The Moving picture world (October 1922)

October 7, 1922 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 491 BEFORE AND AFTER A PARAMOUNT EXPLOITEER WORKED ON THE PARK THEATRE LOBBY It cost just five dollars to make over the front of the Park Theatre, Branford, Conn., and it came back on the run of the first attraction played. Russell Moon, of the Saunders staff, was the magician who worked the change and who proved that he knows that a good exploiteer does more than merely advertise hi* own pictures. He has made a permanent improvement in the house. Paramount Exploiter Creates a New Lobby John P. Dibble, of the Park theatre, Branford, Conn., was a picture showman in the days when he had to travel around to find enough business and film was run through the machine into a gunnysack when it did not run all over the place. Then he settled down and opened the Park theatre, but he did not read this de- partment and he did not keep his house abreast of the times. Lately he experi- enced a change of idea, he booked in a Paramount service and called in Russell Moon, one of the Paramounteers, to help him put over "Don't Tell Everything." Moon found a house with signs written in crayon on wrapping paper, with torn and ragged posters and a rather dingy front. He told Mr. Dibble that for about five dollars he could improve the lobby, and he got the five. Most of it he spent for white paint and the rest for black, for two sections of iron grating which serve to close the house, were left standing during show times and were red with rust. He painted these black and the rest of the lobby white, doing the job himself. From back stage he rustled up some old frames, painted these and put them in place, doing away with the hand-made signs and getting the eflfect shown on the right. It made such a hit with the patrons that it encouraged Mr. Dibble to charge half a dollar for "The Sheik," his second Para- mount, and he got it to capacity. Five dollars made a new house of the old and brought business that never could have been won through the old methods. Mr. Dibble is now a convert to the new mode. Not Very Far It cost only two dollars to sell "The Crim- son Challenge" to the patrons of the Odeon theatre, Savannah. Part of this was spent to drape the marquise and box office in bunting of the proper color. The rest was put into a pointing fist reading "To Death Valley," the place of "The Crimson Chal- lenge—1/100 mile." The finger pointed directly to the box office and fairly pushed them in. The count-up showed a twenty per cent, advance. Eddie Collins Has a New Lobby Frame Eddie Collins, of the Rialto Theatre, Den- nison, Texas, has to be careful of his boss' pennies if he wants to show a profit, and Eddie never was a drunken-sailor on ex- ploitation ideas. He wants something for what he invests. That is how it happened that Eddie was moved to invent a new snow lobby when he played "I Am the Law." He blew him- self to five dollars' worth of compo board and lumber and made a circular frame with a jagged inside edge large enough to take in a three sheet. This he painted white and sprinkled with fake snow, setting the six sheet back of it, and he had a snow lobby with plenty of room on either side. It is an attention-getting frame, and he can repaint it and use it for a number of other titles before it finally is cut up into something else. Make one up and put some lights in back to illuminate the sheet you use behind it. Do that and you'll want to hand Eddie a cigar, for he has hit something both good and inexpensive. HOW THE LOBBY ON THE LEFT WAS DONE OVER TO THE ZULU GLADE TO ACCENT THE OPENING The lobby of the Rex Theatre, Spartanburg, S. C, is narrow and deep. A. C. Cowles put water color signs on the oil painted walls for the coming of "The Dictator" and then, the night before the opening, he added the thatched box office and the palm lined vista to get a tropical effect at a purely nominal cost. The palms are interspersed with bamboo. Sand was put down on the floor to complete the illusion and it ran business up forty per cent.