Moving Picture World (Sep 1916)

2104 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD September 30, 1916 Wo know where we can get a bale or two of scalps, but the police are so darned interfering around here. And here is the sort of talk that drives home argument. It does not start right in to argue a point, it gets you interested and off your guard, then it tells you something. Did you ever try to write standing up? Well, the writer started the writing of this commentary in that position, which will explain any possible strain therein. But he once saw a picture of David Graham Phillips, who wrote "Susan Lenox" and other big novels standing at a sort of high desk, and was told this was Phillips' favorite writing posture. Ever thereafter he longed to imitate. But that might be as bad as trying to smoke cigarettes to attain genius, just because Robert Louis Stevenson or Booth Tarkington affected them, or doing without all meat just because Bernard Shaw happens to be a vegetarian. Did you ever try to eat standing up? The writer has not since he went swimming as a boy, and happened to sun himself on the bank alongside a poison ivy colony. Did you ever enjoy a photo-play in unpleasant surroundings? In uncomfortable chairs, in badly ventilated auditoriums, among people who looked and acted uncouth, where proper attention was not given to projection of the picture? It is ten to one you didn't, at least in the modern day. The moral hereof is that all these things are unnatural. The strain, the pre-occupation, the interference with composing or dinner table or theater delights, takes away from satisfaction with that done or enjoyed. The proper caper is to get the theater, in the last case, which will put you most at your ease. We are too modest to suggest the one in Columbus which will fill this bill. A nice chromo of the editor playing with his favorite dog will be sent to the reader who first sends in the correct answer. About the only kick we have against the Majestic Monthly is that there are four weeks in between issues. A Pretty Layout. This advertisement for the Auditorium, Coatesville, Pa., is an unusually neat layout. It was planned by Walter H. Brooks, and is the first of his newspaper work that we have seen. In the original it is a page wide and drops fifteen inches. The centre panel is a suppositious interview with Miss Pickford. There is another two-tens advertisement and -Charming*. Story Marv Pickford £> Q. , ".' Th; N«tion-s sweetheart Hulda from Holland ■ *V0T IS DOT PITCHEB POSIKG? Mom i.uvohlu of Miu-y Pickford Chn Auditorium °"SJ?rSr£r,y Thurs. Aug. 24th on the reverse side of the sheet for the rest of the weekly program, this falling on the next to the last page. The big advertisement loses considerable in the reduction, but it gives an idea as to how the cuts are laid, and catchlines are used for each picture, adding to the illustrative value. At first glance it might seem that too much space is given the cuts, but the cuts tell more than the types could, and arc more apt to create a desire to see the picture. Just Think! Just think ! Miss Dolly Spurr, of the Royal-Grand. Marion, Ind., got out a form letter the other day without a post-script, Can you imagine a woman writing a Utter with no P. S.? Miss Spurr is unusual in many other ways. But she did write too much, which is not a wholly feminine fault. It lakes a luap of interest to begin to read a letter that runs nearly two pages. If the recipient had that much Interest to start with, he does not need the letter. The main purpose of the letter is to announce the changes In the house. This ends well up the first page, due paragraph on the nature of the coming attractions, and the letter should have ended on the first page. She tries to toll too much at one time, and that is the common fault of so many form letters. In a letter, above all other pieces of advertising, brevity should be the distinguishing characteristic. Like so many others lately, Miss Spurr is adding a monthly calendar to her weekly program. Hers is ::'._. by t'.'i. with a punched hole to hang it up by. The calendar alone is seldom sufficient to make much business, but it is an admirable supplement to the weekly program. Try it yourself. It need not be a costly nor complicated affair, and it should be small and unobtrusive or at the least not too obtrusive. It is not supposed to be a one sheet lithograph. Miss Spurr uses a canary manila stock with four columns to the three and a half inch width, yet she names day and date and play and star, and still has room for the union label. Perhaps We'll Get a Goat. We take this from Real Reels, reminding the reader that George Editor Carpenter is also manager of the Paramount-Empress, Salt Lake City : Mr. Heinecke insists that we tell you about the Fashion Show, the Glad Hand Committee in the lobby, the Nursery for Children with its toys and colored maid who can attend to the wants of twenty vociferous youngsters at one and the same time, the shadow box and the dressed dolls for advertising, the substitution of scenes from coming films for slides, and a few other things too numerous to mention. To us and to a number of exhibitors these things are old stories. We confess that we stole the Fashion Show idea from San Francisco, the advance film scheme from Denver, and some of them we swiped from "Picture Theater Advertising," but the doll stunt is ours, and seems to be scoring with the kids and grownups. Mr. Heinecke insists that we tell you all about it, so here goes : The Paramount-Empress has a shadow box in its lobby. The settings and contents of this shadow box are changed with each show. For instance, when "Hulda from Holland" was the attraction the background of the box was a Dutch landscape in Delft blue. By way of wings there were cutouts of a windwill, a fence, and a tree. In the center reposed "Mary Pickford," wooden shoes and all, in neat Dutch costume and cap. "The House of the Golden Windows" showed the house on the hill in the background with the two children, backs to the front glass, gazing at the golden windows in the distance. "Little Lady Eileen" disclosed a dainty fairy amid appropriate settings, and "Public Opinion," a nurse behind the bars. The dolls are artistically and correctly dressed, and there is no suggestion of burlesque in the display. Every child, and many ladies who pass the theater, stop to look at the display, and many are the questions, "What are you going to have next?" The theory is that it is good advertising ; likewise, variety is the spice of advertising — don't work one stunt to death. It's a good scheme and passed along, but if George Editor will take down that little brown covered Picture Theater Advertising, and read the last paragraph on page sixteen we will, if he wishes, send a selfaddressed tag to be tied to the goat's horns when he lets it loose. It's one he overlooked, but it is there. It is a good scheme, not alone for the lobby, but for store windows downtown. We would not throw the hooks into George Editor in this cru-el fashion did he send us some stuff from the house now and then, but since he has been running the theater he has not sent in a single advertisement or even a throwaway. We hope this will be a warning to him to ship some stuff east now and then. In passing, Mr. Carpenter has swiped nothing from P. T. A. The book was printed to pass along good ideas, and Mr. Carpenter is merely making intelligent use of it. And in talking of house programs he offers this valuable device : Leave the matter of type, quads, reglets, and other mysterious things connected with the printing trade to your printer, but after he has set up your program please, oh, please, read the final proof, because printers do make some awful bulls in sober seriousness. Given, a printer with three whiskey sours under his belt, and he will sour the whole works — one little bull will make your program the laughing stock of your patrons. He is talking of the value of the house organ. He knows what Real Reels under his management is doing for the Notable Features Film Co., and he wants to pass the word along. He's right, too. There is nothing so good as a house organ of the real sort. Adds a Calendar. The Lehigh Orpheum, South Bethlehem, Pa., adds a monthly calendar to its weekly folder, and then makes the folder a six pager. We think they will like the effect better if they put the date in a type distinct from the faces used for announcing the subjects. It is a small matter, but an italic line, preferably in upper and lower case, would make a heap of difference. The advantage In the change from a four to a six is that it gets all of the program on the same side of the sheet, and also gives space for a condensed program for the current and succeeding week. It is an even better form than the old, and that was plenty good enough. From Philadelphia. Only two recent Philadelphia programs, but they are new ones. The Auditorium. Logan, one of the suburbs, is printed on a stock better than is needed, blue and gold embossed cover with a landscape panel. If they picked up the stock at a bargain, the same as Jay Emanuel sot his. then there is a reason, but if they paid regular prices, they paid too much. The program should be attractive, but it need not be eostly. A neat print does well enough. The program occupies the inside pages of the four pager, well laid out, but the printer should have used a slightly smaller type, and have taken the rest of the space to get some white between the days. These do