Showmen's Trade Review (Oct-Dec 1949)

18 SHOWMEN'S TRADE REVIEW, November 5, 1949 Foresees Brilliant Future ( Continued it oil a summer's, night, broke records with $318. Today Savini finds that the greatest change in 45 years has been the improvement in theatres— in buildings, seats, decorations, atmosphere, in projection. Theatres in the early days, he recalls, were flimsy structures, often with wooden benches, sometimes located on second floors of buildings. Booths were not fireproof, the film ran through the projector and was gathered in a barrel. "We used acetylene gas to light the picture," he remarks. Only one projector was in use, necessitating delays while the reel was changed for which the management apologized on slides carrying the legend : "One Moment, Please." And the films were short, with sometimes two or three subjects included on a 10-minute reel. Exhibitors, as today, ranged from the stolid types, to the unpredictable genius. In one southern city where a canny exhibitor ran a fruit stand before his theatre, Savini sold a combined bill of "The Passion Play" and a Charles Chaplin. The exhibitor didn't have enough space on his ad board so he billed the picture as: "The Passion Play" Featuring J. Christ and Charles Chaplin. Motor-Driven On another occasion in 'Laurel, Miss., Savini noticed the operator had climbed out of his booth and had joined them on the sidewalk to talk. "Who's running the projector?" he asked the 16-year old youth." "Afotor driven," the boy replied. Savini hauled himself up to the booth where he found the boy had utilized two butter tubs, some sewing machine cable, running to a small motor. front Page 14) and a shaft, which had been squared at one end, to make anautomatic drive for the projector. The smaller tub ran faster and -was used for action pictures ; the larger ran slower for the more emotional drama. Later Savini spoke to the Powers projector people and they sent an engineer to look at the device. Eventually Powers brought out a motor-driven projector, but, the Laurel experiment, as far as Savini knows, was the first power projector anywhere. "I don't see how we can improve much further," he reflects today. "We can get an advancement in projection, possibly third dimension. We may get an advancement in color." Good Old Days As to showmanship, Savini believes that there's always too little of it, but that it certainly existed in the early days. At the time he recalls there was no paper to advertise the "supers." >So distributor showmen bought all the paper they could from the traveling stage companies, cut out the figures, pasted them on cloth and lettered in the name of the movie attraction. The paper was more carefully guarded than the film. And when it wasn't returned, that was serious with a capital S. One exhibitor in a southern city was particularly remiss in this matter. So remiss that Savini clambered aboard a day coach and rode up to see him. The exhibitor was apologetic. He placed the paper out in front the day before the picture was booked, he explained, and at night the cows, presumably attracted by the smell of the paste, came up and ate the displays. "Cover your paper with chicken wire," advised Savini. The exhibitor did. .^nd after that Savini got his paper back. NEWSREEL CLIPS Judicial Back Pat Not only did exhibitors of Brunswick, Ga., succeed in beating that town's box-office tax, as reported previously by Showmen's TR.^DE Review, but a perusal of the decision handed down by the state supreme court reveals that the motion picture industry in the Peach Tree state enjoys high esteem among the judges of the high court. Here is part of the decision dealing with the history of taxes on amusements : "Before the day of the moving picture shows as we know them today, there was a time when the show business was almost exclusively circus shows and other itinerant shows. Then the show business . . . could be, and was, classed along with bar rooms, pool halls and other like businesses. . . . "Not so with the moving picture shows of today. It has become as stable and permanent and as much a part of the business world as the grocery store and drug store ; and the power of the municipality to regulate it is no broader than that applying to business concerns of that kind." Honor Kramer A plaque citing "Home of the Brave" for presenting "a courageous and vital view of the great dilemma in American life," was presented to Stanley Kramer in New York Tuesday night by the Anti-Defamation League. New York Supreme Court Justice Meier Steinbrink, ADL national chairman, made the presentation to Peggy Ann Garner, who received it for Kramer. Pitt man Opens 1900-Seater The 1900-seat stadium-type Pitt Theatre opened in Lake Charles, La., last Thursday, becoming the largest theatre in that city. The house is operated by the Pittman Company, a circuit which has houses in New Orleans and Baton Rouge and is headed by T. A. Pittman. Turk Carter Heads Variety Convention Group Nonnan L. (Turk) Carter, general manager of the Paramount-Richards circuit in New Orleans, has been named executive committee chairman for the 14th convention of the Variety Clubs International to be held in New Orleans .'■Vpril 26-29, 1950, International Chief Barker R. J. O'Donnell announced this week. Carter will recruit a committee of 25 New Orleans exchange area men to work out plans for the banquet which will bring the 37 tents of the organization together and will meet during January with Seymour Weiss, managing director of the Roosevelt Hotel, serving as vice-chairman of the executive committee and chairman of the Humanitarian award banquet which will climax the four-dav convention. Curfew Fines Barney Fraundorf, chief of police in Granite City, 111. has ordered strict enforcement of the city's curfew ordinance in an attempt to curb delinquency and vandalism among juveniles of the city, according to a St. Louis report. The curfew ordinance applies to girls under 15 and boys under 14, who are subject to fines of $1 to $10, while parents who knowingly permit their children to violate the law may be fined from $1 to $25 for each offense. The ordinance has been in effect since 1911 but there hasn't been any real attempt at enforcement of its provisions for many years. Showmen Wary of Problem Films {Continued from Page 13) are going to have so many of those pictures, that the public will be flooded with them, then the public will get tired of them." Another exhibitor who finds that problem pictures have an audience, but is skeptical of how many should be made is Ed Lachman of Boonton, N. J. "There's a market for a certain number of them," Lachman declared, "but my view is that the accent should be on family entertainment. Certainly the other (problem) pictures are worthy of screentime. But a family I was talking to the other night said they had enough problems in every day life." Lachman added the problem pictures had paid off to date, but also expressed fear of a cycle, remarking: "When you get a whole cycle of them, you know what will happen!" Exhibitors in the main share this view, with some variations. Southern exhibitors, it is no surprise to learn, have some reservations over booking pictures which deal with Negro themes. But a New Jersey exhibitor expressed a similar reservation. He frankly said that he had not booked one of the Negro theme pictures because he had only a small theatre and he anticipated that the fllm would draw a large audience of Negroes. If it did, he remarked, they would crowd into his orchestra seats and create the impression that he was running a Negro theatre, which, inferentially, would hurt his business in the future. 'Pinky' to Play Atlanta Roxy Twentieth Century-Fox's "Pinky," which deals with a "pass" Negress in the south, has been booked into the Roxy Theatre at Atlanta, following approval by Censor Christine Smith after certain deletions had been made. Miss Smith continued to refuse approval to Film Classics' "Lost Boundaries" which deals with a ^similar Negro theme. In announcing her approval. Miss Smith said she was sorry Hollywood had started to make racial pictures. The Roxy usually does not play first-run but was used because it has a large Negro balcony. Erskine Forms Producing Firm Formation of Chester Erskine Productions, with plans to produce a series of features was announced in New York recently by Chester Erskine, formerly Universal writer-director, who produced "The Egg and I." A. Pam Blumenthal, Wall Street contact on numerous film deals, is president of the new company on an exclusive basis. First picture is to be "My Wife, the Celebrity," a comedy.