Boxoffice-March.04.1950

Big-Screen Video for $1,600
Homemade Theatre TV
Goes Into Iowa Quonset
By RUSS SCHOCH
MEDIAPOLIS, IOWA—A small, quonsethut
theatre in this southeastern Iowa town
of 900 is the first film house in the state—
and perhaps the midwest—to screen television
broadcasts. Through an elaborate receiving
and relay setup, owners of the 450-
seat Swan Theatre can throw a 6x8-foot
television image on the theatre screen.
Projection of television programs admittedly
is not yet perfect, but it does work.
"There are plenty of bugs in it," explains
I. R. Glesne, co-owner of the theatre. "But
it certainly is a start."
Glesne and his partner Mrs. Lillie Johnson
were determined to show the people of the
Des Moines county community "what television
is—whether it came in good or bad."
And they have attained that goal. The next
step, said Glesne, is to improve the image
and sound to the point where theatre patrons
can view broadcasts as easily as they do a
film. Glesne and Mrs. Johnson are the first
to admit it will take time and work.
"For some reason, about 50 per cent of the
image and sound signal are lost in relaying
the broadcast to the television projector and
putting it on the screen," Glesne said. Most
of the television broadcasts received here
come from station WOC-TV in Davenport,
55 airline miles away. Occasionally, said
Glesne, images are picked up from St.
about 200 air miles away.
Louis,
•HOME SET' RECEIVER
The theatre's basic receiving unit—similar
to the ordinary home set— is located in the
Swan hotel, also owned by Glesne and Mrs.
Johnson, about 50 feet away from the steelsided
quonset theatre building. Images and
sound are received on the 36-tube basic unit
just as they are on any set. But it's a long,
complicated path from the set's screen to
the big theatre screen. The original image is
relayed to a special television projector in the
theatre by about 150 feet of cables, which
carry image and sound through conduits.
The cables are piped in to the basement of
the theatre, through the length of the building
in under-the-floor tunnels, then up to
control boxes in the projection booth. From
the booth, the operator turns the television
unit on and off, and controls the sound. But
the television projector itself is not in the
regular projection booth. When being used,
it is placed on a stand 14 feet in front of
the screen, just ahead of the front row of
seats, and attached to cables.
Glesne focuses and regulates the size of
the image to be cast directly from the special
projector. That's done simply by adjusting
its five-inch television lens. Inside the
specially built projector is a maze of tubes
and wires—and one giant television tube
which costs about $500 commercially. "The
projector itself cannot receive the original
image direct from the television station,"
Glesne emphasized. "It doesn't even carry
the sound. It just picks up the image
through relays."
The complex setup is the idea and long,
painstaking work of a prisoner in the Iowa
state penitentiary at Fort Madison. Fred
Threikeld, a 28-year-old inmate, built the
outfit for the theatre as part of Warden
P. A. Lainson's rehabilitation program. Permission
for the special work was obtained last
May from the state board of control, Glesne
said, and the unit was installed recently.
It was Threikeld, described by Warden
Lainson as one of the best radio mechanics
in the state, who brought television to the
penitentiary's inmates long before it was
seen by other lowans.
"Our present goal is to provide our patrons
with plus entertainment through television,"
said Glesne, a naval veteran of World War
II and a relative newcomer to exhibition.
FLEXIBLE SCHEDULES
Since the Swan is a small town theatre
which presents only two shows a night, its
schedules are more flexible than those of
big theatres, Glesne said. 'Whenever there is
a good evening television program that
everyone wants to see, the schedules can be
adjusted to allow for broadcasts, Glesne explained.
Although it has not been definitely
shown that television has yet hurt theatre
business, theatre owners are thinking ahead
to the competition it will provide, Glesne
said. And he believes the setup he is developing
is an answer. It is, of course, an
expensive answer—especially for the small
theatre operator. Glesne's total cost so far
has been no more than $1,600—but would have
been at least twice that much if the equipment
had been purchased on the commercial
market, he said. Some radio companies have
built projection units which cost up to $25,-
000, but they still are in the experimental
stage and not on the general market, Glesne
said.
Because a clear, and at times near-perfect,
image is received on the basic set in the
hotel, Glesne believes most of the "bugs" are
in the relay setup. "There is nothing wrong
with the projector itself," he said. "Our trouble
apparently is
in wiring, or perhaps in installation.
It's also quite possible that the
steel sides of the theatre building are giving
us trouble."
Charles Skouros to Tour
LOS ANGELES—To launch National Theatres'
new 21 -week, eighth annual Charles
Skouras Showmanship campaign, Charles
P. Skouras, circuit president, Thornton Sargent,
public relations director, and other NT
executives, will plane out March 7. Skouras
will speak first before the Fox Wisconsin
division in Milwaukee March 10.
The itinerary includes Fox Midwest, Kansas
City, March 13; Fox Intermountain, Denver.
March 15; Evergreen, Portland, March
17; Fox West Coast's southern California division,
Los Angeles, March 21; and FWC's
northern California division, San Francisco,
March 22.
Blames Columnists
For Bad Publicity
MILWAUKEE—The press with its colunrmists
who place unnecessary emphasis on escapades
of errant film players was taken to
task editorially by the weekly Milwaukee
Times in its current issue. The editorial directly
accuses the gossip columnists and the
practices of the press and radio of making
these so-called escapades important.
"We do not condone nor condemn the activities
of persons, be they movie stars or
ditchdiggers, when they overstep the bounds
of propriety," the Times comments. No one
would care what a ditchdigger does and nobody
should care to much what a movie star
does. The folks of the stage are not especially
anointed."
THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE
"Just why, when people of the amusement
world, public office or the underworld commit
a moral offense, does the entire nation
stand agog? The answer is simple. The
very people who throw the rocks when they
overstep the limits of propriety are the ones
who made them important."
The editorial says there is "nothing more
obnoxious than the 'key hole peeper' of
which we have a bumper crop. Newspapers
and the radio chains have shoved into our
homes 'syndicate experts.' They comprise the
little army of mudslingers which has has
fastened itself onto Broadway, Hollywood and
bigtime centers."
The Times contends that the very newspapers
which now cry for the "chastisement"
of stars "who have sinned" are the ones
which, "day after day run these gossip colums
detailing the private lives of actors and
actresses. Usually the gossips aren't reporters
but hacks. Most generally their own
backgrounds aren't too sanctified. They
thrive on smut and pass it into the homes via
the newspaper column and the radio wave.
They themselves bicker, battle and fume to
get an 'exclusive' or a 'scoop' that doesn't
amount to a hill of beans."
ORIGIN.AL AND HALF-TRUTHS
The Times says further that the public
wouldn't be one whit the worse for it were
they spared "this drivel, for most of it is
conjecture, half-truth or out and out planted
publicity. It is digested, mainly, by adolescents
and morons or read for amusement by a
few others."
Were is not for these gossips, the Times
further says, the public would never be apprised
of "the moral decadence, if any" of
the actors and actresses and the newspapers
would ignore the "hot stuff " of the amusement
world.
"The columnists and commentators are not
one whit better than the bad actors. He who
writes dirt, revels in it," the Times said.
MPAA Safety Record
NEW YORK—None of the 400 film exchanges
of the Motion Picture Ass'n of
America member companies had any fire
loss in 1949 for the fourth successive year,
according to an MPAA conservation department
report to Eric Johnston, president.
It was the tenth in the 24 years since
the department was set up that there was
a fireless record. The average annual fire
loss from 1926 to the end of 1949 is $202,
a record probably not matched by any other
industry of similar scope.
22
BOXOFFICE :: March 4, 1950