PENNY SHOWMEN WHO ARE NOW FAMOUS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 142, 3 July 1937, Page 11

PENNY SHOWMEN WHO ARE NOW FAMOUS

; t w growth of cinema Looking Back to Nineties

\yHEN THE NEW Oreon Theatre j opened in Leicester Square recently, boxing in the square on its third side with pieture houses, its steel and concrete formed a tablet to an historic spot in film history — the site of one of the first pieture shows given in England, writes C.A.L. in the London Observer. There, at the old Alhambra music hall, in the middle nineties, Eobert Panl oxhibited his new njachine, the Theatreograph^ lately introduced with vast suecess at Olympia. Almost next dooT, at the Empire music hall, the' new Lumiere Cinematographe was nightly attracting auddences. Leicester Square was already, before 1900, the hub of London 's picture-going world. The old music halls were the|firstlcinemas; the space of a variety turn the usual length of a film programme. In time tho novelty of the sho^t "living picturo" turn fadod, and came to be nsed as what tho Americans called a "chaser" to empty the.house periodically during thc continuous vaudoville performanecs. 'But outsido the music halls thc halnt grcw. ' Enterprising shownion bcgan lo hirc local assembly rooms,' clubs, and cmpty shops for their performancee, paying their rental witli a^pcrccntago of the takings. In America tho "penny areade" men, led by an enterprising young fellow named Adolph Zukor, gave a fillip to the business by leasing adjoindng rooms to their arcade:s, knocking holes in the wall or ceiling, fitting up an improvised screen, and gradually weaning their patrons away from peepshow to pieture. Other pioneers of the peepshow were a certain Carl Laemie, a cortain Jesse Lasky, and a family of young cycle salesmen called Warner. In London tlie crowds were flockdng into a convertcd shop to ride through tlie Bocky kfountains for sixpencc a trip in a now cntcrprise known as Hales Tours. • - Until thc Cincnialograph Act of 190(5 thcr-j were no sal'cty rcstrictious at film shows. Thc halls, often built of" av.oo(1; wero lit by uncovercd gas jots; Ihe seats wero woodcn benchcs; a singtC door usuully provided the exit. -The film, as it rau through tlie projector, unwound loosely on to Ihe floor, or in beltcr-class houses dnto a saek or open baskot. It took two serious iires, following the terriblc Paris bazaar fire of tlio nineties to convince the Hotne Ofiice that same fonu of rcgulation

and' licensing was necessary to keep this new entertainment under control. Step by etep, in the -years before and during the war, the "bioscope," as it was first called, "the pdctures," as they became later, developed as a . social in•stitution. , The rules demanding extra exit space suggested the purchase of adjoining properties, and cinemas automatically grcw larger. Wise managers advertised that their house was "aired botweon eacli. performance. . Woodcn benchcs gave wav to aTmcliairs scTewed to the ground, and prcsently "ono thousand t-ip-up seals" was an announcemen,t of enormous charm. ' Tho film loeturer, who learnt up his coniments on hronday morning. to accompany thc action of Monday night's film, becarno a rarily. Tlie single piaiiist. was supported by a firbljer, then l>y a multjplo kej-board combining »ten or eleven other instruments> and -prcsently by a small oreliestra. Programmcs, instead of changing daily, were changed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. and presently, with exclusive dignitv. on Mondays and Thursdays. By 1912 entreprising managers were serving tea and a biscuit with everv ?eat. By 1913, for a penny "anywhere in the house" you could see a six-reel pieture in a theatre housing fifteen liundred people with atteiidants dressed in "de luxe" nniforms. Not long afterwards the price went up to twopence, and even threepence. By • 1914 they were advertising "the largest screen in Stratford," or Birmingham, or London. In 1915 D. W. Griffitli put the hali-mark of gcntility on picture-sliow-ing' with "Tho Birth ' oi: a Nation," which miglit only bc oxhibited in large, spceialised halls, with a special musi-. .enl score to accompnny every. show. Tlie national devel'opiuclit in eiuemabuilding in America during. tho war years led lo a, vast injpctus in this eountry after 19J8, when the restrietions on building were removod. Pieture houses sprang up liko muslirooms often on the site of converted music^lalls. lr>lectric- signs blazed. above these

new "palaces"; every cinema was a "super" cinema; every programme was a "de luxe" programme; organs began to rise out of the ground, colour floor lights bathed them in blne and rose and amber; stage "presentations" ushered in the film. Then, in 1929? the talkies came, and overnight tho picturo houses mnst be "wired for sound" or porisli. A totally ncw stylo of arehitocture was thc' order of tho day. All over tho world, now talkio theatres sprang up; old silent halls were gutted, their vitals cut out, remodelled. Tho tendency in silent days was for cincmas to bc long and narrow, with ground-fluor seats. Tho isound engineers found that the cclio from the back wai] reached tlie frout seats after a time lapse of scconds. They tackled the problem in two days, treating tlie walls with" acoustic absorbing material, and oreaking up the baek wall with a bnleony — using the audience, in fact, as an absorbing medium. Their cinemas became wider, lower, with heavy carpets and npholstery to absorb echoes. The operating box, for the first time. was treated as the key to tlio theatre The old boxes, -"absolute deatli-traps" as they have been called, were scrapped in favoqr of lighter, airier. more ample conditions. Sound, pTojeetion. lighting. ventilation, became a thorough engineering job. Everv cinema is a minia(ure power station to-day. Meanwliile, in the last eight years, another enormoue impetus to cinema dcvelopment has been found in tho increaso of road transport, and in particular thc growth of the motor bus serviccs. A eountry town liko hfaidstone is served to-day by sevcutecn separato bus routos. Sidney Bernstein. avIio has built a thoatre there us big and costly as any of his London houses. reckons tliat ho draws his: andiences from a fifteen-niile radius. " Tn niost cases, in eountry districts, nr-t-angements are made with the omnibuf companies to meet the times of the

cinema programmes. On market days the pieture-house cloakrooms will be stacked with parcels — free -.storage for fowls, fruit, groceries, shoes, shrubs^ tortoises, and all the odd products of a eountry shopping day. The modern tendency of picturegoers is to .regard the cinema as an exclusive land of club, where they can get free garage, free cloak'room ' space, warm, cushioned 6eats on cold days, air-condi-tioned freshness on hot days. Thanks to the . str^ngent regulations of the L.O.C. and other local autliorities, they can isee their filtns to-day dn comfort and safety. There is no danger of light failuro. • The regulations demand cmergency ligliting, generated from an independent source of snpply. Tliero is no danger of fiTO.panic. . The rules for cmeTgency cxits nre striet, and kfr. Bornfitoin rockons that ho.ean get 3000 children out of a modern theatre in something just. under two njinutes. The house lights are brigliter than tliey nsed Eo be: with a tendency to be thrown Sown on the feet to provent stunibling. For half a crown tho most exigent pic-ture-goer can buy three hours of rewt and comfort;, soft carpets to walk on. soft chairs to sleep in; warmth, opulence, and variety. Thirty year3 ago a young lady reject: ed her fiancee because slie heard he was going into the "living pieture" business. Twenty years ago a penny arcade salesman refused to join Zukor in the cinema because he "had seen pietures put out penny arcades and. was not going to be twice caught napping." Ten years ago the leaders of the industry deelared that talkiesj if they caipe, would only be an overnight novelty. In less than half a century we have seen this illusion of movlng images grow from a toy peepshow into the most fashionable of luxury cntertainments. . To-day, in 1937, comfort has almost reacliedi saturation poiut in ihe cinema. We havo arrived at tho stage whoro wo can 110 longer Wlured here or thero J)yan bxtra girl in tho stage show or an extra goldfish'in' tlie fo'yor. Tlie public of 3937 shops for pictures, moro than evcr before, according to the quality of the cntorlainmcnt. The screen inattors moro than tho soft fu rnisliiiigs; the images are moro persuasive than 'the usherettes. As Charles Eaymond, the manager of the Empire, once phrased it with charaeteristic American economy, "Thc scatis pll face onc way."