Motion Picture News (Oct-Dec 1930)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




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.

26 .1/ o t i o ii Pie) it r c X X a v e in b i ' 2 , 193 0 Si >MK of the glitter that surrounds the picture business is acquiring a coat of tarnish these fall days. The worries are plenty. To begin with there is the chronic concern over quality of pictures, blown up to formidable proportions today by the widespread lack of it. Then you have to figure production which persists in rising without pulling standards up along with it. A second and extremely bothersome problem. Thirdly, and inter-related with the others, of course, is the sag in theatre receipts, which are off anywhere from ten to thirty per cent as against last year, the exact percentage varying with the individuals you talk to about grosses. Fourth — maybe it should be moved up — is the vexatious, impenetrable and mystifying foreign situation which has succeeded in keeping a number of ordinarily level heads in Xew York revolving at top speed. For nobody has the slightest idea where the overseas tangle will end. The Insiders include this latter headache because foreign sales are so inescapably interlocked with the progress or retrogression of the industry in the United States, although the exhibitor at large probably can't see how he's involved in what happens, or doesn't, in ( iermany or Brazil. Nevertheless, he is. And this is why : Regardless of whether or not the bookkeeping systems in vogue are sound or otherwise, it is true, notwithstanding, that American negative costs rarely show a profit from earnings in the American field. Foreign sales are depended upon to suffuse the red with plenty of black and, if they don't, it inevitably follows that the slack will have to be picked up by increased rentals foisted upon the domestic showman. Quotas, other restrictive forms of legislation, international economic depression, what to do and how about providing foreign language audiences with talkers they can understand are among the many INSIDERS' problems facing foreign sales managers who will tell you frankly they have never been so dizzy in all of their careers. It is this combination of pressing circumstances that is directing the fire of the bankers toward the leaders of the industry. Fog and Befogged Interested in balance sheets and speaking the language of assets versus liabilities, the financial fraternity is expressing pointed concern over the future. Questions have been asked, but satisfactory answers have not been forthcoming always. Not necessarily because the desire for evasion exists, but primarily because nobody quite knows how to reply. Out of the maze, it does appear, however, that one method of procedure may be safely evolved. The major companies are beginning to understand more fully that the day of merchandising is here; that intensive efforts to sell product must be made if any measure of success is to be met; that routine booking, routine advertising, routine everything may be expected to bring routine results in a day when the extraordinary is a pressing need. Note these signs of the times : Adolph Zukor, interviewed in Kansas City while en route to the Coast, recognizes the importance of advertising, plus merchandising. Therefore, Paramount will so act. Carl Laemmle has ditched Universal's advertising budget for a free-hand policy that will cost more money but which inevitably will bring the results for which it is designed. Can You Answer Why A WELL known executive hurried East, stayed about a week, scurried West and now shortly returns to New York to spend a lot of time here when his job is really at the studio? Several picture personalities called a meeting, started to talk calmly, ended up violently and then continued their deliberations with as many lawyers present as there were principals. A certain chap who should be in Hollywood to sit in on certain conferences suddenly found pressing business that succeeded in taking him almost 2,000 miles from the scene of confab? The extensive duties of a fellow whose name you know well are to be augmented and why at least one other fellow — executive in the same organization — is gnawing his fingernails? A well known production figure, formerly endowed with a highsounding title, consented to drop the monicker and permit himself to sink into ostensible oblivion and for how long? Harry Warner, flanked by Sam Morris and Abe Waxman, heads an advertising council to cooperate with all circuit houses, not merely the Warner holdings, on merchandising, advertising, exploitation for future pictures. What Radio did with Amos 'n' Andy is now current day trade history. It looks like a repeat for "Cimarron" and other important films. The company is that sold on the idea of emotionalizing the exhibitor through trade and newspaper advertising. Bankers and a Slant Some day — perhaps what's going on is the beginning of the era — the picture business will learn that it isn't the number of pictures, but the kind of pictures that counts ; that it's a day of specialization and that only specialized, intensified treatment will bring home the dough. The Insiders happen to know that the ideas here expounded are looked upon as sound and with a great deal of favor in certain of the banking circles whose support make the operations of several large picture companies possible. They are drawing upon the experiences and the growing pains of other industries and applying them to this. Smart eggs, those bankers. Boosting the Nut Wonder why I'athe is remaking a large part of "Beyond Victory." war time drama. E. H. Griffith is directing the retakes, while John Robertson directed the original. Bill Boyd. Helen Twelvetrees, Dorothy Burgess, Few Cody. Robert Ames and Russell Gleason are in the cast. Franklin-U. A. "Jam" It didn't take long for Harold B. Franklin and United Artists to ride into a jam in discussing plans for a hook-up in the battle against Fox West Coast Theatres. Franklin, as Motion Picture News exclusively stated, advanced a tieup with United Artists, but his proposition was refused. He thinks United Artists is bluffing. Franklin says, but the company is going ahead with its plans for 25 houses along the Coast. The first house will be at Santa Ana. a deal is under way at Pasadena, and one other is just about closed The company plans a straight picture policy with Sol Lesser in charge. United Artists takes the position that talking pictures, like legit shows, are more important than the theatre that plays them. Big theatres and chains.