The Moving picture world (March 1923-April 1923)

334 MOVING PICTURE WORLD March 17, 1923 Mid-week Splash to Help Dangerous Age This makes a too long cut, but the text is so good that we are pasing it along to you. Even if you do not get The Dangerous Age you can fit it to any one of half a hundred other titles. It is one of those special stunts J. W. Sayre, of the Jensen and Von Herberg houses in Seattle pulls now and then. In the original it is 180 lines by two. It ran in the = WIVES— IT'S = DANGEROUS FOR YOU TO KNOW TOO MUCH! Your husband is no banjo — don't ' pick on him. If he says he's been at the club, believe him. It won't'add to your peace of mind know different. After a man reaches the dangerous age "Goo-Goo" again becomes his chief figure of speech. Say it and watch, him cuddle! No matter how slow a man is at 39, at 40 he doesn't even stop at corners to toot his horn. If he likes baby talk, cultivate a lisp and please him. No wopian ever won and kept a man with sulphur and molasses. Try salve and straight lines. And, above all, take him, before it is too late — just till Friday night — to see "The Dangerous Age" at the Liberty Theatre. A picture the Liberty crowds have praised in every language but the dead language, paying it is wonderful very fine magnificent pretty excellent dynamic dramatic forceful splendid ver.v t;ood tremendous perfect pleasing smart intense beautiful remarkable unusu.i! human interesting suspenscful best nlliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigiiir: A First Nattonat Release J. W. SAYRE'S JAZZ middle of the week. Sayre thought that the business could be jazzed up a little, so he discarded the usual form of display ad and broke out with this on Wednesday. It put a new kick into the house receipts and paid for itself many times over. Some of this may have come out of the press book, but it sounds like Sayre. Few managers realize that sometimes even a good attraction needs a midweek tonic, but often receipts can be jumped by giving a little fresh push with a special display if the business is not full capacity, and Sayre collected a lot of coin with a display that was read by everyone. He writes the same sort of stuff each week in his Screenland, the house organ, and they are used to looking for his quips, so that when the Liberty came out with this display, they all settled down to read. Probably it reached a great many who fully intended to go if they had time, and were not quite certain they woifld have the time. When they heard from him, they figured that they simply must go and the half-formed intention was crystallized into an urge. This sort of stuff cannot be used very often. If it is, it will lose its punch, but for a now and then idea, if you can write this style of stuff or get it out of the press book or from the titles, you will find that it brings in real money. —P. T. A.— = Too Much Black Is = Hurtful to Display This advertisement from the Kinema Theatre, Los Angeles, would have been unusually — » good had the printer been prevented from spoiling it with too much bold type. That j^— lined backing gives the panels an isolation 1^ which does not require that every line be set in the blackest type to be had in the size used. The stars could have been displayed in a light face letter of a little smaller size, and the sales lines would have looked better in italic. The text in the lower panel could have been made a light italic, and the result would have been a very pretty display ; but it is almost impos ™" sible to persuade a Los Angeles printer to ■ cut out the heavy blacks unless you stand over him with a club, and the result is that there is no real display because it is all "display." You might get the idea in a mm single-column reproduction, but we are hitting it up to a two because we think that a study of the space will repay you. Note ^^-i how the names of Stone and Miss Oifford keep the title from showing at its best, and how they, in turn, are held down by the lines below. Then try and imagine how that would have looked with all of the star names smaller, both in the matter of height and lightness of line. Figure how the 'Jazz age" line would have come up had Louis B. Mayer been presented in an eight-point reman instead of twelve-point bold. Then take it over to your printer and talk it over with him. Don't let on that you are trying to teach him something. Cut this text off and pretend that you are trying to get information, not give it. Perhaps the idea will sink in and he will give your own job a better result next time he sets one. Black type is not display. Sometimes it is precisely the reverse. Good display is relative and consists in giving display to the important lines and not to all of the type matter. You do not lose the effect of the lesser lines by holding them down. In a space so well guarded nothing else can intrude. You will get the lines read and read more easily in a lighter letter and at the same time gi\'c greater strength to the big lines. Grauman Combines Three House Ads Combining three displays to get a larger space without taking as much space for any one of the attractions is only one of the points of improvement shown by the Grauman advertising department. For some weeks now they have been using stock cuts for attractors and have given the type its proper place as the chief selling agency. This set of three is not as good, in point of copy, as some of the other examples to come in lately, but even this is so much better than the old material as to excite comment. The cuts are from the plan books and work just as well as the original drawings, and there is no excess of art work to confuse the eye and detract from the message. These days it is no job at all to discern with the naked eye just what the Grauman houses offer in the way of main attractions and other pro "vhfi is the'dangerous age? JAZZ ACE7 MARRIACET DIVORCE ACET WE ALL REACH IT— BUT WHEN— AND HOW 7 LOUIS B. MAYER PRESENTS ^ DANGEROUS A6E WITH A POWERFUL CAST, INCLUDING LEWIS STONE RUTH CLIFFORD CLEO MADISON-EDITH ROBERTS MYRTLE STEDMAN-JAMES MORRISON -UNCOLN STEDMAN ADDED ATTRACTION A JACK WHITE.MERMAID COMEDY „ I LOOK QUI BELOW! I Five De Luxe Showft-Todfty •! 1 :00. 3:00, 6:15. S:1S, 10:15 P. M. Fir«t Show Start* «t 12 Noon. Norton at tho Morion Theodore HMikel, Conducting Kinema OrchMtrm A First National Release. AN EXAMPLE OF HOW ALL BLACK LINES GIVES THE REVERSE OF DISPLAY