Motion Picture News (Nov-Dec 1919)

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HAS THE QUALITY CffiCULAnON Of THE TRADE Volume 20, No. 23 November 29. 1919 Don't Be Buffaloed! WE want to put forth a message to the exhibitor with all the emphasis we are capable of. We want to back it with the utmost sincerity and with our complete belief in the solid future of this industry. The message is: Don't be buffaloed! Rumors, tricks, threats, suspicions are flying fast today. Forget them. Just remember that a business as big as this isn't run on pettiness. It is shaped, and therefore your part in it is shaped by big business laws — that's all. It's a big, solid, permanent industry. And as the retailer in it, the man betw-een pictures and the public 3'ou are the most substantial part of it. You've good solid ground under your feet. If you feel any shakiness it's m your head, not in your feet. It's only your imagination. Just so long as you're a good showman and hold your public you have nothing to fear from any man. But, you say, you can't hold your public without good pictures; and you are fearful of your future supply. Nonsense. Never before in the history of this business has the outlook been so promising. You will get many good pictures from many sources. And you always will. No one concern will ever control the supply of good pictures. Corralmg productions is as futile as getting a grip on quicksilver. It can't be done — that's all. Il won't be done. What you need right now is a little hindsight and a little foresight. If you will look back you will find that every attempt to close and control this market has failed and that furthermore the exhibitors who bowed down before the menace of control got the worst of it. If you will look ahead you will see the solid permanence of this business of making and showing pictures to meet a great public demand — and your own solid and permanent part in it as an independent factor, shopping freely for pictures for which in turn the public shops freely. Don't mortgage that future. Don't let any present bugaboo fool you. Sit tight and smile. Be independent — and you 11 win. sjc ^ ^f: What's the Answer? have spoken before of the great new aggrega\\l tion of picture palaces m this country. It is ^ ' now estimated that $76,000,000 have been invested in these buildings within the past year, and since the armistice. We have spoken of the huge responsibility placed upon pictures by this new order of picture theatre. It is a huge responsibility — because of the huge investment, staggering overhead and large seating capacity of this new theatre aggregation. We have thought, for instance, that these new theatres might offer a booking circuit to the operatic stars of New York at prices they could not refuse; and thus pictures would be supplemented with the art of the greatest vocalists m the world; and the world at large, through picture theatres, would, for the first time, hear the greatest singers. Will pictures, alone, present pictures, meet this new responsibility; or will music help meet it; or will pictures, through some new development, of and in themselves, rise to the opportunity? We like the last thought best. Whatever the new \ Con 1 1 mill] 1)11 tir.i't jxtiji ) Wm. a. Johnston, Pres. and Editor. Robert E. Welsh, Managing Editor. Henry F. Sewall, Vice-Pres. E. Kendall Gillett, Sec. and Treas. Fred. J. Beecroft, Adv. Manager. Published on Friday every week by MOTION PICTURE NEIVS. Inc., 729 Seventh Ave., New York, N. Y. 'Phone g36o Bryant. Chicago Representative, L. H. Mason, 220 So. State St.; 'Phone Harrison 7667. Los Angeles Representative, J. C. Jessen, 618 Wright and Collander Building (Hill at Fourth St.) ; 'Phone Pico 780. Subscriptions $2 a year, postpaid, in United States. Canada, $4. Foreign, $7. N. B. — No agent is authorized to take subscriptions for Motion Picture News at less than these rates. Have the agent who ti.kes your subscription show his credentials and coupon book. Western Union registered cable address is " Picknews," New York. Copyright 1919, by Motion Picture News, Inc.