Showmen's Trade Review (Oct-Dec 1949)

8 SHOWMEN'S TRADE REVIEW, October 15, 1949 No Video Threat If Station Is SO Miles Away Theatres located at least 50 miles from main television station outlets will have little to bother about as far as video competition is concerned for some time to come, but those more closely located had better realize that television is here and here to stay, Victor Sholis, manager of WHAS told the fourth annual convention of the Kentucky Association of Theatre Owners last week in Louisville. Sholis advised managers to bear the new medium in mind in connection with their policies. Arthur DeBra, community relations director of the Motion Picture Association of America, told the convention that both the Kentucky and the federal admission taxes had been passed as a war measure to be repealed after the conflict. DeBra termed the taxes discriminatory, stating that 85 per cent of the amount gathered under federal levy came from motion picture theatres. Gael Sullivan, executive director of the Theatre Owners of America, also discussed the tax situation and warned exhibitors to be watchful of groups attempting to censor movies. The convention, which was presided over by President Guthrie Crowe, held several sessions. World Series Is Proving Ground {Continued from Page 6) over a pale version of that beer which every movie star seems to drink — for exploitation purposes. The citizen, approached by the reporter, acknowledged that he had seen the series over television. No, he made it plain, he had not seen it over the large-screen system in the house across the street — the Brooklyn Fox. Yes, he didn't doubt that the game looked a lot better on a large screen than it did over the small home receiver at the end of the bar. "'But," he added, "many is the afternoon I paid that house over there 55 cents admission to see a show I didn't especially want to see. Sometimes the show was bad. But then when they get something I really want to see, they raise their damned price up to $1.20. I'll see my baseball from this bar and look at my movies at the Paramount." Which brings up another question. Video Too High Now, N, J, Allied Finds The small theatre operator must either wait for a much cheaper system of theatre television or until some rental system for the equipment is available, members of New Jersey Allied, considering the question of video in their houses, agreed this week. Chance of equipment that will sell for much less than the present quotes of $25,000 was considered unlikely by technical experts who point to the amount of precision work needed in the equipment which must be done by hand. Nothing Personal, Savvy? The Ideal in Philadelphia advertised the following double bill: The Snake Pit & Fall In GOOD FELLOWS GOT TOGETHER when the Kentucky Association of Theatre Owners held their annual meeting at Louisville last week. Left to right: Gael Sullivan, executive director. Theatre Owners of America; Exhibitor C. K. Arnold of Bardstown; Lt.-Gov. Lawrence Wetherby (standing); KATO President Guthrie Crowe; Attorney Ed P. Jackson; and Mrs. Gratia Locke, Louisville, exhibitor. NEWSREEL CLIPS Devotion and Guts — Those who read the story recently about the liandpicked 12 whom MGM is sending to Europe to confer with its foreign sales staff didn't know it and it's a 10-to-one shot that those who write what is called trade news for MGM didn't know it either, but in one of the 12 — ^Publicist Louis Orlove — there's a genuine human interest story of devotion and guts. Louis is the only publicist represented in the dozen. The telegram from MGM Vice-President William F. Rodgers, announcing his selections read: "Congratulations on a great job. You are the one chosen to go with the experts to Europe." The fact of it is Louis did his "great job" from a hospital bed and from an invalid's chair as he recovered from an operation. It started in Minneapolis when he keeled over while beating the MGM drum. At the hospital doctors used long words in lengthy dis Film Events Calendar OCTOBER 15-17, convention. Pacific Coast Conference of Independent Theatre Owmers, Sun Valley, Idaho. 23 24, convention. Theatre Owners of North and South Carolina, Charlotte Hotel, Charlotte, N. C. 24 26, annual convention. Allied States Association, Minneapolis. 25 27, Variety Club mid-year conference, Hotel Astor, New York City. 18-20, annual convention, Motion Picture Theatre Owners of Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, Hotel Chisca, Memphis. 27, presentation of charter to Variety Club Tent No. 35, Hotel Astor, New York. NOVEMBER 14, directors' meeting. Associated Theatre Owners of Indiana, Hotel Lincoln, Indianapolis. 8-9, annual convention. West Virginia Theatre Managers, Greenbrier Hotel, White Sulphur Springs. 15-16, convention. Associated Theatre Owners of Indiana, Hotel Lincoln, Indianapolis. 16, tenth anniversary dinner, Motion Picture Pioneers, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City. DECEMBER 1-2, convention, Independent Theatre Owners of Wisconsin, Hotel Schroeder, Milwaukee. cussions but Louis got the idea. None of that for him, not in Minneapolis anyway, when his operations base was located in Milwaukee. When their backs were turned he sneaked out to a limousine he had phoned for, drove to the airport and flew to Milwaukee where he was rushed to Mt. Sinai airport and the cut-and-carve artists got to work. For 46 days he was between sheets but there was a telephone at his elbow and Louis kept plugging product. When he was able to walk he threw a party for the hospital staff at w^hich MGM pictures were screened while a straight line was kept open into the screening room so the doctors could get their emergency calls. When he was able to leave the hospital, he went back on the road through Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota and the upper peninsula of Michigan, talking MGM whenever he wasn't telling the city room those stories which city rooms have learned to look forward to from able exploiteers. Quotes "1 want to see showmen in the drive-in business. . . . Young men in show business have their greatest opportunities in the drive-in business. ... At the end of 1949 there will be one drive-in for every eight indoor theatres in this country. . . . Young men in show business have their greatest opportunities in the drive-in business.— Jaek D. Brmmagel, general manager CommonweaUh Drive-In Theatres. Finishes 40 Years, Gives Free Show The Milwaukee Theatres rounded out 40 years of operation at Bardwell, Ky., with a free show last Thursday for everybody and a general tie-in of the town's merchants who celebrated the enterprise which J. A. Milwain set up after he decided there was something in "this new thing called movies" four decades ago. Milwain had opened a photographic studio in the town but shifted to movies in the Opera House on the second floor of a commercial building in 1909. A few months later he built the 400-seat Red Moon Theatre on the site of the present Milwain. When a May, 1947 tornado damaged the building, he repaired it and kept it running till 1929 when he built the present Milwain,