Moving Picture World (Nov-Dec 1927)

December 24, 1927 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 2 7 Selling *<= Picture NOTHING NEW TO THIS. BUT IT ALWAYS BRINGS THE COIN Tom Roberts used the bannered trolley for “What Price Glory”, at the Ritz theatre, Mansfield, Ohio. Window cards in each window helped the announcement, but don’t forget the face cutouts. Ve ©O&L DS 6BE 4TEST/l0TWNP\CTUfi£ WHAT PRICE « Gt-ORVO lTslMI«M»NSflSU> «v cr-rnoM. NOW A department of practical exhibitor helps, Established September 23, 1911 by EPES W. SARGENT and continuously conducted by him for more than sixteen years. These are not stunts for certain pictures, but for certain types of pictures. Apply the ideas to your own problems. Make ’28 Show Big IN a week or two you probably will sit down and take stock of 1927. Probably you will find that the year does not well stand comparison with 1926 ; for radical changes and advanced rentals, not compensated by advanced admissions, will probably show a drop in the net gains. What are you going to do about it? Doubtless you will feel that something must be done. You can’t materially cut your rentals, so you must increase your receipts. Gift enterprises will prove of no permanent value. It may help for a time, but at best the idea is a makeshift, and when the novelty wears off, your position is worse than it was, since you must continue the gifts to maintain an average business, or discontinue them and suffer a further drop. IN some sections the double bill and even the triple feature program have been resorted to. Generally this is worse than the gift enterprises. The average public can absorb just about so much entertainment. They may come in added numbers for a time, but in the end they will suffer from mental indigestion. Moreover you cannot afford to offer two big attractions. You will have to slide on one, and the poorer picture will detract from the enjoyment of the better offering. The double program inevitably leads you into a deeper pit, and yet it will be difficult to drop one feature without lowering your admission prices. If you have to do something to make your show more attractive, don’t resort to double features and long shows. Play for a better matinee business, for one thing. Don’t argue that you can’t get them in in the afternoon. It can be done, even in the small towns. T T may take a little hard work to develop the matinees, but you can swing it. Make your afternoon performances more attractive than the night shows. Go in for trick instrumental solo numbers. Drive on the idea that the theatre makes a good ending for a shop ping trip. Perhaps in a neighborhood house you can get the merchants to unite in a drive to shop locally instead of going “downtown.” In a small town you can coax the women in from the suburbs. They will give you space in the store ads, realizing that it may help them. For the evening shows make your programs sound more attractive. You may not have to change your program; just make it sound better. Play up the comedy and the news reel with talk in your advertising. Don’t just dismiss them with “other features.” Tell what they are. Sell them individually. /"V FTEN it will pay better to use institutional advertising, at any rate for a time. Change from display to the open letter style, One Exception With most of the so-called Broadway houses trusting almost wholly to newspaper work and explaining that Broadway is too big for ballyhoo work, Tom Gorman, of the famous old Hippodrome, is a notable exception. He believes in lobby ballys, prams, or anything else that will help mop up — and he mops. F’rinstance, he used an automobile airplane on F. B. O.’s The Harvester, and cleaned with a picture that the wise ones said would have no big city appeal whatever. Gorman has a set of B. O. figures to prove to the contrary, but he sold instead of announced. Grosses and mention your features alluringly, but casually; not as the offering, but merely as a sample of what you offer every day. Don’t put ninety per cent, of your space and energy into selling fifty per cent, of your program. Sell it proportionately. No matter what your business is, if it is short of absolute capacity, you can make it better. You can make your offerings sound better, you can make your house look more attractive, you can make your advertising more convincing, and you can make 1928 show a gain over not only 1927, but the fatter years than have gone before. You can’t do it sitting still. It takes deep thought and hard work, and the harder you work, the more 3rou’ll make. Ran a Contest J. L. J. Gray, of the Pearce theatre, Port Arthur, Texas, reports fine results on a recent Most Popular Girl Contest. He obtained a scholarship valued at $150 from the local business college and offered it to the most popular girl. Each admission was good for 1,000 votes, and to get it started, Mr. Gray made a canvas of the stores and factories, presenting each girl who expressed a desire to enter with a thousand votes as a starter. The actual voting covered a three week period and held business up in increasing volume. The value of this style of stunt is that you don’t have to keep it up. You can run it and drop it without people feeling that they are being deprived of something. You can’t do that with a gift enterprise.