The Seward gateway and the Alaska evening post., 1917-12-11
FIRST NICKELS AND DIMES ARE
 SHIPPED INSIDE
War Tax on Admissions to Theatres Cause Great Change in Currency of Administration Sends
 in the Small Change
VISITING MOVIE MAN TALKS
Says Picture Houses Fight Shy of the Picture Depicting the Alaskan Miner as There Is Too
 Much to Criticlse

PORTLAND, Dec. l. -(By MaiD
 The first dimes and nicBles that ever went into Fairbanks, Alaska, were shipped in after the new war tax on motion picture theater admissions went into effect, to meet the prob lem of making small change.
 r. w. Talbert, special representa- tive of the Universal Film company, who has returned from a months and a half trip through the Coast cities of Alaska, told of the shipping of the cargo of dimes and nickels from Cordova to R. L. Thorn, mana ger of the theater in Fairbanks, just before Mir. Talbert left Alaska to re- turn to Portland.
 Heretofore everything in Fair banks has cost % cents, 50 cents and so on, in multiples of 25 cents," says Mir. Talbert. "The rise of 3 cents in theater admission prices brought in the problem of odd change. Until it was possible to get dimes and nickles shipped over from Cordova, Manager Thorn met the new situation by sell ing tickets in sufficient quantity to bring the total up to even 25-cent change"
 The films showing in Alaska now are those released in the states from one to two years ago. The big draw back to getting film service into Alaska is the fact that there is a To- day schedule in summer and 15 to IS days in the winter to the coast cities, and this makes it entirely impractical to take new films off the service in the states and let them idle through the long trip to and from Alaska. A a result the films are used in all the theaters in the states before they go up to the Alaskan circuits.
 Strangely enough current events and weeklies are what the people want worst of all.
 "This demand is met by buying the films outright from the Seattle ex- changes taking them up to Alaska and putting them through the circuit of the coast cities. Captain A. E. La throp, who controls theaters in Cor dova, Seward Valdez and Anchorage. buys the films, puts them on to the circuit and then sends them on to the other cities They are six weeks old when they go out of Seattle and the run along the coast cities is about SO days. Then they send them into the interior cities by sled and perhaps this weeks current events film will reach Nome audiences some time late next spring.
 "In spite of the handicap of trans portation against which they must work, there are a number of excellent theaters in Alaska, in Anchorage, Cor dOva, Valdez, Juneau, Ketchikan, etc
 cone kind of film the exhibitors in Alaska fight mighty shy of is the film that is made up on the plot of a min ing story. Their audiences know the mining game down to the ground, and the way that the hero of the average moving picture strikes his pick into a mud bank and pulls out fortune, doesn't get by with an Alaskan audi ence for a second.
 "They've tried one or two mining films there, but they won't run 'em on a bet now. It's safer to book COW boy and New York society films, in which the detail won't meet with such critical eye"