Motion Picture Herald (Oct-Dec 1956)

ALLIED HERALD picture RUBE SHOR is the speaker with guest-of-honor Colonel H. A. Cole at his side. ( Continued from preceding page ) ics which dominated convention activities Wednesday and Thursday. With some 200 delegates in attendance, the convention was officially launched at the Tuesday luncheon following which Roy Kalver, of Decatur, Ind., made his keynote address. The convention's theme — “see how, learn how, so that you will know how” — related largely to film buying clinics, availabilities and runs. There also were clinics on advertising methods, new approaches to increasing box office receipts, concessions operations and talks on personal problems affecting individual theatre situations. The climax came at the Thursday evening banquet honoring the prominent Texan and Allied veteran, Colonel H. A. Cole. Preceding Mr. Kalver’s keynote, Ray Miller, representing the Mayor of Dallas, made a brief welcoming address, as did Mr. Shor and Julius Gordon. Kalver Predicts Survival The keynote featured a prediction that independent exhibitors will survive their current trials, an admonition to “fight back” when competition is toughest to rewin lost patronage, and a blast at the policy which has resulted in the sales of film company libraries to television. “Many feel that we are experiencing (our competition’s) maximum onslaught,” Mr. Kalver told the convention, “and while unfortunately, there will be casualties, through reappraisal and readjustment of our business and our thinking to meet changing conditions, most of us will survive.” “However,” he continued, “we are not going to remain upright very long unless we start fighting back. We have to start telling people how much more enjoyable it is to enjoy fine new pictures in the theatre than to see the run-of-mine television entertainment in the home. It is here that the motion picture business has fallen down badly. In the effort thus far we have had little or no support from the film companies. Now they are displaying interest in promoting theatre attendance, as witness the proposal for an Oscar Derby, and that is good news indeed.” Mr. Kalver reminded the exhibitors however, that “it is inevitable that changing conditions must bring changes to our mode and philosophy of (theatre) operation” and suggested that many long-established exhibition practices may have to be changed — length of runs, number of weekly changes, types of programs, admission prices. “There must be an intelligent reappraisal of all these to keep flexible and up-to-date,” he said. He predicted that the drive-in will “loom larger in the entertainment picture” of the future. The address called for a “return to sanity” in film selling, and charged that some selling methods are “illegal and immoral” because terms that cannot be fulfilled are entered into knowingly. The “most reasonable solution,” Mr. Kalver said, “will be *he return of autonomy to branch managers, so they will be cloaked with authority to make deals based on their customer’s ability to pay.” Discussing exhibitor efforts to get outside aid in their differences with distributors, Mr. Kalver referred to last summer’s hearings before the Senate Small Business Subcommittee, saying he thought them “extremely effective in bringing to the attention of our senators the seriousness of our manifold problems.” The speaker reviewed Allied efforts to follow up on the subcommittee’s suggestion that exhibition and distribution get together and try to settle their differences, saying that Mr. Shor’s attempts to arrange meetings with company heads were “brushed off.” “Nothing has come of the Committee’s recommendations,” he said, “except shameful reprisals heaped upon the exhibitors who dared appear at the hearings as witnesses.” He termed recent sales of film backlogs to television “the most unkind cut of all,” asserting that “the best surveys indicate that theatres suffer a 15 to 25 per cent decline in gross when pictures of the cali HEBALD picture Julius Gordon welcomes the men and women of Allied. bre of ‘30 Seconds Over Tokyo’ and ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ are shown on local TV stations.” “We cannot understand the thinking behind this stupid policy,” Kalver said. “The fast-buck boys are not only dissipating the reissue value of these great properties but surely they must realize the great damage they are doing to the theatres playing their current releases, most of them on percentage.” He asserted there is a continuing need for an increase in production of “family type” pictures, saying that many of the low budget films being produced now lack public appeal. Commends MPAA Efforts He urged that more advertising be keyed to the availability of the films advertised in theatres. The Motion Picture Association was commended for its current efforts to develop business building programs and exhibition was said to be ready when called upon to aid in this project. Mr. Kalver was critical of some film advertising, saying its needs change because the public “is bored and unimpressed” with the sameness of the language and approach, with the result that “they don’t believe our ads any more.” He said that placing of theatre ads off the amusement pages of local newspapers also needs to be considered by exhibitors in search of a new approach. “If we are to survive and succeed,” he concluded, “old differences must be resolved, old antagonisms eradicated. There must be created a true tolerance and sympathetic understanding for each other’s problems.” Wednesday morning began the film clinics, to be reported on at the end of the convention. The note of optimism continued through Wednesday when Hugh McLachlan told delegates that the battle over standardization is finished, and Albert E. Sindlinger, in one of the principal addresses of the afternoon said there was no reason for any theatres to close “when ( Continued on page 23, col. 1) 14 MOTION PICTURE HERALD, DECEMBER I, 1956