Showmen's Trade Review (Jan-Mar 1945)

Jmuary 27, 1945 SHOWMEN'S TRADE REVIEW 7 See It Through The March of Dimes campaign gets oflf to a wonderful start with a heavier enrollment of theatres pledged to participate than in any previous drive for this great and worthy cause. In order to reach that unofiScial goal of five million dollars it will be necessary for every theatre in this campaign to see the job through to the final day without missing any opportunities to swell the total. There should be collections at every performance. This is vastly important, and theatremen who have taken active part in previous campaigns for the March of Dimes have been emphasizing the point with good reason. There is always the danger that some theatreman, figuring that there is only a small audience in the house, may decide that the little collected will not be important to the national total. That line of reasoning, however, could deprive the Fund of enough dollars to treat and cure many a child who may be stricken by the disease. It's a matter of simple arithmetic to arrive at how much the grand total for 13,000 theatres would be affected by deduction of a dollar or so from each theatre's final collection funds. hHere We Go Ago in The cut in raw stock supplies for the motion picture industry has opened up once more the seemingly endless argument as to where economies are to be exercised. The theatre branch, already hard pressed because of product shortage, naturally looks to the exercise of some resourcefulness at the studio and distribution sources to maintain the flow of releases while effecting savings of footage to comply with reduced raw stock quotas. The studios, on the other hand, declare that they can't make worthwhile savings on stock by any methods not now in force with respect to camera takes and production technique. The bug in this whole situation is that one side probably never will see eye-to-eye with the other side on the issues, because to each the other fellow's problems look to be less knotty than his own. We recall Sam Goldwyn's rejoinder, when stock curtailment was first enforced, to proposals (which we notice are cropping up again) that footage be saved by elimination of credits on feature leaders. "The government," said Goldwyn, "isn't interested in saving little pieces of film. They want to save hundreds of thousands, yes, millions of feet of film." Then he proceeded to the favorite Goldwyn topic that the industry should make fewer pictures so theatres would get better pictures and run each one they got for longer engagements. It would be a good thing for the industry, however, if producers and distributors evidenced more concern than now seems to be the case for the plight of some of the smaller situations and later runs in the matter of availabilities. The booking situation these exhibitors face is more than a test of showmanship. Theatres whose drawing population does not admit of longer runs but whose patronage cannot be brought into a theatre by anything less than good pictures are really up against it and their situation is worsening by reason of increasingly longer runs in the key spots. Further cuts in the number of releases would make their situation look hopeless to them. We don't think this industry is doing its future any good by permitting large numbers of people in scattered areas of the country to get out of the movie-going habit. That will happen if some of these "have not" theatres don't get a better break on product. For it's worth remembering that some of the people who now live very prosperously in cities and towns where they see their movies at first run and at first run admission prices, really became movie fans when things were different — when they were younger, had less money, perhaps, and found in the neighborhood subsequent-run theatre the thrills and glamor and entertainment they learned to love and continue to patronize. Think It Over while we are talking about the exhibitors in the later run situations, we would like to call attention of the distributor advertising chieftains to an idea that was expressed by some exhibitors in our Leaders poll. The idea is that some follow-up advertising and exploitation of bigger pictures should take place for the benefit of the later run theatres in or near their own territories. The reason behind the idea is that so much time elapses between the showing of bigger pictures at first runs and their appearance at the smaller situations that patrons of the latter have time to forget the picture and all the fuss and feathers that marked its appearance at premieres in the general territory. This idea seems to have about it the stuff to merit consideration and a thorough canvass of its possibilities and practicality from the standpoint of the distributors as well as the theatres. For one thing, a build-up of the picture for its later run showings would help to offset the disadvantages suffered by those theatres because of the long, and still lengthening, engagements at the first run houses as well as the delays caused by clearances in the territory.