Moving Picture World (Jan-Feb 1927)

442 MOVING PICTURE WORLD February 5, 1927 Which Space Catches Your Eye First on This Page? knows that in a small town the reader has more time and less paper, and will read ads and all, so he tells about his three changes, uses one cut for the attraction, generally on the Monday-Tuesday attraction, and sells just as many tickets as he could with a three or four column splash. The bottom of the cut will suggest how he lays the rest of the space. The Wednesday-Thursday announcement runs in single column on the left with the last two days on the right, all type. Mr. Larmour gets unusually good type displayers, wherein he is fortunate, but the copy is what counts, and that is all Mr. Larmour’s. Single Space Has Cut to Help Gain Display This advertisement from Chicago on Bertha the Sewing Machine Girl is largely cut, though it has a couple of good selling lines in the small space. It takes about 52 lines, or not quite four inches. A LOVE AMD LIN6ERIE ' EDITION OF THE GREAT MELODRAMA tv/T/Aj MADGE BELLAMY i:h:k.h MONROE. Pil DEARSORN-CONTIHUOUS IN THE ORIGINAL SIZE Really some of these Chicago singles are better than the two and three column displays, since Chicago is going largely to hand lettering and promises to become as bad as Boston. It is getting worse all the time. With small spaces, due to the heavy line rate, there is a necessity for some hand work, but it is being very crudely done, and as usual the artists are trying to be artistic instead of legible. Makes a Big Drive on Summer Bachelors In addition to three snappy cuts the New Theatre, Baltimore, uses a lot of talk on Summer Bachelors, and the talk rather than the cuts put over the sales, though the cuts contribute to the emphasis. We think the best sales line is : “Do you know there’s a powerful reason for the short skirts of today. Will they make them any shorter?” We thought there were a couple of well known reasons, but most men will be interested in this appeal. The excess of talk does not make for overselling as sometimes it does. It is not that sort of talk. It all belongs to the general line that here is a story you really need to see, and there is no repetition. Each item offered is on a different angle, and it all helps to create the impression that there is so much to be told that space is far too short. Did She Make LOVE? YOU NEVER HAVE AND NEVER WILL See Anything Like It! CITS AND CHATTER It is an unusually good example of selling through talk, and the talk is all upper and lower case to make it easy for you to read. There are five lines where two point leads in between would have helped, but apart from this the typography is much above the average. The lower cut is for the added attraction and not for the picture but it all helps to appeal to the class of parons who will most enjoy the picture. It’s a nice use of a three nines. Drake Is a Marvel of Selling Compactness Most theatres taking small spaces are content to put over the title of the feature and let it go at that, but the Drake Theatre, Chicago, takes only the twenty line single shown here in original size to put over Syncopating Sue and five vaudeville items. 'Ambassador Theater Corp.’sWtRt DRAKE ^^546 Mont “Syncopating Sue” With COJtlNNE GRIFFITH rose Ave. Rav Shannon & Co. I Ross & Edwards ■ The Variety j ; pioneers Billy Hughes and H The Three Orontoa ■ HIGHLY CONDENSED The display is arrived at through the use of the reverse signature. The title is a twelve point display and the star is in eight point. The vaudeville items run in six point, and bold face, at that. This is one of the best examples we have had of condensation. It is purely directory, but it serves its useful purpose. This All Type Is a Chicago Splasher Warner’s Orpheum Theatre, Chicago, took 75 lines to put over The Winning of Barbara Worth, and by avoiding the use of cuts and large type faces, it made this display push holes in everything around. THE OUTSTANDING PHOTOPLAY IN ALL THE WORLD Completed 60 days ago by Samuel Goldwyn at a cost of one million dollars! HENRY KING'S PRODUCTION “THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH” WITH Ronald Colman, Vilma Banky and a cast of 3(000— the roman* tio spectacle of the ages. Statfl at Monro® Continuous 8:30 A. M. Till Mianlte ONLY SEVENTY-FIVE LINES This was set into a page of fairly small spaces, many of them no larger than this, but every space was jammed full of type and cut or, worse yet, hand lettered. It was all as tidy as the ash heap. And on such a page this well set space, with plenty of white, with modest but confident argument, stood out the one thing on the sheet that was different from all the rest. It was the first thing to attract attention when the page was looked at. It was about the only space to suggest a really class show. It must have done a lot of selling for its size. The text would have been a little better had the second and the bottom banks been set in light italic instead of this rather thick fullface, but that’s a detail. It was at least better typography than its competing spaces. Double this space could have sold attention no better ; perhaps not as well.