ynduA^

How to Make Theatre Pay in Highly
Competitive Area Shown by Scanlon
By ALLEN M. WIDEM
WINSTED, CONN.—Adhering resolutely
to the premise that even an area containing
highly competitive facilities can provide
encouraging boxoffice response for a
motion picture theatre, independent exhibitor
John J. Scanlon jr. is making the
opposition—as well as skeptical, big-city
exhibition interests—sit up and pay respective
attention.
"Small town exhibitors are not licked,
not by a long shot!" he told an inquiring
Boxoffice correspondent at his Strand
Theatre office. "If I thought the end was
near for small-town exhibitors like myself,
I'd get out of business. I think far
opposite—I'm putting more money and
more time and effort into the Strand because
I'm confident and certain of what
the futm-e will hold for me, my theatre
and my family."
The secret of the Scanlon success?
"It's not a secret, really," he said, grinning.
"It's more a matter of resolving without
frills just what you're out for in a
small town which is ten miles from a larger
city (ToiTington, where Dave Jacobson
operates the first-run 'Warner, and where
two other theatres are closed and 25
i
miles from the largest city in the state
(Hartford, with 35 theatres i.
"I'm aware that I can't come up with
the blockbusting boxoffice figures, and I'm
gi-ateful that distribution, which has been
of considerable help to me, is also aware
of these circumstances. I'm getting as much
encoui-agement from distribution as the big
fellows in the big cities and that in itself
means a heck of a lot to a small- town exhibitor."
Scanlon, son of the late John Scanlon
sr., for 30 years with Warner Bros. Theatres
in the Connecticut zone (the elder
Scanlon was Danbui-y city manager for
Stanley Warner, successor company to
Warners Bros. Theatres, at time of his
death some months agoi, looks upon the
Strand, a well-i-un house in this predominantly
industrial community, hard-hit by a
disastrous flood in 1955 and since recovering
financially and emotionally, as the
NE-2
S&^iCf/ne
pivot, the center of entertainment activity
for Winsted.
"When people in Winsted and environs,"
he said, "talk entertainment, I want the
Strand's name to creep into the convention
and then dominate these same thoughts.
This is specifically why I'm constantly offering
the Strand's facilities for every benefit
type show imaginable. When people
cross our threshold, they're geared to
thinking in terms of the Strand, and
they're om- best advertisement, beyond actual
advertising in newspapers, via strong
word-of-mouth recommendations."
Towards such objectives, Scanlon recently
offered Strand facilities for four
full days of screenings of Paramount's
"The Ladies Man" and "On the Double,"
with the Winchester Juvenile Grange sponsoring
performances for the Oak Hill
School for the Blind. Adults were charged
75 cents, students (with student pass), 65
cents, and childi-en, 35 cents.
A whopping total of 24 c(x>perative merchants,
businessmen and other opinionmakers
In this conservative community
bought a page in the town's sole newspaper.
The Evening Citizen (which promotionally
prides itself as being the smallest
daily newspaper in Connecticut) , urging
SRO attendance figures.
The foregoing is typical of the community-minded
spirit manifested by Scanlon
workday schedule. He infuses his staff
with enthusiasm for motion pictui-es and
motion picture theatres, asserting that the
staffer with a smile is infinitely more valuable
than the doui'-visaged aide.
At the same time, Scanlon is quick to
admit that some attractions, promising in
outlook, didn't chalk up briskly at all.
"This activity doesn't discourage me,"
he emphasizes. "It rather encourages me
to go out and see why I didn't gross well.
I feel very strongly that boxoffice grosses
can be on a definite par level with personal
management activity, no better, no worse."
Time and again—and not alone at holiday
periods—Scanlon gets communityminded
merchants to sponsor kiddy
shows, the thinking here contending that
n 2 years for $5 Q 1 year for $3 O Z years for $7
n Remiftance Enclosed D Send Invoice
THEATRE
STREET ADDRESS
TOWN ZONE STATE..
NAME
POSITION
mmm THE NATIONAL FILM WEEKLY 52 issues a year
825 Van Brunt Blvd., Kansas City 24, Mo
what helps bring people into the center
of Winsted helps, inevitably, to move merchandise
off merchants' shelves.
"How do you know," he asks skeptical
merchants when approached, "if you
haven't tried?"
He maintains student prices (teenage
level) at 65 cents, ten cents below the
adult figui-e, feeling he should encom-age
gi'eater attendance by the teenagers. On
occasion, merchants pick up th? kiddies'
show tabs complete, the tickets themselves
distributed at merchant outlets.
In summer when the beckoning countryside
lures vacationers by the thousands,
Scanlon is not resting on his particular
showmanship laurels; he specializes in
street ballyhoo and has sailboats, with
appropriate sales copy, on Highlake lake,
patronized by the bulk of the Winstedites
as well as vacationists.
He mails—to a sizable list of summer
boys and girls camp»s—invitations to send
young people to the Strand, at the same
time offering varied and sundry inducements
(reduced fare, for example) to the
ever-recreation-minded adults who administer
to the needs of the pre-teenagers.
"I'm looking forward to some hefty
grosses from some of the topnotch product
just ahead!" he concluded.
NEW HAVEN
Ctanley Warner has instituted something
new for downtown first runs—charging
$1.25 for reserved loges at the newly
remodeled Roger Sherman Theatre, the
New England zone flagship theatre . .
.
John H. Harris' "Ice Capades" played the
6,000-seat New Haven Arena January 18-
24 at $4.80 top.
Playwright Thornton Wilder is moving
from suburban Hamden to the better
weather environs of Ai-izona . . . Hobbling
about with a cane has been Mi's. Prances
Hurley Connors Augustine, assistant to
Bob Carney, resident manager at Loew's
Poll, Waterbury. She slipped and fell on
the steps of the lobby at the shuttering
Loew's Majestic, Bridgeport, fracturing her
left leg.
Robert M. Sternburg, president of New
England Theatres, was in town, conferring
with Jim Darby, Paramount Theatre . . ,
Pi-anklin E. "Fergie" Ferguson, general
manager of Bailey Theatres, reported a fine
reaction by patrons to the advancing of the
normal 5 p.m. change-of-price to 4 p.m.,
thus enabling more family groups to attend
performances on weekdays at the
first-loin Whalley.
Olivia de Havilland and Henry Fonda
were in town with the pre-Broadway test
of Garson Kanin's latest stage effort, "A
Gift of Time," at Maurice Bailey's Shubert,
January 29-Febniai-y 3 at $4.80 top.
Friends on Filmrow received news of the
death, in Miami Beach, Fla., of retired
Warner Bros, exchange manager Max.
Birnbaum. He is survived by his wife Ida,
three brothers and a sister.
'Myth or Mission' Topic
HARTFORD—Allen M. Widem, Hartford
Times amusements editor, will discuss
"Motion Pictures—Myth or Mission" at the
February 7 luncheon meeting of the Capitol
City Kiwanis Club.
BOXOFFICE :: February 5, 1962
t