Moving Picture World (Jan-Mar 1914)

28o THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD ■ Advertising for Exhibitors Conducted by EPES WINTHROP SARGENT A Letter to Bill. JUST to head ofif comment. Bill is not his real name at all. When his wife talks to him she calls him Harry and you can gamble that he answers, but now and then we are going to drop a line to Harry and call him Bill, because he doesn't care what we call him. Harry — or Bill — has just bought a house somewhere between Salt Lake and the fresh water lakes, and, seeing as how he's a friend of ours, we're going to try and head him in straight if we burst a lung or smash a typewriter. There are a lot of people in the same position as Bill and these letters are given here for their benefit and in the hope that they will help others than the William whose name is Harry. Here it Begins. Dear Bill: Glad to see that you've bought a house for a Christmas present to yourself even if there are others in the back part of the shop as silent partners. They call them silent partners because they talk more than the man whose name is on the door or the door mat. Whatever the name is, the ostensible partner is the door mat, for every silent partner thinks he knows more of the game than the active man, and the advice you'll get is more than plenty. And as though you were not getting enough, here is some more. I take it that you've bought a house that has been run down at the heel by the last man in. You don't tell me just how it has been run down, whether through the program, the service or the general conduct of the house, but I note that something is wrong and that you must win them back. It's on the winning back that I want to talk to you. Pulling Up. You are like all others who have gone this way before you. You hAve heard that there is good money in getting hold of a good location that has been run down and building it up. You've induced five other men to think your way and put up their pro-rata and it is up to you to get the money back for them and for your own bank balance. You're a game enough sport to see your own money fade without letting out more than one yelp to every eleven dollars that vanishes, but there are some men who will make more noise over a wented ten-cent piece than Charlie Gates would let out over a vanished thousand when a horse stops to get his shoes blacked on the back-stretch instead of coming home first. With five partners it's a cinch that you have at least one of these bad losers. With five partners it's a cinch if you have only one. You can't talk to these fellows about playing a waiting game. They think that all they have to do is to put up a thousand and go to the bank Monday and draw down fifteen hundred profits. It's going to be hard to convince them that you were not joking when you said that the profits would be slow at first. They heard you say it, but they know of lots of cases where a shoe string has been run up into a pair of hip boots in a couple of weeks, and they do not realize that this was some few years ago. They'll have you well nigh crazy for a time and you'll be ready to do almost anything to shut them up. The quickest way to get rich is to deal in filth. Sensation is what the people want, and they'll buy it if j-ou offer it. You can boost business a couple of hundred a day with something noisy in the way of a film and posters still more loud and I'd hate to tell you what you can make — for a little time — with the "White Slave" films. Perhaps And mind you. these "White Slave" films teach a strong moral lesson. Bless your heart, they teach a strong moral lesson. They've got the Sunday school licked three ways and up in the air when it comes to handing out a strong moral lesson, but a fairly close touch on the situation here in New York leads me to the belief that the strong moral lesson thing means more in the advertisements and the press stuff than it does in the theater. The "White Slave" films may teach a strong moral lesson until the cows come home and go back again, but the trouble is that they only teach the strong moral lesson on paper and not in the theater. The other night a couple of chaps went up to see the film that's been raided. The best he got was a cell and the only comment he made as he came out was — "Is that all!" He wasn't looking for a moral lesson, he was looking for a lot of ladies in short skirts or no skirts at all, and when he came out he felt that he had been swindled. Maybe he got a moral lesson, but he wasn't looking for moral lessons, he was looking for ladies, and he didn't see as much of them as he expected to. He saw a lot of crude, sordid, vulgar stuff, but it was not half as good as a burlesque show and it cost almost as much. He was looking for a sensation and he got the bee and he'll ever after blame you and not the film for stinging him. You've got his coin — once, but it is the last penny you will ever get from him. Then you'll get a lot of small boys and young girls, small boys of seventeen to twenty who sit alongside the young girls and look at them while they look at the film. They are not looking for moral lessons, they're looking for sensation, and they arc getting it, because they are very young and very green. They think they are "seeing life," when it is not life, but moral death they are looking at. And Then Again. And then, again, Bill, you must count on the church people. They won't come to the show, so they won't see the moral lesson. TheyMl simply mark you down as a fellow to keep away from, and they'll whale the life out of any kiddie of theirs they ever find coming out of your house. They will feel that they can contribute all the moral lessons their offsprings will need and they will want to hand them out in their own way. They may want to start on some of the other ten commandments before they tackle the seventh and they won't thank you for anticipating their school course; not a bit of it. Instead they are far more likely to complain to the mayor or the police, and these, being more or less sophisticated, will know just how much you are thinking of the moral lesson and just how much you have the box office in mind — and they won't give you the benefit of the doubt; not with the papers standing ready to give them double column stories if they do the raid stuff and never a line if they stand in with you. After that you could put in "From the Manger to the Cross" with every clergyman in town lecturing the reels and you could not raise the ban of some of these who have you on their black books. You've pulled in a lot of quarters quick, but for every quarter you get in a hurry you lose a few dollars that would be coming in ten or twenty cents a week for the next few years. The sensation thing is all right if you've only rented the house for a week and are going to leave town on the Midnight Saturday, but it's not good medicine for you. Bill, if you want to keep on doing business at the same stand, and I don't give a hoot what your backers may say. I've been through this sensation stuff more than once. Bill. I remember when John B. Dorris put on "Orange Blossoms" at the old Princess Theater that started out as the home of the San Francisco Minstrels, changed to Herrman's and wound up by being Sam T. Jack's. When Dorris died he was broke and he got about five lines of obituary. He made money with the undressing stuff, but it didn't last. I saw the "Golden Statues" at the Casino years before that, but they didn't have anything stronger to follow the gilded ladies, and so they lost money. I was behind the scenes when a big vaudeville man started to lick things here. He began with the Salome dance and wound up with a lady with no clothes and the sheriff just outside his office door. He could not build sensation on sensation past the point where the police would stand for a political pull, and so he went Bong! There is a close comparison between sensation and cheese, Bill. There comes a time when the Board of Health won't stand for the age of the Roquefort, but you can't lead them back to start on a fresh cheese that's just getting ripe. They want it good and green, and no other way. Sensation is all right if you have your grip packed and your ticket bought, but if you've a lease on a house and have paid rent in advance it's bad medicine and you can't help it any by saying it teaches a strong moral lesson. Run a good house in a cleanly fashion and stave the kickers off and at the end of the year your partners will thank you. no matter what they say to you now or whether they'll even talk to you. One times a quarter is twenty-five cents. Fifty-two times ten is $5.20. \\'hich do you want? You can have your choice. Not Limited. We are writing this primarily for Bill, but if you want a letter, sing out. If you have something of general interest in matters of management we'll be glad to write Bill about it. He is just starting out — and there is lots that he has to learn yet, though very probably he thinks he knows it all. Scrapping in Valdosta. Things have been burning down in Valdosta, Ga., where Frank Montgomery runs in opposition to the Grand, though the Grand is a favorite Montgomery title. The Grand is run by J. B. Ham, with R. J. Tindell, as manager. The Grand started the ball rolling by advertising the "great original Pasquali production." of "The Last Days of Pompeii." It had two days of it when H. N. Hunt, the Montgomery manager, came out with a wire from George Kleine and the announcement that this was the only original production. The Grand countered with a half -page advertisement stating that the Kleine production was not an imitation, but "a smaller production planned for the smaller theaters." We think that both sides displayed a lack of dignity in this exchange of "only original" and "imitation" stuff. Most intelligent people are able to reason it out that Bulwer Lytton wrote "Pompeii" some years ago, and can deduce that one could not very well be an imitation of the other since the novel is common property. In consequence the question of original and imitation does not enter, but even if it did, the main question is "Which is the best?" and this is the only factor that interests the public. Fight advertising should be directed along these lines, not in decrying the wares of another, but in booming the stuff the advertiser has to sell. The Grand ran its "Pompeii" on Christmas Day. The Montgomery had the Kleine on Saturday and Monday. It's a safe bet that most of the town turned out to see both and decide which really was the better, so that no one really got hurt. We think that in a small town two theaters might get together and play this scheme for a clean up instead of making bad blood by fighting, but where a fight is on. it is better to pay to boom your own show than to decry the other attraction. Some of the old timers may hark back to the days when "The Crowing Hen" and the "Bridal Trap" were playing at New York theaters across the way from each other and, oddly enough, at the very houses where the two versions of "Pompeii' were shown, Wallack's and the Bijou. At first McCall and Duff scrapped, but in the end the scrapping was more or less a prearranged affair designed to hold up the interest in a not very good comic