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120 MOTION PICTURE THEATER MANAGEMENT
different types of employee in a motion picture theater as there are functions and departments. The mere listing of these groups, together with their duties and their supervision, makes a bulky report, no matter how briefly one may essay to express it. Hence the devotion of so much space in this volume to the explanation of man-power; and hence the subdivision into chapters to make the individual factors distinct.
Yet to plunge into so many details without an intelligible bird's-eye view might result in some natural confusion. I take time and space at this juncture, therefore, to approach the subject with a presentation of the salient features of the entire field, in order that I may thereafter proceed to each of those features with the assurance that it is fitted into its place in the larger plan.
What, first of all, does a theater management do? It receives people, it seats people, it cares for and protects people. It amuses them and entertains them. It runs a plant in a clean and attractive manner. It handles money in receipts, disbursements, profits, investments. It engages, trains, supervises, discharges, promotes a varying number of workers.
For every such function, there is a department. I have elucidated the organization before; but for the sake of convenience I will give the list again briefly here: Service, producing, housekeeping, and finance. In each of these major groups there are divisions and sub-divisions. There are streetmen, doormen, floormen, ushers, musicians, pages, cashiers, clerks, maids, dancers, vocalists, projectionists, stage hands, porters. All along the line there are department heads or group captains. In other words, whether you look at the top, at the bottom, or at the middle of this regiment, whereever your eye rests on a single point of the organization, you will find a single individual. What I mean is that a manager or a captain or a porter is one person— neither more nor less.
Now, on the other hand, the theater must be just one theater— very definitely just one theater. And I claim that the ideal in utilizing personnel is to establish the unique character of the house in the specific task of the individual. He or she will sell a ticket, or seat a patron, or run a projection