Moving Picture World (Nov-Dec 1927)

64 MOVING PICTURE WORLD Cleanliness F. F. Proctor as he was at 19. Rang the Golden Bell F. F. Proctor’s Policy IP ill Always Build Your Business F. F. Proctor as his friends see him today. ROBABLY if you asked F. F. Proctor to what he attributed his success as a showman, he would answer “clean shows. By EPES IF. SARGENT He would be correct, so far as he went, but that does not cover all of the ground, though clean shows have been the foundation upon which all the rest has been built, for he knows that, even now, women and children prefer clean amusement and will go where they can be assured freedom from the raw filth that too frequently passes as humor. And the men go where the women take them. But Mr. Proctor does not stop with cleanliness in his stage show. He is a stickler for clean, attractive houses, and, carrying matters to their last analysis, he wants a clean house staff. He picks his managers for personality as well as ability. He seeks men who mentally are in step with his own ideas ; knowing that the man who doesn’t see the need for being so particular cannot carry out his ideals. In the last analysis, it may be said that the Proctor success is built upon clean shows and clean showmanship. The manager who lets the performers go just about as far as he thinks he can, stands little show of lasting in the Proctor employ. He gets a little too liberal in his own interpretation of cleanliness and then he goes out to look for another job. FOR nearly two generations theatrical men have poked quiet fun at what they are inclined to regard as a puritanical nicety, but it seems to have paid. Only this season he opened a $4,000,000 theatre on New York’s growing East Side and houses almost as magnificent in Schenectady and New Rochelle, adding to an already formidable list of theatres in the vicinity of New York, and most of the string of Proctor houses are owned outright. One of the first to see the possibilities of the picture-vaudeville combination, Mr. Proctor was one of the very first to compete with the then new “store show” by giving picture shows in real theatres. Later, again sensing a popular trend, he added vaudeville, and it is largely to the success of his ventures that we owe the present general change-over to the same policy on the part of many former vaudeville houses. And the Proctor policy of cleanliness is not merely a pose designed for publicity use. He does not press agent his clean shows and seek to sell on that argument, while being careless as to the delivery of the goods. He exacts absolute decency in program, and lets the audiences do the talking. That’s where he makes his success. Mothers know that it is safe to let their children go to Proctors. They know that they can go themselves. They talk of it to each other. Word gets around. His press agents do not have to keep plugging away j on that theme. Probably it is not mentioned a dozen times a \ year in connection with any single house, but the people know there is always a good, clean show' at Proctor’s — and they go. | MR. PROCTOR knows that the shows are better because I they are clean. He knows that the act that resorts to 1 vulgarity and filth, does so generally because it is unable to be really entertaining. It is not the clever comedian who has ) to resort to profanity and mild obscenity to get shocked laughs. 1 He can get them fairly with real humor. It is the actor who ' is not getting over who has recourse to smut, and so a clean show is almost always a good one, too. And he sells the Proctor show. He makes his show as a I whole, the headline. He advertises the show at Proctor’s, 1 rather than one headliner this week and someone else the next. { He knows the value of “names,” and he uses them, but not to i the exclusion of the show as a whole. As a result, if his headline is a little weak now and then, there is not the drop that is felt in houses where the appeal is mostly on the big name. People go to see the show, and they like the show. They do not miss the headliner. Headliners may help, but with the Proctor system, their absence does 1 not hurt. And a rigidly clean theatre is as important to the Proctor policy as a clean show. When mere cleanliness was a luxury, Proctor theatres were clean. Now that a new note of almost extravagant luxury has been sounded, Proctor is still to the fore. He has been quick to sense, even to anticipate the change 1 in style. He was one of the first to go to the straight picture system, and there was a time when you could get all of the I first runs at the Proctor houses. When there was a dip toward the addition of vaudeville, Proctor was in the lead, and his newest houses reflect the present policy of a de Mille setting 1 for all parts of a theatre. And he has carried the scheme beyond most, in that luxury does not stop at the certain line but is carried backstage for the benefit of the entertainers. BUT a theatre is not just a theatre to F. F. Proctor. Location means as much as the house itself. He wants the right location, and he picks his sites as carefully as chain (Please see second column, page 65)