Motion Picture News (Jan - Mar 1914)

THE MOTION PICTURE NEWS 21 GROUP OF MICHIGAN EXHIBITORS AT THE BAY CITY CONVENTION Photograph Specially Posed for the Motiok Picture News the city, and by several notable state officials who had taken an active part in the censoring of pictures. But more important than his financial success, he had convinced these societies that there was no need for censorship. The right kind of policy, adapted to the needs and wishes of the community, and not to the whims and fancies of himself as an individual, had won out. "I would advise any exhibitor to mix freely in local affairs. It is a wonderful power for good, if his theatre is properly conducted, and it is a terrible power for evil if otherwise. Genuine success can come only when the standard of pictures shown is kept far in advance of the wishes, desires and likes of the patrons. "No matter how slight the error may be by one of my employees, I never let it pass without comment. But always there must be constructive criticism. An exhibitor is supposed to know more about his business, about how to conduct a theatre, than his employees. They are sure to make mistakes, but they should never make the same one twice. If they do, it is not their fault entirely. One of the greatest elements in successful theatre management is to keep every employee at the highest degree of interest in his work. A disinterested, uncaring employee becomes neglectful, a piece of dead wood, that will, in time, communicate its disease to all with which it comes in contact, and as such, should be eliminated without any hesitation. No employee at all is better than a disinterested one." "'T'HIS man who wanted to become an exhibitor and did so •■ soon will realize the fulfillment of an ambition born out in the western city. He wanted to see motion pictures on Broadway, that great commercial thoroughfare, where centers practically every angle of the amusement world. And he will have an active part in keeping them there. All of his experience of the last few years, the knocks, discouragements, temporary failures, and the big, vital lessons that have grown out of them will be called into full play when he assumes the management of The Strand, a new house now being constructed at Forty-seventh street and Broadway. It will be gorgeous in its appointments, its seating capacity will near the four thousand mark, admissions will be high, and its position is the best in the entire world in which to test the real value of motion pictures. In elegance and size it will outrank the Regent Theatre, now under the supervision of Mr. Rothapfel. But more important even than the name it will give to its manager, greater even than the universal attention its opening will attract, superior to the influence and possibilities it will bestow upon Mr. Rothapfel, is the fact, coldly clear and firmly defined in this man's mind, that his policies, his system of management, his unswerving attention to detail, his methods of satisfying public desire, and his managerial work in general, will differ but slightly from that which characterized his conduct of the little theatre, moulded and built from a former dance hall, out in the small town behind the Ridge. In a sense, his policies will be broader, his work of management more complicated, his methods greater in scope. But the first principles of successful exhibiting, learned through bitter experience, will be the same as, when, instead of the handsomely gowned women and men prominent in the affairs of the world, who will ride to the theatre doors in costly machines and pay top-notch prices for seats, his patrons were silent, stolid men and women, quaint in dress and manner, fearing to look to the right or left, who crept, often shamefaced, as if they were committing a shameful act, to the little box office built in an alley, and paid their hard-earned nickels for the educational entertainment he so wisely gave them.