privilege tax on theatres, based on ' the highest net admission charge, has been approved by the City Council, following a two-hour discussion with exhibitors. 14 MOTION PICTURE HERALD, DECEMBER 21, 1946