This brought a flush to the manager’s face and caused him to shift in his chair.
“My dad,” said Grand then, and with severe reverence, “pushed out here in ... 1920. There were few frontiers open for him at that time. There are fewer still ... open-for-us-today!”
He faced the manager and would have let him speak; in fact, by looking straight into his face, he invited him to do so, but the man could only nod in sage agreement.
“If there is one unexplored territory,” Grand continued, waxing expansive now, “one virgin wood alive today in this man’s land of ours—it is cinema management! My dad—“Dad Grand”—was a championship golfer. That may be why ... now this is only a guess ... but that may be why he always favored the maxim: ‘If you want them to play your course—don’t put rocks on the green!’”
Grand paused for a minute, staring down at the manager’s sparkling shoes as he allowed his great brow to furrow and his lips to purse, frantically pensive. Then he shot a question:
“Do you know the story of the Majestic Theatre in Kansas City?”
The manager, a man with thirty years’ experience in the field, who knew the story of every theatre in the country, did not know this one.
“In August, 1939, the management of the K.C. Majestic changed hands, and policy. Weston seats were installed—four inches wider than standard—and ‘a.p.’s,’ admission prices, were cut in half ... and two people were to occupy each seat. The new manager, Jason Frank, who died of a brain hemorrhage later the same year, had advanced Wyler Publicity nine hundred dollars for the catch-phrase, ‘Half the Price, and a Chance for Vice,’ which received a wide private circulation.”
Grand broke off his narrative to give the manager a searching look before continuing:
“... but it didn’t work, sir! It did not work ... and I’ll tell you why: it was a crackpot scheme. A crackpot scheme, and rocks on the green! It cost Frank his licence, his health, and in this case perhaps his very life.”