We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
346
Motion Picture News
WHAT DO YOU BID FOR
You have never before been asked to bid for a picture.
But Universal’s MILLION DOLLAR PICTURE is so totally beyond the class of any production ever before attempted that it must be handled in a revolutionary manner.
Universal can NEVER GET ITS MONEY BACK on this stupendous super-production. It has already cost so much that by the time we have exploited it and have made the prints WE WILL HAVE TO TAKE IN TWO AND ONE HALF MILLIONS TO BREAK EVEN!
I could take in MORE MONEY THAN THIS by roadshowing “Foolish Wives’’. But there are two powerful arguments against such a method. First, road-showing is a slow process. Second, I consider it unfair to you exhibitors, and therefore poor policy, to make regular moving picture theatres wait for months and months, and maybe years, after release date before showing the screen’s greatest effort.
I want MOVING PICTURE THEATRES TO HAVE FIRST CRACK AT THE BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE INDUSTRY.
I say I want this. But I can’t afford to sacrifice a million dollar picture the only one ever made— to accomplish it.
Therefore, I can’t go through with it unless you meet me more than half way.
Some of the greatest exhibitors in the world have made handsome offers for first run of “Foolish Wives’’. But, as handsome as those offers have been, THEY DO NOT COVER THAT PART OF THE NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE COST CHARGEABLE AGAINST THEIR CITIES.
Better still, such men as Tom Moore of Washington, Felt Brothers of Philadelphia, Ruben & Finkelstein of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and others, have offered me their theatres ON ANY TERMS I SEE FIT TO MAKE, because they say the industry owes this tribute to Universal! It is a great spirit, a new spirit, a spirit which will inspire Universal to reach * greater heights in the future than it ever hoped for before.