Motion Picture Herald (1954)

ALLIED AT 25, A UNIQUE AND LIVELY TRADE ORGANIZATION THE FOUNDING FATHERS. Abram F. Myers, front and center, signs the contract which made him General Council I his favorite title I of Allied States Association of Motion Picture Exhibitors and launched that organization. The date is early January, 1929. Seated on the left are James C. Ritter of Michigan and the late W. A. IAII Steffes of Minnesota, and on the right the late Henderson W. Richey of Michigan and Col. H. A. Cole of Texas. Standing in the back are Dave Cockrell of Indiana, Steve Bauer of Wisconsin, Andy Gutenberg of Wisconsin, Herman Blum of Maryland, E. H. Smith of Iowa, and Charles Casanave of Illinois. by JAMES D. IVERS THERE are some in the industry who would claim that Allied is not an organization but a state of mind. Others, more bitter or more recently bitten, would charge that its principal mission is to make trouble. Neither would be true. Yet both contain enough truth to make them sort of inverted compliments. They are tributes to the character, composition and spirit of an exhibitors’ organization unique in motion picture annals. Abram Myers Will Make Anniversary Keynote When Allied States Association of Motion Picture Exhibitors meets October 12 in Milwaukee it will be celebrating its 25th anniversary. A press release from convention headquarters this week announced that Abram F. Myers has been selected to make the keynote address at that Silver Anniversary meeting because Allied’s “whole history and its many accomplishments have been bound together under the influence of his wise and guiding hand.” Mr. Myers, accepting the assignment, expressed his “deep and profound affection for Allied and what it has stood for” and said that his part in its history had been “to a great extent inspired by the ever present enthusiasm and untiring support of many of Allied’s great exhibitor leaders.” Then Mr. Myers added his pinch of salt to the sugar of sentiment. “Although the • -Silver Anniversary . . . will share part of the spotlight,’' he said, “it must not be overlooked that the main theme is ‘The Product ^Convention’ and* that all efforts will be concentrated on the exhibitors’ right to make a profit on the product he plays and on the other current evils .that are gradually forcing the small theatre owner out of business.” No statemehf’could better reveal the mainspring and gears that make Allied tick. Has Been at the Helm For Entire 25 Years Mr. Myers, a native of Iowa who has spent his entire law career in Washington, was the architect of the ship and has been for 25 years its unwavering helmsman. But the power to run the engines has come from a group of exhibitor leaders as colorful as they were dedicated. When a group of dissatisfied exhibitors, led by Col. H. A. Cole and the late W. A. (Al) Steffes waited upon Mr. Myers in 1928 in his Washington office, to ask him to draw up articles of confederation and become advisor to an organization they had been trying to found since 1923 — a founding incidentally which grew out of a tax repeal campaign of 1923 — the quiet but determined young lawyer already .had some knowledge of the motion picture industry. As an associate in the Department of Justice he had worked on the Motion Picture Patents suit and as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission he had presided at film trade practice conferences called to write an order growing out of a complaint made by the then newly formed United Artists Corp. against Famous PlayersLasky. A year after those abortive conferences the rebel group, fresh from a final break with the old MPTOA, asked Mr. Myers for counsel. That the conversation produced a sympathetic contact far beyond any explainable in cold business terms, is evident from the fact that 25 years later, the General Counsel (his favorite title) quietly but proudly says “the full amount (of the stipulated annual compensation) has never been paid in any year down and including the present one.” Many are the wars Allied’s “conference committee” has been through. So many that reading over them makes today’s problems and conferences and allegations seem a repetition of an old story. Mr. Myers’ very first official act was to invoke the Sherman anti-trust act, at the birth of sound pictures, to insure interchangeability. Then there were compulsory arbitration, the Thacher decision and the 5-5-5 conferences, the Brookhart Bill to ban block booking', the NRA code, the Paramount suit and the United Motion Picture conference, the Neely bill and. finally divorcement — not immodestly hailed as Allied’s greatest victoty. And on September 27, 1954, a press release from Allied headquarters in Washington— Mr. Myers’ office — announces that “a draft of a bill to regulate interstate commerce in films has been completed for presentation to Allied’s national convention.” It quotes Mr. Myers: “Reconciling price regulation of so varied a product as films with constitutional requirements posed the most difficult problem I have ever tackled. However, I believe this has certainly been solved. ... It is amazing that the film companies by their confiscatory pricing policies have driven exhibitors to the contemplation of this drastic step. But our appeals for a modification of those policies have for the most part fallen on deaf ears . . So much for the helmsman. Mr. Myers would be the first to condemn the implication that the ship could have sailed so far or so straight without more than • sage guidance. Of the founding fathers only Col. Cole, Nathan Yamins and Sidney Samuelson are still active. But the places were filled and are still being filled by such men as the late M. A. Rosenberg, Ray Branch, Martin Smith, Benjamin Berger, Jack Kirsch, John Wolfberg, Trueman Rembusch, Irving Dollinger, Abe Berenson, Max Alderman, Leon Back, Morris Finkel, Horace Adams, Leo Wolcott, Ruben Shor, Jay Wooten, A. B. Jefferis, Harold Pearson, Charles Niles, Wilbur Snaper, Stanley Kane, Robert Wile, William Ainsworth, and, of course, the present president Ben Marcus. MOTION PICTURE HERALD, OCTOBER 2, 1954 27