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The Middleman of the Movies
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composed by bright young men whose parents had made the mistake of sending them to college instead of turning them loose on the world at 15. However, this is an unwarranted economic digression and has little to do with the subject.
Broadly segregated there are two classes of film middlemen, the regular jirogram exchanges, such a.H' Mutual, Paramount, Pathe, Universal and Tri:ingle. General Film, and the state rights dealers, the jobbers of big features, like "The Birth of a Nation," "Ramona," "Civilization" and a host of others whose names ire household words.
The exchange system is less than a dozen years old.
Its forerunner was the film peddler who went from one show house to another with his film in a grip or under his arm. At that time, about 1903, the film in short lengths was chiefiy employed as a "chaser" in vaudeville houses. Two pioneers of this early stage of the film industrv are (leorge K. Spoor, president of Essauav. a millionaire many times over, and (ieorge Kleine. another Chicagoan. until recently head of the General Film Companv. Spoor was the inventor of the "Kinodrome" projecting machine, one of the earliest in the market, and George Kleine supplied most of the films for this contrivance.
Then came the first real film plays, from Pathe in France and Edison in New York, and as a direct consequence of their advent, the birth of the "nickel show." which later became the "movie." The first "shows" were 500 feet in length and in duration about nine minutes.
This is "Little Mabel, the Film Inspector." She inspects the reel to see that it is in good condition before it is sent out to the exhibitor. Every reel is inspected after every run. Mabel gets $25 a week for looking at pictures. She inspects about 100 reels a day. There are sixteen exposures to the yoot of film, so Miss Mabel passes on 1.600,000 picture frames daily for Mutual.
Not a great period had elapsed before motion picture "theaters" had sprung u]i all over I lie country, chiefly iu the large centers of population, and then came the exchange.
The first exchange was started by Max Lewis in Chicago in 1905. It was called the Chicago Film Exchange and Mr. Lewis is still in the business in that city. A short time afterward the late "Pop" Rock, one of the founders of the Vitagraph, opened the first New York exchange.
The first attempt to systematize the film business was the organization of the Film Service A s s o c i a t i o n, in which the Edison company took the lead. All of the (■oni|)anies in the producing field, with a few exceptions including Biograph, were in the Association, ten manufacturers in all.
At that time the universal admission fee was five cents and the picture theaters, most of them in abandoned store rooms, had an average seating capacity of 200. As the entertainment lasted but nine or ten minutes, the house was filled between twentv and forty times daily, which accounts for the tremendous profits made bv the owners of these humble places of amusement.
In the beginning the exhibitor contracted with the exchange on a weekly basis for his supply of film, the price ranging from $15 to $.15.
The exchangeman's profits were proportionately large and in many instances much larger than those of the owner of the picture "palace." The custom was to buy the