Showmen's Trade Review (Oct-Dec 1949)

6 WHAT'S NEWS In the Film Industry This Week EXHIBITION In New York, or the Bronx if you want to be technically correct, crowds poured out the subway at 160th Street and headed for the Yankee Stadium. The World Series race was on and exhibitors across the country began to worry about their matinee trade. The big event is conservatively estimated to hit about 25 per cent of the afternoon trade in 25 per cent of the nation's theatres, a fact which the average showmen can do little about beyond flashing the score by innings on the screen or keeping a scoreboard in the lobby. But this year six theatres in five cities did something to meet this competition. It joined it. (Page 7). Large-screen television in the Boston Pilgrim, the Brooklyn Fox, the Chicago State Lake, the Scranton Westside and the Milwaukee Tower and Oriental, brought the game play by play to audiences which cheered, booed, ate peanuts and popcorn and got up for the seventh inning stretch. In Washington another bill to reduce admission taxes — this time from 20 per cent to five per cent — was introduced by Sen. Wayne Morse, (R. Ore.). Its chances? Not too good. In Hattiesburg, Miss., exhibitors who had sought to fight a state blue-law closing their houses on Sunday at 6 P.M., were permanently enjoined from violating the law. The exhibitors had counted on the fact that no jury would convict, but now they face contempt sentences if they operate. Out in Missouri, the Dickinson Circuit was moving into first-run situations at Joplin and Springfield, where Fox Midwest hitherto was the sole first-run. In Hagerstown, Md., exhibitors find business there down another 10 per cent which makes it 25 per cent off in two years, and out in St. Louis a round table conducted by Mid-Central Allied showed that while film rental is the most important topic for the small-town exhibitor, it is outranked by availability and run in the estimate of the large-town subsequent-run operator. Meanwhile national Allied has added 730 new members in its 20 units and Michigan Allied elected Ed Johnston president. And from Sikeston, Mo., the Malone Theatre corrects STR by pointing out that it and not the Sikeston Drive-in had first-runs on "Duel in the Sun," and "The Paradine Case." Further the Malone says it will have first-run on "Portrait of Jennie." LITIGATION The South Side Theatre of Hollywood revealed this week that it had asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the bidding practices of RKO and Paramount. The Justice Department meanwhile granted RKO a six-month extension to put divorce into effect. The company was supposed to drop its theatres by Nov. 8, 1948. In Medina the Schine circuit failed in an effort to prevent reassignment of the Princess and Temple Theatre leases to their owners as a result of a pool dissolution arising out of the consent decree Schine signed in an anti-trust suit brought against it by the Government. In Roches ter, preliminary arguments in the suit by Exhibitor Charles V. Martina against Dipson circuit and Emile Muller over an alleged breach of contract on Muller's part in connection with the Lyell Theatre, were heard. And in Kansas City, Fox Midwest's Granada was being sued for a total of $20,000 in separate actions by two Negroes who were refused admission. GENERAL Distributors, studying their exchange system with a view toward economies, apparently believe that they can't do much about cutting down the number of branches. The Colosseum of Motion Picture Salesmen, meanwhile continued its talks with exchange heads for higher wages, and out in Hollywood the 45 lowbudget producers who comprise the Independent Motion Picture Producers Ass'n had voted to disband in protest over the attitude they think unions take toward them. Indications that they would try to battle the unions through the Taft-Hartley Act and other methods were seen. In New York, meanwhile, an interunion battle which threatened a split in the Associated Actors and Artistes of America was in progress with the Screen Actors Guild apparently threatening secession over a new "Television Authority." Sag had announced it would not tolerate its members being compelled to join another union to make films for video or to appear on live telecasts. Hints were that if Sag seceded from the 4A's — Actor's Equity, American Guild of Variety Artists, American Federation of Radio Artists, American Guild of Musical Artists (opera). Chorus Equity, Screen Extras Guild, Sag, and the actors' religious guilds, — it might unite with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes or with the American Federation of Musicians. If it goes to the AFM it will be an ironic twist for it was another quiet, soft-speaking AFM president, Joseph N. Weber, predecessor of the turbulent Jimmy Petrillo, who gave Actors' Equity a hand years ago. Weber reportedly told New York legitimate houses which were opposing Equity that musicians might refuse to work non-Equity houses. In Baltimore the Maryland State Board of Motion Picture Censors found that "the moral qualities of motion picture had reached an all-time low," an echo of remarks made by the Legion of Decency Chief and reported that of 11,418 miles of film reviewed, only five films had been rejected altogether and parts had been eliminated from 219 others. Financial: Columbia — Net profit 52 weeks ending June 30, 1949, $1,507,000, or $1.08 a share compared to $565,000 or 40 cents a share last year. Republic — Net for 39 weeks ending July 30, 1949, $730,116.93, compared to $62,577.62 last year. The Commerce Department reported film dividends for August were down to $511,000, compared to $7,716,000 for August, 1948. The Securities Exchange Commission reported that Jack Cohn sold 500 shares of Columbia stock between Aug. 11-Sept. 10, leaving him with 48,568 shares, and that Lehman Bros., had sold all the RKO $1 par common — 4,835 shares — it owned. SHOWMEN'S TRADE REVIEW, October 8, 1949 Video Threat Is Weaker By BILL SPECHT (News Editor) Television today is less of a threat to motion picture theatre business in those areas where there are regular and selective video programs than it has been at any time since it first appeared on the horizon. This doesn't mean that it can't become a more serious threat to the box-office in the near future. Nor does it mean that it can't threaten the nation's entire box-office front in a sl'ow period of years to come. But judging from a survey in New York, video right now is less of a headache to the exhibitor, even in his dreams and imagination, than it has been in the past. In August, 1948, this reporter made a check of the situation, and the picture he saw then was not too alarming. This week he made another check and the picture is more rosy now than it was then. At the time one of the surveys was conducted in a neighborhood which was selected because it contained "expensive apartment houses rising above others which if they don't meet the legal or technical definitions of a tenement certainly suggest the conditions which the word usually connotes." Recheck This same area was revisited. There were no marked changes in buildings insofar as the general situation was concerned. There was no marked change in the attendance at various bars in the neighborhood. Business was still good. But there wasn't the overflow crowd seated at tables with their eyes glued to the video receiver. Not that the beer drinkers were not looking at television. They were. But it had to be fights, baseball or wrestling. Every bartender in every bar agreed to that. Other programs were not popular. There is nothing astonishing in this. Besides the sports craze which exists in the average American, it remains that boxing and wrestling are the things television does best. The camera doesn't have to be too active to keep up with them ; the action area is comparatively small. At all places the customers looked at television, but they weren't standing on each other's heels to do it. Television was being accepted now as a regular thing. It wasn't a novelty any more which caused you to look at it regardless with breathless interest. The same thing seems to be applying in the home. Last year the family rushed through dinner to sit in rapture before a glass square or a glass circle in a darkened living room, and neighbors paid much-too-regular calls on the families that had a video receiver. This year the family seems to have found there are other things in life. Even bridge and gin rummy are staging a comeback. Movies as a matter of {Continued on Page 10) INDEX TO DEPARTMENTS Advance Data 35 Audience ClassificaHons 15 Box-Office Slants 15 Feature Booking Guide 30 Feature Guide Title Index 30 Hollywood 28 Newsreel Synopses 38 Pictures Started Last Week 35 Regional Newsreel 21 Selling the Picture 11 Shorts Booking Guide 37 Theatre Management 19