Showmen's Trade Review (Oct-Dec 1939)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

October 14. 1939 SHOWMEN'S TRADE REVIEW Page 21 PRESENTS October 14, 1939 All Quiet on the Convention Front IT is a pleasure and a privilege to oifer greetings and hearty good wishes to all members of the Society of Motion Picture En' gineers, whose Fall Convention takes place in New York beginning next Monday. May their convention be a success from the stand' point of its more serious side and as well in all its social phases, without which no convention in this land ever will amount to a hoot. The motion picture theatre as a purely practical com' mercial enterprise owes much to the S.M.P.E., for down through the thirtynine years of its existence this brother' hood of technical and scientific men has served valiantly in the cause of finer pictures and finer picture theatres. Its contribution to the cause of improved projection and lighting in the theatre itself can never be measured in terms of dollars and cents at the box offices of the theatres. Its scientific and technical approach to the prob' lems and complexities which have beset pioneering efforts of film producers and studio technicians has been a bul' wark against the corroding efi^ect of discouragement and defeatism in a dynamic and growing art. And for this important work the S.M.P.E. may well be proud. You don't have to dip too deeply into the past to learn that the S.M.P.E. has on many occasions urged causes to which little heed was paid and which later proved to have been a warning, the acceptance of which might have saved theatremen great sums of money. For years before sound came into the industry and caused an up' heaval in both studios and theatres, the S.M.P.E. had A MONTHLY Section THEATRE UIPMENT maintenance pleaded with architects and theatre builders to provide larger space for the projection equipment. But on and on went the plans and the construction of projection booths which were so cramped that the introduction of sound with its need for added equipment put a double cost on many a theatre — the price of the terrifically expensive equipment and the cost of enlarging the quar' ters housing the projectors. This is but one of many matters that might be referred to in order to make clear that it is no mere courtesy to the S.M.P.E. for us to ask attention of theatremen to the discussions and advice of its convention, but an entirely practical suggestion made in the selfish interests of theatremen. There'll be no spectacular blasts of oratory or flaming political speeches at the S.M.P.E. convention (which makes it most unique for a convention associated with the film industry) . But the calm and quiet will be filled with good, sound, substantial and earnest discussion of the film and film presentation in the light of new discoveries and development in the technological field.