Box office

“ I have searched through many biographies in hopes of finding the writer or artist who was wholly uninfluenced by the Box Office. If he existed, or was likely to exist, he would be found, one would think, in large numbers among those well-to-do folk who had ample means and could devote their lives to developing their genius and ability solely for the good of mankind. It must seem curious to those who despise the Box Office to find how little good work is achieved by men and women who are under no necessity of appealing to that institution for support. ”

“ In professions such as the actor’s, the barrister’s, the politician’s, and to a great extent the dramatist’s, and all those vocations where a man to succeed at all must succeed in his own lifetime, the Box Office is, for all practical purposes, the sole test of merit. The suggestion—a very common one to-day—that a man can only make a Box Office success by pandering to low tastes, or indulging in some form of dishonesty or chicanery, is a form of cant invented by the man who has failed, to soothe his self-esteem and to account pleasantly to himself for his own failure. ”

“ Before discoursing of the Box Office in its widest sense, let us return for a moment to the case of the actor. Here the Box Office must, in the nature of things, decide his fate. It is the polling booth of the playgoer, and it is the playgoer and not the critic who decides whether an actor is great or otherwise. Why do we call Garrick a great actor? ”

“ And on the whole they are good. Success at the Box Office is not only to be desired on account of the money it brings in, but because it means an appreciation and belief in one’s work by one’s fellow-men. ”

“ All great first principles want re-stating every now and then, and the Box Office principle is one of them, for, like many of the great natural forces which govern human action, it seems to be entirely unappreciated and misunderstood. ”

“ Wall Street didn't worry none about what graft was being gotten away with as long's they thought they was going to get their money back and a hundred per cent. profit every so often. But that was yesterday, when audiences would shell out cheerful and sit through anything because pictures moved. Today they're still lining up at the box-office, but only because they can't believe the day won't never come when they'll maybe see something worth their time and coin. Tomorrow they'll be saying, 'Show me!' before they'll dig up as much's a thin dime. ”

“ Even if the Box Office is as uncertain as the law, it is also as powerful as the law. Of course a painter or writer has the advantage over the actor—if it be one—of appealing to a smaller Box Office to-day, in the hopes of attracting a large Box Office to-morrow. A man can write and paint to please a coming generation, but a man cannot act, or [13] bring in Bills in Parliament, or bake or brew, or make candlesticks for anyone else than his fellow living men. ”

“ In the box-office, if the first purchaser of seats for a new production is an old man or woman, it means to the ticket-seller that the play will have a long run. A young person means the reverse. A torn bank-note means a change of position for the man in the box-office, while a gold certificate, strange to say, is a sign of bad luck. ”

“ The box-office price of a ticket for a single performance is $3, and even if the demand should not happen to be as immense as to warrant a long advance on the box-office tariff, McBride can sell his tickets at the regular price of $3 apiece and get the sum of $10,080 for them, which will leave him a profit of nearly $3,000 upon his short investment. ”

“ It may be that in some ideal state the incentive to work may be found in some other institution rather than the Box Office. It is the dream of a growing number of people that a time is nearly at hand when the Box Office results attained by the workers are to be taken away and shared among those high-souled unemployables who prefer talking to toiling and spinning. ”

“ You do not know all the ins and outs yet, dear fellow. The Ambigu pays for thirty copies, and only takes nine for the manager and box office-keeper and their mistresses, and for the three lessees of the theatre. Every one of the Boulevard theatres pays eight hundred francs in this way to the paper; and there is quite as much again in boxes and orders for Finot, to say nothing of the contributions of the company. And if the minor theatres do this, you may imagine what the big ones do! Now you understand? We are bound to show a good deal of indulgence. ”

“ Box office reform depends upon six words spoken by the right man with the right authority to back his six words up. Help from the newspapers does not depend, I am convinced, upon the spending of millions of dollars, but would follow an honest request for their assistance based upon the ground of the theater’s cultural and educational value, always provided that we could show some claim to cultural and educational importance. ”

“ But the suggestion that Box Office success is or can be largely attained by unworthy means is, it seems to me, a curious delusion of the envious, insulting to the generation of which we are individuals, inasmuch as it suggests that we are easily deceived and deluded, and exhibiting unpleasantly that modern pessimism that spells—or should we more accurately say smells?—degeneration. ”

“ Some of the lower class of purchasers, inspired by the thrifty desire for gain said to be a New England characteristic, sell these tickets, which they buy at the box-office price, at an enormous advance, and smear their clothes with treacle and sugar and other abominations, to secure, from the fear of their contact of all decently-clad competitors, freer access to the box-keeper. ”

“ It is his business to create his proffered entertainment into a valuable piece of property that shall declare actual cash dividends at the box office. That is being a successful showman, and he who does this exhibits real showmanship. ”

“ Sliding up to the box office I heard him demand one of the best seats and laid down a five-dollar bill. A coupon and three dollars was handed to him. When he asked what the ticket cost and was told that it was two dollars, it was evident that he expected to pay half a dollar at most.
"Two dollars to see the forty thieves, eh?" he repeated.
"Yes, sir," said the box-office man.
"Well, keep your durned seat," exclaimed the man from Jersey. "I don't think I care to see the other thirty-nine."
Then there's the elevator boy in our apartment house, who was born and brought up in the city. ”

“ In one year, when motion pictures got too far below the line of popular appreciation, enough people stopped going to them to drop the total box office receipts in the country more than a hundred million dollars.
So, while for a time there is more money in playing the public down than there is in playing it up (since more people come, at first at154 least, to see pictures that are too cheap for their taste, than come to see pictures that are a little too good for their taste) , in the long run, playing the public up pays best. ”

“ We may be thankful that all parties openly recognise that any political play to be produced must please the pit and gallery, and that any statesman actor, to be a success, must play to their satisfaction. No one wants the stalls and dress circle of the political circus to be empty, but it would be absurd to let a small percentage of the audience exercise too great an influence on the productions of the management.
As in politics, so in business, for here no sane man will be heard to deny that the Box Office test [12] is the only test of merit. ”

“ In political matters we find that for all practical purposes the Box Office reigns supreme. No misguided political impresario to-day would plant some incompetent young actor into a star part because he was a member of his own family. ”

“ Davenport's engagement ended, Miss Ince resumed and played from September the 5th to the 17th, then departed for the Golden Shores of the Pacific. Now again, after this brilliant succession of stars, the stock company was left to its own unaided efforts, and from September the 17th to November the 26th they kept the wheel turning with a steady stream of stock pieces, and the old mill grinds, and the box office does business and the actors get their salaries. "Stars may come and stars may go, but the stock keeps on for aye." ”

“ Every theater was always sold up to that row, no matter how early in the day I got to the box office. I have an invention in mind that will register every seat sold or given out, and show it on a diagram, to put an end to the usual practice. ”

“ You will almost certainly have a few hot words with the man at the box-office, as he will try to swindle you out of a portion of your gains, trusting to the confusion of the moment to cover up his fraud. ”

“ Because, in the first place, the lively arts have never had criticism. The box-office is gross; it detects no errors, nor does it sufficiently encourage improvement. Nor does abuse help. There is good professional criticism in journals like Variety, The Billboard, and the moving-picture magazines—some of them. ”

“ Children and men and women are taught to forget that ‘they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize.’ It is considered bad form to remember that there is a Box Office, that it is the world’s medium for deciding human values ”

“ In this very place, we are half-distracted by the speculators. They have been holding out for such high prices, that the public have held out too; and now (frightened at what they have done) the speculators are trying to sell their worst seats at half the cost price, so that we are in the ridiculous situation of having sold the room out, and yet not knowing what empty seats there may be. We could sell at our box-office to any extent; but we can't buy back of the speculators, because we informed the public that all the tickets were gone. ”

“ Other light dramas on the stage, and thrilling murders in the audience, used to occur at Alexander's Theater, on Front street. Here you could get a glass of Laramie beer, made of glucose, alkali water, plug tobacco, and Paris green, by paying two bits at the bar, and, as a prize, you drew a ticket to the olio, specialties, and low gags of the stage. The idea of inebriating a man at the box office, so that he will endure such a sham, is certainly worthy of serious consideration. ”

“ Those who have gone into the private boxes once and find the girls obliging enough to sit on their knees and ask them to treat will go there again if they can possibly get the fifty cents that is asked as an admission fee.
Sometimes a party of really Christian men unfamiliar with city ways will get into a variety dive by mistake, and what is more, into the boxes. The glaring sign over the front of the house which simply announces that the place is a theatre attracts them to the box-office. ”

“ Bless them for shedding the gleams of their gifts into our darkening times. Save them—tonight—from Bourbon Street. Inspire the mighty industry that sponsors them. And, in fine, smile beneficently on the box offices of the land, breathe into them a second spring and let there be the financial flow that is so vital to the maintenance of an enterprise without which our daily lives would be so definitely drabber. Amen.
The one man who could hold a candle as a letter writer to Father Murphy was Gene Fowler, another friend of many years. ”

“ I know many a captain of industry who quietly hides away in the [Pg 80] secrecy of his strong box rare little volumes, such as Shakespeare quartos, small pamphlets by Shelley, and even first editions of Joseph Conrad. These rich men realize—and rightly, too—that such treasures will always sell at a premium, even though the market is tumbling and Wall Street is in a panic. Owners of precious books always find they do not have to wait for the chance buyer. Their volumes can be sent to the auction mart at any time, where they will realize, as a rule, their full value. ”

“ If I am a successful man, my work has a certain market value at the publisher's. So far my case is the same if I am an English novelist—but there the analogy stops. In France, the manager of the theatre can compete with the publisher for the purchase of any new idea that I have to sell. In France, the market value of 200 my new play is as high, or higher, than the market value of my new novel. Remember, I am not now writing of French theatres which have assistance from the Government, but of French theatres which depend, as our theatres do, entirely on the public. ”

“ There is a 'middleman,' called the 'Exchange,' whose business is to buy the films from the makers and rent them to the theatres. He pays a big price for a film, but is able to rent it to dozens of theatres, by turns, and by this method he not only gets back the money he has expended but makes a liberal profit."
"Well," said Patsy, not to be baffled, "we could sell several copies of our films to these middlemen, and so reduce the expense of making them for our use."
"The middleman won't buy them," asserted Jones. ”

“ Creating a demand for your wares in new lands is, as one is well aware, a far harder task than is capturing fresh business at home, so, if the desired volume of trade is to be obtained, there must be no stinting on the advertising campaign expenditure. It is doubtful whether there is any publicity outlets that can outshine the versatile motion picture in the all-important capacity of a results bringer. ”

“ Motion-picture publicity is so pliable that arranging with movie theaters to put on a film of your product in the making and equipping salesmen with a reel and apparatus to demonstrate before prospective customers does not exhaust its uses.
I have unearthed a New York manufacturing concern in a large way of business who have fathomed the all-important matter of deriving the fullest value from their movie-advertising investment. They utilize their film to teach salesmanship to the employees. ”