Publix Opinion (Jun 13, 1930)

5 PUBLIX OPINION, WEEK OF JUNE 13ru, 1930 PUBLIX OWES OBLIGATION TO PUBLIC! INVESTORS ARE ENTITLED TO FAIR RETURN (Continued from “from Page Eight) have confidence in you an your company...They think you are honest, they don’t — think you are cheating on the job, they think they are getting a square deal from you and from all of us; unless they think that we cannot get this money. The people who invest in our securities are entitled to the comforts of confidence first, a reasonable return on the investment next and an appreciation of the investment by virtue of our efforts. And the fellow that loafs anywhere in this company, any-. where he may be located, may be doing it at the expense of quite innocent people. So when you work in a publicly owned institution, your obligation does not end just with your own offices and own. fellows, it extends far beyond. | We who are in New York are constantly reminded of the picture I am describing and naturally so because we go to bankers for money and, therefore, to the boys in the home office, I present and pledge this phase of our work, because I know that unless we retain and embellish and build up that. confidence, all of this story will go up in smoke. Divide Day Orderly Now getting back to the relationship of orderly thinking to the operation of a given theatre or a given district or division. Get the thought that you will divide your day in an orderly fashion, that you will set aside a certain *time for, say, your advertising, your checking of your house, etc., each day. And if you do the same each day, it gets to be a habit, but an organized habit. If you do that job properly, I really think the next time I address myself to you, you will have grown in .additional responsibility. If you are doing it, fine. Analyze yourself. and see if there is any more order you can get in the hab it of. It is a glorious way to work. You have time for everything. Across my desk each day I have district manager’s letters— I am reasonably consulted on policy, policy changes, all phases of our operation and I have time for it. And I know, therefore, that with all your responsibilities and with all the business you have to do—and I am well aware of the thousand and one details that each of you have, or should have,—the amount of time you will have for constructive thinking will be greatly augmented. I was very fortunate in this business, I was fortunate in getting into a large organization very early, referring to Balaban and Katz. In fact, fortunate that the theatres in the city were large and enabled us to surround ourselves with man power. The only smart thing I ever did in that connection was that when I had them, I used them. : o Learn From Others I have not yet seen the man who has written a complete thorough book on the operation of theatres. I have not yet met the one man in the amusement world who completely within himself wrote the whole book of show business and I so sincerely feel this that I knew if I wanted to make progress I had better _ avail myself of the men I had and let them help me make ‘overnight geniuses. ested in your welfare, progress. I figured they knew a lot and I would be willing to listen to them and utilize their possibilities. And within our organization do exist all of the elements of the departments. Within your district exist district manager, district advertising men, district bookers. Avail yourselves of them, and while I know many of them have not arrived and they are not prepared to render every bit of service, you take from them all they have to offer. | No Overnight Geniuses _ Another thing I learned in these twenty-five years was there are no overnight geniuses in show business. I would not give you thirty cents for one if there were. I haven’t any use for the brilliant showman. Give me the fellow who does his thinking and builds block by block and when he gets an idea nobody is going to kick it over easily.-. The other thing goes out much faster than they come in and the point is there are) none of your officials that are They are fellows willing to work and the typical characteristic a man ought to have is a thorough willingness to take whatever job or assignment that is thought best. I want to take this opportunity to express publicly my appreciation of you men and many others around the country who have been called over night and told to move bag and baggage to a new center. We are extremely conscious of that, we have all of the appreciation in the world for that activity and it has been marvelous because of the agreeableness and. the willingness with which the fellows responded to those conditions. The response has been wonderful and it has made my job a cinch because who would not succeed with fellows who support him that way? I realize it is futile for me to reduce to words the appreciation we have for those fellows. We hope of course that the happiness you have with the company will ultimately reward you for that service. So confident is Mr. Kent of the confident relationship which exists for Paramount that every other exhibitor will be sold on percentage that there will be no flat rentals, and I want more thought, more exploitation than ever before given to our pictures. In every ad, everyone must know that it is a Paramount Picture. This means a very great deal and we are going to gamble on it and if we do our job right, we are going to determine then to a greater and greater degree the type of product we should have. Best Friends In Company I want to say this to you, as far as we in the home office are concerned, the grass is greenest right under our noses, during the troublesome periods in getting this business together we never stepped away from our fellows. We do not intend to do that in the future. I want to assure you that the best friends you have anywhere are the fellows in your own organization. Why? Because they are very much interin your success, in your future, even if it is a selfish interest. When you think you have got any trouble, I repeat again, the best friends you have are the fellows in your own company. I want to assure you on their behalf the greatest toil, the greatest willingness, is what counts. I want to assure you that they hold for you the finest respect that they have, the deepest confidence, that as far as they are concerned, you are the best friends they have. ask no more, no less. I ask that you have with us the same patience as we have with you, the same belief that we have in you, the same confidence that we have in you and the same respect that we hold for you. If we jointly do that and do it as we should, this is going to be a grand worlé to be in and to be with each other, Minneapolis Highlights May 25, 1930 We were perfectly content to pay for the training of our manpower, and take all the red figures as they came, and to have patience with them as long as we felt that we were grooming manpower, because we believed then, as we do now, that, with the proper manpower, and the proper numbers of manpower, with the proper allocation of that manpower—the dol‘lars. would flow. When, you think orderly, and give everything you have to a given subject, finish that, and then do the next thing, and the next, it becomes a rather simple matter to tie them together, and becomes a habit as easily — as the other way becomes a habit. When your business proceeds orderly under you, and you have time to think, that is when you will become an executive, because an executive becomes that through his ability to think orderly, and to do his job orderly, and then think for the fellows whom he is leading. The time to think . is the first step toward becoming an executive. Now, that, to me is about the most important mission I have to serve in this company. The policies of the company, and whether this theatre should run this type of show—or this, that, and the jother thing, will be taken care of, We have plenty of men to do that; my mission, I feel, is to develop in all of our men POWER, that ability to think orderly and to spread it on down through the different fields; to get you so geared-up that you, in turn, can carry that work right on to your younger men, in your respective theatres—to build the manpower that we will require, not only te do our present jobs properly, but to carry-on this almost fantastic picture that is before us. _ | Must Lay Good Foundation I have seen enough to convince me, without a question, that the only ideas worth anything are those which a man conceives, that have been amply thought about, weighed, measured, and made to fit in with existing conditions. Those men who do not lay a perfect foundation cannot remain in this business on account of the speed that is necessary to conduct \this business. I need do no more than refer again to those boys in the homeoffice, who have justified the position I take regarding over-night genius in showmen. We don’t have any of them in New York; we just have a lot of willing fellows with common sense and a willingness to work hard; fellows upon whom you can build a foundation, so that they don’t cave-in when the first gale of wind comes along that doesn’t blow sunshine, I want every man in Publix to know and to feel positively assured that there is nobody who will get a position in this company except through merit; nobody’ S incompetent relations are going to get anything. At this point, I want to bring }out that, by this, I don’t mean to In return, I convey that, if you have a brother who shows a desire for this business and you think he will like it, and that the company will like him, you shouldn’t help him and get him on the right path, instead of the wrong one. Once having given him the opening, it ends there; it’s everybody’s race, and everybody’s business, and the fellow with merit will get there. I know many changes were made—most of them for the betterment, and not to the detriment of anybody. I gota fine kick out of the situation when six or eight boys were stepped-up for doing a fine job; it was thrilling to be able to take Mr. Mullin and give him a bigger Division away from here, and also to take Eddie Smith out of the Twin Cities, and give him the entire Pacific Coast Division; also, to take Perry, one of your old boys, and give him a Division which runs from Colorado to the Pacific Ocean, and to feel confident that those boys are going to measure-up. This same thing has taken place almost everywhere. : | 2 Mat Think OrAerly I feel I have the right to talk to you as I am doing because I have gone through all the jobs in the theatres; I thoroughly understand the janitor-work, I ran a picture-machine, I played a piano, I barked in front of a theatre, and I have passed-out heralds, written copy, etc., and feel that I have the right to talk to you. Because everything around our business, and everything which surrounds the theatre is of an atmosphere of highlyspeeded activity, managers should, at all times, be orderlythinking individuals,—only by thinking orderly can we maintain that speed, properly. I emphasize schedule, and order not only because of the great obligation you owe your work, but also by this approach you will be developing into a better grade of man to carry on your business. When you get the habit of doing your job by schedule, orderly, your District Manager and Division Manager will know, and it won’t be so very long before I hear about it, and you wall be in line for a top-job. Take Stock of Self : Make a debit and credit sheet of yourself, and take stock of yourself, on the level. Get up a regular balance-sheet, and see where you are — what you lack. No one man has yet written the book on show-business, and no man is so versatile and completely adequate as to do it by himself. “KNOW YOUR ORGANIZATION.” Your organization, today, consists of all types, and all kinds of help—when a fellow is not sufficiently on the level with himself, he is just foolish; he is simply throwing things out of the window. I was very fortunate to have gotten into a large organization quite early in my life—I refer to I sat up night after night for months at a time in California — with Syd Grauman just to get ideas. I trailed Rothafel in New York because I could get some thing from him. Don’t think you are going to be under-rated. When you want help don’t be too hesitant about asking for it, because you — must have gathered by this time from my speech that I am not so hot for the birds who know it all and I have a lot more sympathy for the fellows who want to learn and want help. Human Development We have attempted, as nearly as it is possible, to maintain a human relationship and a human understanding simultaneously with a speedy development of the organization. I say that because I think that everybody who has contact enough with the home office in New York has found there a very fair, understanding, sympathetic lot of fellows. ter to pressure than without it. We don’t like it, but it’s better for us. so we don’t cave in. When I say pressure I refer to high pressure. That’s the best thing for us. I would hate to be the — supreme court of myself. I want the Treasurer of our organization to ask me how I get that way, how I prove.those figures. But at that I think the boys have been a really fine human lot of fellows. The reason I am certain of it is because I know the patience I had with them and you can appreciate that I must have had some patience with them—Sam Dembow wasn’t a theatre operator; Dave Chatkin never ran a_ theatre; Botsford never was in the theatre business; Ludwig never operated a theatre; Mullin was in the Maintenance Department, Se, necessarily, I must have had some patience in teaching them the principles of theatre operation and therefore I can’t conceive. that, with the patience I had with each of them, ‘they, in turn, wouldn’t have the same sympa thetic appreciation of every last. man out in the field. The unselfish accomplishment that we all can have is that within ourselves we have built a great big business and we have Kept in line as a family. and our family was successful. That’s the first human tradi tion. We want no medals for being human. I think it’s there. Now to emphasize a little further the human. equation, something happened very recently that I think is very — significant. and probably tells the biggest: story of all that I am trying to say. The name of your company was recently changed from Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation to Paramount Publix Corporation. e, of the theatre department, were of course complimented to think that after fifteen years of development, after all of the money that was expended on that name and all of the pride that went into it, we had arrived at a point in our theatre operation when the parent company was willing to have the — corporate name changed to Paramount Publix Corporation. the Balaban & Katz organization | of Chicago. In that organization, we got manpower as quickly as we could get it, much ahead of the actual requirements of the time. <I refer to publicity men, producers, stage-craft, and all of that sort of thing, and today I realize that the only smart thing I did was that I availed myself of what these men had to offer and didn’t sit back and write the ticket for them. I took from them, rather, all they had to give me, and it was plenty. If I have been successful at all it has been funda- mentally and principally, I think, was on their trail and tail plenty. It is true, of all of us that we respond bet— : =~ Made Great Sacrifice , | Now, the significance of the story is this. know, was the Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation and it took a pretty big fellow to do what Lasky | did—take his name off—because he is not working for any more money. The gods have been very kind to him in dollars and about the only thing he has left in life — is the pride of accomplishment and the perpetuating of his name, because of what help I got from!@ very natural thing, for he has them and the fellows who could |S0ns, but he said he realized that. give it to me and, believe me, I|the time has arrived when the, (Continued on Page Ten) | The name, as you —