The Moving picture world (May 1923-June 1923)

296 MOVING PICTURE WORLD May 26, 1923 Editorial Personalities Toot ! Toot ! Two days more and a large and more or less important slice of our industry transfers itself to Chicago. One solid — or liquid — week of the usual "conventioning" — and gosh, how we dread it. If the convention survives the opening day it will have shown unusual powers of assimilating punishment. Three trade paper editors are scheduled to speak. That's a severe tax to put on the circulation departments. Al Lichtman surely has been lining up the artillery for a loud bang at convention time. Jack Bachman mislaid the rubber band for the bankroll a few weeks ago and the money has poured into Broadway for the biggest stage hits available. Now a list headed by "The Boomerang" and "The First Year" is all complete and registered in time for the convention doings. With competition sending the prices of stories out of sight, players of any value at all at a premium, and good directors writing their own tickets — next Fall's production sheets are going to hit new marks. Which means QUOTAS scaled up so that every subject is on a "super" basis. So — If this convention wants a real and serious PROBLEM — no film gathering is complete without one — let's find out where the money is coming from to pay the bill. Admission prices CANNOT go down. We have been told in the past that they could not go up — and have seen them rise despite that belief. Can history repeat and the average move still higher? Personally — all the affidavits in the world as to production cost wouldn't soothe our injured feelings if we had paid cash to witness seventy per cent, of the past season's Broadway offerings. Speaking as a relative of Mr. and Mrs. General Public we'd ask more intelligent entertainment and less money talk. After which ser-ee-ous interlude we will proceed with the Personalities. FLOYD BROWN, Indianapolis manager for First National, at lunch with IRVING LESSER. An exchange man who says, with a note of convinc ing sincerity, that he is going over his quota this Summer. Has promised the home office to that effect. Then ran into "BILL" WRIGHT, of VITAGRAPH, and heard figures to prove that labor was never so scarce, never got so much money, and was never so all-fired willing to spend it as this Summer will show. A few more encounters like this and we began to feel CHEERFUL over the Summer prospect. That's going some. Remember the licking we took a year ago? Gr'rr'h! Now it looks as though the cue is for that song favorite, "Them Days Has Gone Foreever." HODKINSON showed the New Yorkers something this week with a bang-up campaign on the thirty simultaneous week showings of "DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS" that followed the Cameo run. Half-Minute Editorials One of these days they are going to carry a raving exhibitor off to the booby hatch and the learned doctors, after lengthy examination, will report that the word "QUOTA" did the trick and will repeat on any occasion said exhibitor hears it. "QUOTA" is the word that has come to serve the double purpose of "breaking the bad news" and giving the alibi for it at the same time. Right now "QUOTA" is a red flag to Mr. Exhibitor. What will it be after the exchange men and salesmen get through the August and September drives? Always seemed a mistake to us that trade paper advertising men didn't assign "QUOTAS" to the producers. And — sometimes — get advance deposits. But that's getting too serious for thirty-second frivolities. Here's a suggestion for the new M. P. T. O. A. administration: Flooding the trade papers with lengthy COLLECT telegrams is not exactly the EASIEST WAY of getting publicity. It just "isn't done" in the most select press agent circles. It has given us many a smile over the past year, but when a thousand-word night press rat* wire drifted in from Chicago last Wednesday we rebelled at our "QUOTA." NAT ROTHSTEIN returned to New York this week. Pretty soon we'll hear the cannon roaring. NAT has had many a chance to "circus it" in the year past — and handled the job with much suecess — but, man, oh, man, what an opportunity that two-fisted boy has em "HUMAN WRECKAGE." Here'* a case of the picture finding the organization and the men to handle it right. R. E. W. FOSTER GILROY and GEORGE GALLUP deserve a half dozen bouquets on the corking newspaper ad copy that put the idea over. We liked it particularly because it seemed to be aimed at efficiently selling the picture and the thirty theatres — and not utilized as a Roman holiday for "clevah" copy-writing. The thirty theatre stunt reminded us of CLYDE ECKHARDT'S feat— which probably still holds the Windy City record — of forty-nine consecutive seven day showings on "OVER THE HILL." Boy, that was putting it over. We happened through Chicago about the time CLYDE was sowing the preparatory selling seeds and heard him variously described from the extremes of lunacy to highway robbery. Went through again a few months later and the chorus was, "I told you so !" — "I knew he'd put it over." Then CLYDE ECKHARDT followed with seventy-three theatres for five day showings of "THE QUEEN OF SHEBA." No wonder they pulled him back to the home office quick and pronto, where we saw him last week, solidly and firmly intrenched, and bubbling over with enthusiasm over the FOX Fall line-up. While under the ether recently "BILL" YEARSLEY discovered some new mountain streams so as soon as his underpinning would stand firm he packed the kit, inveigled P. A. PARSONS into joining him, and last Friday to Monday were sad and sorrowful days for the festive trout. It was serious business for "P. A." but just a dress rehearsal for "BILL." On June 1st the latter is going to start a three months' leave of absence from FIRST NATIONAL. Finally had to succumb to his yearning for a holiday in the "broad, open spaces." DR. GIANNINNI— the one and only banker to whom film men can talk without stuttering — in a reckless moment at the MIKE LEVEE luncheon declared that he wa9 "always willing to meet and co-operate with other LEVEES and help them along the road to success." The bread lines form on the right — and left — and center. Save a space for us till we get back from Chicago. So long 1 R. E. W.