Trade Talk #7

 

What Trades Told: Paramounts on Parade, Frank Wants Back In, and Adults Only Please

Re Broadway's legendary Paramount Theatre (interior above), how’s addressing sheer vast of the place, a closest millions came to entering a king’s palace, let alone as welcome guests, not sweeping ash but treated like royals manor born. I personally never stood in a so-called “movie palace,” crumbled remnants of a few, yes, a more sad than satisfying experience. Ever visit such ruins? They're like Pompeii after the eruption. In fact, preservationists are doing a better job keeping Pompeii intact these days. Once there was a collector’s show (1976) at a rundown Greensboro venue, promoter-in-part Don Key who used to publish the fabled Big Reel where we enthusiasts could buy 16mm. The onetime Paramount anchor now saw reels and old posters change hands in spacious common areas once pristine and filled with excited patronage. There was smell of decay about it, but what did we care so long as there was film plus paper to barter back and forth? Broadway’s Paramount Theatre was ultimate showcase for freshest product its corporate owner had to offer, the site a model to which others could aspire, but never equal. People who never knew luxury in their lives could come here and experience it. An admission bought far more than a feature plus live entertainment, however spectacular these were.

Walking upon plushest carpet, using facilities unknown at barely plumbed homes, what survives of such grandeur stilled images as published by trades, plus Paramount fronts and marquees photographed for whatever posterity they’d know. Then too were ads that once enticed, prices notably lowered following the war when receipts began falling as folks found other ways to dispose of dollars. Trades tried to assure a nervous industry that renewed prosperity was just around a late forties corner, but wiser heads knew better. How do you maximize profits while forced to lower admissions just to fill a fraction of your seats? Simple truth was movies not so entrancing as before. Neither were the live acts now that swing had passed its prime. Trouble was studio output much more costly to complete, then compete, for leisure dollars. You’d not dream it all could disappear, but consent decrees cruelly scattered the lot of Broadway palaces plus others of similar size at key sites throughout the country. Little is left of these monuments now, only ads, stills, to convince us they once existed, a fact the harder to conceive with ever fewer of eyewitnesses to confirm that life was indeed once like this.

I'm Told the Paramount Even at Peak of Frank's Popularity Put Plants in the Audience to Shriek and Swoon for Him

Meet Danny and Meet Frank Again --- Trades didn’t tell it at the time but run-down-at-heels Frank Sinatra fairly begged old stand the Paramount Theatre to let him back in to live perform with Meet Danny Wilson, a Universal comparative cheapie that hoped to revive both Frank and musicals not necessarily the strength of this studio. The Paramount was by now a free agency for exhibition of films they’d choose rather than have them chosen by previous owner Paramount Pictures, entity formerly in control of this Broadway house plus 1,200 or so more across the country. That was then and this was now, choke collars off theatres and if you wanted a favor, like Frank obviously did, you took your hat in hand and called on Mr. Manager. Sinatra's relationship with the Paramount was good for multiple appearances at this acknowledged sweet spot of all presentation houses he graced over years since starting. It all came inevitably to relationships and accumulated good will, this true all over but especially so in exhibition. Tricks of the Trade were better called Trust of the Trade.

Swim In a Heated Morgan’s Creek --- Trade folk followed each other like hounds after meat. Word would get out of a selling device that worked and sniffers from however far would ape the scheme and be off to respective banks with reward. Far from resenting the purloin, showmen were flattered when brothers of the business took their example and ran farther with it, like for instance with Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, a 1945 hot potato to declare censors defeated and come on in to wide open comedy forbidden till now. Who were they kidding really, though proof was in pudding whipped by Preston Sturges, who wrote-directed Morgan’s and made Miracle of beating prudes at their suffocating game. Did the Chicago Theatre here go too far? What if would-be patronage took the “Adults Only” tag serious? Storks a-flyin’ bespeak babies born, that of course what Morgan Creek’s Miracle was all about. Word spread fast that Betty Hutton’s character gets knocked up, but by which of many servicemen she kisses goodbye? It all seemed too good to be true for sauce seekers so far frustrated by Hollywood pulling in horns. Had a new day dawned for moviegoers?