Moving Picture World (Jan-Feb 1927)

652 The First “M o v i e” Publicity W or k e r (Continued from page 623) one since. The boys are here to stay, whether the big executives like it or not. The first press agent's salary was just sixty iron men per week, a sumptuous stipend, honorarium or whatnot for those days, and one which caused some of the more thrifty of the Patents Co. magnates to grumble every time they thought about it, which was every Saturday. But in the main they grumbled inwardly, just as magnates do today, when it comes to paying the press agent his salary, which goodness knows, and thanks be, has gone up some. Yet in many ways that sixty per paid to Chester Beecroft and grudgingly given at first, was perhaps the most useful money ever spent for the motion picture’s progress in the light of what its recipient did for the money. It goes without saying, of course, that Chester Beecroft was a trained newspaper man, with showmanly experience before he joined the Motion Picture Patents Co. As a boy in Westchester County he had edited and run the Pelham Manor Tribune, a little four page weekly, that for a time was quite a journalistic and commercial success. He had served an apprenticeship on the N. Y. World, part of the time as an assistant to Roy McCardell, the noted syndicate and magazine writer. He had been advance man for Julia Marlowe, Mrs. Fiske and Mrs. Pat Campbell. He had been New York manager for the Billboard and press agent for the Hotel Astor, just after it opened. Old-timers will recall how in 1908 he handled and exploited Mene, the famous Eskimo boy whom Peary brought down from the Arctic, to the hotel’s great benefit and profit and Manager Muschenheim’s suave satisfaction. So Beecroft, though only 22, was fully backgrounded for the really big and important things he had to do for his employers and the film industry generally. The film press agent of today is concerned principally with “putting over” his company’s pictures. Chester Beecroft’s job for the Patents Co. in addition, was “putting over” the things which have made his successor’s jobs possible. Let me cite just a few of them. Along about 1911, when every city in the country was striving to impose a drastic munici censorship on motion pictures, the situation for the movie was most serious. Through F. Hopkinson Smith, the author, and John Collier, I think it was, of the People’s Institute, Beecroft was instrumental in getting the National Board of Censors organized and in persuading the Patents Company and the General Film Company, which had then been formed to distribute the former’s product to accept the idea of having the picture censored before release. It was a life-saver for the film industry, and the other companies, of course, followed the big fellows’ lead. This organization of educators and prominent citizens is the present National Board of Review, with its fine record of constructive service for the public and the film industry. Beecroft then made a tour of the various State capitals, as the representative of the Motion Picture Patents Co., wih the People’s Institute as a background, explaining to legislators and educators the nature and usefulness of the motion picture. By this means impending censorship measures, many of them most drastic in character, were headed off and the seed planted which later helped many a movie protagonist to successfully combat threatened adverse legislation. MOVING PICTURE WORLD W e i l The Worker AMONG the duties he assumes as Director of Publicity and Advertising for Rayart Pictures, Richard Weil edits a little magazine called “The Box Office” that radiates wit and information for the exhibitors. It goes out with a two-color cover that might put it over on the newsstands if it appeared there. And it goes to 18,000 people. There are three pages of lively news and feature photographs in the current issue, with the balance full of interesting copy and comment. “The Box Office” carries twelve pages with editorials and cartoons on the back cover in the manner of a metropolitan daily. Rayart showmen value the book highly and use it consistently to promote their showings. Two New Candidates . For Hall of Fame Epes Wintlirop Sargent, managing editor of MOVING PICTURE WORLD, takes exception to the claim made by the writer of the accompanying article, that Chester Beecroft was “the first movie press agent.” Mr. Sargent informs us that in June, 1909, he was hired on part time by Commodore J. Stuart Blackton of the Vitagraph, to write short publicity items for the trade press, at that time consisting of the MOVING PICTURE WORLD and the FILM INDEX, and for the newspapers, and that he was succeeded in this position by Sam Spcdon as a full time press agent some months later, when Mr. Sargent joined “Pop” Lubin as scenario editor. This would make Mr. Beecroft the third, instead of the first, movie press agent. Mr. Sargent was doing publicity on “part time” only, however, so we contend this eliminates him. The question of priority thus becomes one of the exact date when Mr. Beecroft and Mr. Spedon assumed their respective duties as press agent, with the patents company Vitagraph, a matter of a few weeks at most. This question we cannot decide, offhand, and without further investigation. We will say, however, that we expected to start something when we wrote this article hut not so soon. — N. C. | In the same year the theatrical trust, as then constituted, who were frankly scared at the rapid strides being made by the motion picture in the amusement field, had a bill presented at Albany, which would have made it a misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment, February 26, 1927 to project motion pictures using celluloid film. It needs no diagram to explain what this would have meant to the still very infantile, but very much overgrown and disorganized film industry, if that bill had ever become a law. Beecroft got permission from his bosses, as a forlorn hope, took an operator and a projection machine to Albany and before the Codes Committee of the State Legislature, ran off a film for them and deliberately set fire to it. He demonstrated to the solons, to their entire satisfaction that the blaze could not extend beyond the protective felts on the projection machine, thus showing that the fire hazard was not unduly great. The bill was killed, but it would be interesting to know Beecroft’s sensations, while making this demonstration. Suppose that those felts had been loose or defective? It was Beecroft also, who first initiated the campaign with the newspapers to take the motion picture seriously. He was still the only press agent in the business, so he did not hesitate to take the newspapers into his confidence. He never was afraid to go back to an editor. In this, I fear, not all who have come after him could say as much. During this period of the industry’s progress, all the picture houses were dark, a condition productive of much newspaper and other criticism. Every day the press had some new case to make out against the movie. With the approval of the Patents Co., Beecroft took an operator and conducted a series of experiments with colored lights, while projecting film. He proved that with amber hued lighting none of the projection values were lost. Then he showed the newspaper editors what was being done and won their co-operation, following this up with a campaign of advertising in the trade press for the education of the exhibitor, uring them to light their houses. This was the inception of the present lighted theatre, which we have today, and which has changed the motion picture theatre from a resort of doubtful character to a place of amusement where even the most fastidious can repair without criticism or offense. Beecroft also campaigned for better and more dignified motion picture advertising. His series of “fairy story” ads, which appeared in the trade press in 1913, were regarded then as being the best and most effective advertising which up to that time had appeared in the industry. These advertisements contain suggestions, which might be helpful even today to the average film advertising man. Beecroft was also practically the first man to use a colored insert, his three-color advertisement on the “Littlest Rebel” for E. K. Lincoln and Frank Tichenor in 1914 creating a sensation and resulting in selling all territory' on this picture within two or three weeks, entirely on the strength of the advertisement and without the buyers viewing the picture, at the enormous gross (for those days) of $126,000. Some three months previously, the Gaumont Co. had run a four-page three-color insert on their “Fall of Constantinople,” but it was a long time before these two had any imitators. As the premier press agent — the real publicity prima donna — of the motion picture, few will deny after reading the foregoing that Chester Beecroft surely has a record of constructive achievement and genuine service to the industry, of which he may well be proud. He blazed the way for many others, doubtless as able as himself, but who, perhaps, did not have his singular opportunities. Yet today, as a press agent, Chester Beecroft is all but forgotten. Probably he would rather have it that way.