Sticks vs. City on Pix

By Robert H. Brown. Variety, December 6, 1932.

New York Hits Home Town Flops

Sophistication Cold in Small Towns—They Don’t Know Triangle Still Good for Goodies

TWAIN SELDOM AGREE

Birmingham, Dec. 5

Sticks and the city, how do they compare as to grosses in the picture business?

Take it any way on earth, there is probably no one combination that will produce a picture okay in New York, okay in Birmingham, okay in Kansas City and other sections as well.

It’s a tough problem that has bothered bookers and producers as well as exhibitors. An exhibitor reads of the big sensation such and such a picture is making in New York and he wonders what it will do in his small town theatre in the sticks.

The booking office tries to stick him with a heavy price for the picture simply because it clicked great in Gotham and Chi. Past bookings have taught the exhib that ‘New York successes’ are ‘home town failures’ for him as a usual thing.

On the other hand, there is the failure in the cities that clicks in the sticks. The manager of a chain house is in just as tough a spot. He sends in a swell report on a freak picture slammed out by a studio just as a programer and it does great in the sticks. Then the next week he books one of those supers and his trade dives. He writes in his report that business is bad. The home office reads the report and says ‘better get a new manager for the Pumpkin Center house, he can’t do business on ‘Grand Hotel’.’

Circuit managers, house managers, independent exhibitors and others in the show business in the tall grass all agree that what is needed most is a better understanding between the sticks, New York and Hollywood. This does not mean that Hollywood should stop making those supers that get a ton of kale in New York and a pound of cabbage in Pumpkin Center. They simply infer that those pictures should probably be kept in New York or shipped into the South and other hick centers without expecting too much.

Don’t Want ’Em

Boiled down to a pint of pure water, the sticks don’t want sophisticated pixes. ‘Strange Interlude’ hasn’t done so well in the South. It is still on the future booking list for Birmingham and there is some question as to whether it will ever land here. ‘Life Begins’ has played only a few spots because it is a rather touchy spot. It is all out of Birmingham.

The old triangle story still goes in the sticks. As long as there is a lover, a girl, and a villain and a thin plot there is a market for the picture. The more action the better.

Recently there has been placed on the market a group of shorts burlesquing the old time ‘True Blue Harolds’ of the old film days. They are burlesque from start to finish and are meant to be laughed at. But everyone that has played Birmingham so far has received an average of one laugh a week. It just goes right over the head of the patrons. They seem to think the comedies are serious.

Next to triangle stories there is the mystery or scary picture that gets the dough. There was ‘Frankenstein’ (U) that clicked here in spite of rain all week. It went over great everywhere, small town and large town in this hick territory. ‘By Whose Hand’ (Col), ‘Arsene Lupin’ (M-Q), ‘Freaks’ (M-G), ‘Night of June 13’ (Par), ‘70,000 Witnesses’ (Pair), are just a few of the thrillers that have done pretty good among the grinds in the forests.

Other Favs

Other subjects that usually click in the country are sex, sports, aviation, war, and slap-stick humor.

The more vivid sex is the more business. That is, providing it escapes the blue noses and censors, who seem to take pleasure in chopping and banning films. They have to in order to hold their jobs, because preachers are the biggest enemies of the pictures. If a real sexy picture isn’t banned the preachers ring the clappers off the bells of the mayor, chief of police and theatre managers’ phones.

But where a sexy picture does get by and word gets around that it is sexy, then they fly to the box office. Mostly young couples at that….

(From the Internet Archive)