Motion Picture Herald (Oct-Dec 1956)

for OCTOBER 1956 GEORGE SCHUTZ, Editor EDITORIAL INDEX: IT'S TIME TO FACE UP TO THE PRICE OF PROGRESS, by Gio Gagliardi 10 CASUAL COMFORT FOR "ART FILM" PATRONS: Remodeling of the Coronet Theatre, Milwaukee 12 BIG WELCOME FOR PATRONS, by Curtis Mees 14 SUNSET DRIVE-IN THEATRE, WEST MEMPHIS, ARK 16 CHARLIE JONES: GHOSTS OF YESTERYEAR; OR WHAT MAKES CHARLIE RUN.. 18 ABOUT PEOPLE OF THE THEATRE 4 ABOUT PRODUCTS 21 BETTER THEATRES is published the Erst week of the month, with each regular monthly issue a bound-in section of Motion Picture Herald; and in an annual edition, the Market Guide Number, which is published under its own covers in March as Section Two of the Herald. QUIGLEY PUBLICATIONS, Rockefeller Center, New York 20. N. Y., Circle 7-3100. Ray Gallo, Advertising Manager. Hollywood: Yucca-Vine Building; HO 7-2145. 1957 Trade Show With the 1956 Trade Show a thing of the past, we look toward a 1957 exhibition at least as extensive and stimulating, with a return to conditions that make viewing the displays convenient and that allow theatre people and manufacturers and dealers to get together easily and often to mix business with pleasure. That is to say, a trade show where the members of the organizations live while convening, in or close by their hotel accommodations. That is the prospect of the 1957 gathering in Bal Harbour, Fla. At the moment in which these lines are written, it is only the manufacturers — Tesma — who are definitely scheduled to meet there. Tesma, however, has invited the exhibitor organizations, and the Popcorn and Concessions Association, to associate their conventions with the Tesma Trade Show according to the custom of the past five or six years. With this possible difference, it may be hoped: Both exhibitors’ organizations to do so, possibly with one meeting during the first half of the exhibition, the other during the second half. Common sense urges it. Response to Change The desperate need to modernize the exhibition plant and to help in that effort by settling upon a process by which theatres generally can present a finer performance, is discussed elsewhere in this issue. Here we refer to it in a left-handed way, taking a look at how another field highly sensitive to public taste and habit has dealt with competition developed by these changing times. The president of the American Travel Association is reported to have said recently, “The motor court has been the best thing that ever happened to city hotels, big and little. Needled by competition. city hotels have taken a new lease on life.” City hotels, the report continues, are providing for motorists — “building parking lots and garages adjacent to their properties, some with facilities so you can park on the same floor as your room. Some hotels are putting in a “motor lobby,” permitting a guest to check in direct from his car, and other hotels are doing likewise. Millions of dollars are being spent to modernize hotels, a large number, if not the majority, of which are as old and outmoded as thousands of motion picture theatres. The hotel business also has many properties where people ain’t, and none where their travels sometimes take them. Hotels are going up near airports, for example. As the report adds evidence of change and response of the hotel business to it, the more that field seems akin to the theatre business . . . except for the response. Response of the hotels to the changed and changing social scene of course is conditioned by quite different circumstances from those plaguing the motion picture industry. Still, with city congestion getting worse and the motels becoming fancier, the hotel people are doing a hit of gambling, and a pretty penny it is, too — must mean hundreds of millions of dollars in capital expenditures over a period of five or ten years. To fit our antiquated exhibition plant into the new pattern of population and recreation would be a greater gamble, no doubt. There is, however, no alternative. And the gamble is only increased by the present trend of technical compromise, sloughing off on the advancement of the art the industry so dynamically, so promisingly began only three years ago. — G. S. 9