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Sectional Edition, »• ' per year: National Edition, $7.50. NOVEMBER 11, 1950 V 58 No. 2 Mr. Larry Wood in Arcadia Theatre Company Wellsboro, Pa. Dear Larry: In your letter of November 4 you say. "I believe the beginning of the end of showmanship in this industry started with the beginning of the selling of motion pictures on a percentage basis." You attribute the lack of showmanship on the part of exhibitors to distributors' selling terms and you advocate a change thai "will inspire exhibitors to really get out and sell the product." Otherwise, you say. the industry will slowly die. I note, too, your feeling that "already the small situations are faced with closing due to the fact that they cannot keep open on percentage buving of pictures." You say, "Movies are better than ever and so would business be, if the exhibitors would roll up their sleeves and start selling." And. as for yourself, you admit that business is better than ever because you have never stopped selling. You advocate an "incentive" as an offset to "lazy operation and closed houses" via a downward sliding scale on percentages. I like your observation that show business cannot live without showmanship. But why that should depend only on the rental terms for percentage pictures is a puzzler. If showmanship Mi OPEN LETTER started to disintegrate when percentage selling began, then it should be completely dead by now. That form of selling—and buying—is virtually as old as this business. It was in vogue when I entered the industry 35 years ago. And it has become a part of merchandising policies in many other fields, from shirts to automobiles. You have a good point in advocating a sliding scale that will reduce the percentage to exhibitors as ticket sales increase. The Pacific Coast Conference of Independent Theatre Owners made a similar proposal and an attempt was made to put this into effect by Andy Smith of 20th Century-Fox. Another major company was considering a similar policy but. I understand, that this now has been discarded. Apparently 20th- Fox found it to be wanting, although it may not have been given a sufficient trial. There is another point on the question of percentage pictures and that is. "Just how many such are involved in the average exhibitor's bookings per year," insofar as the small exhibitor is concerned? The key runs play virtually all of their product on percentage. Doesn't it get down to the matter of how high the percentage is; and isn't the exhibitor pretty largely in control especially under the required selling practices as ruled by the courts? Yes, I know, these requirements are not always lived up to, but I rather imagine that the exhibitors may be as much to blame as are the distributors, because of long-standing competitive habits and the unwillingness to let a picture go by that is priced too high to allow them a fair profit. Further, virtually all of the companies have declared their willingness to drop percentage bookings for the small theatres, particularly in the so-called "critical'" situations. One of the things that has been t rossing my mind in connection with this problem of buying and selling is how much more effort does the exhibitor extend in his selling of flat rental pictures because he is assured a greater net return if his efforts bring results? Further, it seems to me that if these efforts are fruitful, then the average net results should be brought into fairly good balance in those instances where the percentage bookings may cost more under present conditions than on such a basis as you set forth. I know that you, Larry, are a consistent plugger and that you get just about all that it is possible to get out of pictures in your situation. But my thoughts and the questions I ask concern the many situations where I know efforts such as yours are not extended—in fact where virtually no selling is done by the exhibitors. I also have a feeling that exhibitors could help their own product situation by getting away from their habitual policies, playing fewer changes per week and, perhaps, making one of these changes a single-feature program, thereby reducing the total of their product requirement and, as a result, creating the inore favorable conditions of a "buyers' market" rather than continuing under the "sellers' market" which has existed since 1941. I think, Larry, that entirely too much stress for the industry's own good is laid upon making n profit out of buying, rather than out of selling. 1 think that this is a shortsighted policy of which both exhibitors and distributors are guilty. I also think that this, as much as anything else, is the basic cause for the "lost audience" which the industry has failed to attract. The desires of too many to get "all the traffic will bear"—one from the other—instead of in terms of patronage volume is selfishly holding the industry down. Knowing for how many years there has been contention over this buyer-seller problem, it probably will take a miracle to bring about an understanding solution. For there seems to be altogether too little desire on either side to give the other a fair and equitable deal. There seems to be altogether too much effort on the part of both buyer and seller to outsmart one another. If such conditions did not obtain, then I think it would be a fairly simple matter to devise a workable formula that would divide between distributor and exhibitor a fair share for each of the boxoffice dollar. So we're right where we started— probably going back as far as the day when the first feature film was released. Sincerely vours. \Je^^J /yn^iuA^t^^
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