The acting bug is strong within many, especially boys and girls in their teens. The speaking-stage used to be the attraction, but nowadays they get screen-struck instead. Can’t you imagine how proud the winners would be to act in a photoplay and be viewed by their admiring friends? It may prove a stepping-stone to an engagement with a big film company. Events have turned out this way before now.
Important links in the chain are the local motion-picture exhibitors. All are fully alive to the value of a photoplay possessing a strong local appeal. Therefore, if you agreed to announce in your newspaper where the picture was being presented, you would find all the local exhibitors clamoring to hire it. You would probably be able to charge a nominal fee to help cover the cost of production, for it is not as if the photoplay is advertising pure and simple. You get your publicity as the promoter of the production.
Apart from getting your newspaper on the lips of everybody, every candidate would enlist the aid of friends to secure votes, the additional coupons required for this purpose increasing your circulation many times over, temporarily, of course. On the other hand, you would secure new permanent readers.
You may be too far removed from such movie-producing centers as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Jacksonville. Fortunately, however, there exist private concerns throughout the country which make a specialty of local work.
XXII.
SELLING SHOES BY MOTION PICTURES
Mr. Shoe Manufacturer, take your choice. Which would you prefer to boost a brand of shoes by—an industrial film, a comedy photoplay or a trick film? That is a matter for you personally to decide, for my responsibility ceases after mentioning how each type of motion picture has been employed by other shoe manufacturers.
The George E. Keith Company, manufacturers of Walk-Over shoes, introduced themselves to the motion-picture public with “The Making of a Shoe,” said film being exactly one-reel in length. The camera man went to Campello, Massachusetts, for his material, and first panoramed his camera outside the Walk-Over plant. Once inside, evidently nothing escaped his notice, for he covered everything, from the leather inspection to the polishing of the finished soles.
Credit must go to the Krohn-Fechheimer Company, of Cincinnati, for being the first to present photoplay stars. Their film, “A Footwear Romance,” featured, to use a studio term, Ruth Stonehouse and Bryant Ashburn. It was easy to capitalize these two attractions, so full-page announcements were taken in the leading motion-picture magazines.
This was how the fans were appealed to: Glancing across the aisle on the Pullman, Edward Blair saw a pair of feet so small, so bewitchingly dainty, that at once he lost his heart to the pretty feminine possessor. But who was she, and where was she going? Resorting to a bit of clever detective work, he found that she wore the Red Cross shoe—a clue that led up to some startling information. But afterwards came the greatest shock—when he discovered her as the servant in the home of Miss Eugenie Hatton, the girl he must marry to win the fortune of his eccentric uncle.
How would you have this story end? Would you have him marry the servant-girl, whom he really loves, or Eugenie and a fortune? How it really does end will be a big surprise to you.