The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-10

N factor in the motion picture industry, declares that I and other commentators on business conditions sadly neglect to take these three industries into con sideration, in considering economic conditions and attempting to forecast the economic. trend. He claims that these industries afford good index or the. public's. state of mind. He went on: Advertising lineage of local ana national accounts in the newspapers Of the country compares favorably with the boom year of 1920 Radio lacks the background to afford such a compari- son, but public interest shows con- sistent growth and forecasts q bigger fall and winter business than Last year
 Most forms of amusement other than outdoor enterprises seem to have summer recessions, with radio, 1t is static that reduces or interferes with receptiyity. i
 There has been no obstacle or hin drance to taking the business temporal ture of the motion picture industry, since a luxury tax has been paid on every movie theatre ticket from mid- war days to July of this year. The receNt federal revision measure abol- ished the levy on. all theatre tickets from fifty cents downward. This has influenced public patronage upward in the few cool spots of the country. and it, is expected to increase theatre audi: ences throughout the winter.
 Being particularly interested in the motion picture industry, this authority proceeded to cite facts And figures to show not only its growth but its greatly improved financial. status. ..
 The Famous Players-Lasky corpora tion,. which apparently is larger than the rapidly growing First National and the Loew-Metro-G Goldwyn Mayer con solidation, was not in particularly good shape some time. ago, as buyers of its stock, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, learned. Famous Players, explains this authority, made the mistake of curtailing it's volume of pictures out of ratio with it's operat- ing overhead. Accordingly, it vigo- rously. slashed its overhead, weeded out dead wood, and closed both its Cali fornia and Long Island studios for al most three months. At the end of the year, the company was being fi- nanced by the banks to the tune of three and one-third million dollars without, however, failing to continue 10 earn and pay 8 per cent dividends on both classes of stock
 This year it is spending fully $1S,- 000, 900 on productions. Whereas, 1t paid about that amount for fifty pic lures last year. it will have seventy pictures of better quality this year.
 ''On the basis of recent and present progress in setting its house in. order, ?, !, he says, ''the company expects to be out of the banks the first of the year. As an evidence of the theatre pros perity across the country, this one com pany, sold by the end of July-seventy- five per cent of the contracts it set as the quota to be obtained by next January. Famous income for the fall is not actually building at a rate to indicate net profits to equal the com pany's banner year of 1920, when net profits were $5, 337 900.
 Representation in close to 10000 of. a nations 16,000 motion picture theatres in a highly competitive indus try represents a creditable achieve ment."
 As in other industries, consultations have been the rule among motion pic lures. Here are interesting facts bear ing on this subject:
 Metro -Goldwyn-Mayer, the three headed film child of Marcus Loew, rep resents sensible reduction of waste and parallel overheads. through Metros. absorption of the Goldwyn and Mayer individual entities. Within a few weeks this elimination of one nation wide distributing system for the sale and delivery of pictures ended a drain that represented the better part of a $40,O00 week operating overhead. There are still fourteen of these na- tion-wide systems of branch offices representing that number of companies paralleling each other in about the same exchange or branch cities
 New Years day, in. the movies, comes not on January 1, but during August. What is the outlook for the coming season? It is described as distinctly encouraging. For the season of 1924-25, the full length feature picture output is scheduled to be around 500 produc- tions from all domestic sources.
 Of this total about 300 are produced by the independent organizations and marketed by the sale of territorial rights to localize marketing concerns without national affiliations. The IA nationwide distributing concerns an- nounce the following production sched- ules: