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Crescent Amusement Company's Standardization and Corporate Intrusion into Small Towns
- 2. Chains and the Movies • Chains • Hollywood and the Big Five – Production, distribution, exhibition • Affiliated, unaffiliated, and independent • Crescent Amusement Company
- 4. From the hub in Nashville
- 9. Relation to TN’s 1940 Railroads
- 10. Connections to Film Distributors
- 11. Population and Theater Distribution in Relation to Railroads
- 12. Style of Warfare • Combine (friendly merger) or forced buyout • Franchise agreements • Antitrust
- 13. Degrees of Local Standardization • • • • • • Branding “Local touch” Management Ticket prices Segregation Sunday Shows
- 14. Standardized Features • FHA loans in the mid1930s • “Modern” in every respect – Comfort • Lighting • Seating and sight lines • Air conditioning and heating – – – – Fire safety Projection and sound Restrooms Glass fronts • Storefront arrangement – Treatment – Corner stores • Glass fronts
- 15. Standardized Architecture • Glass fronts • Corner stores • Offices over lobby and under balcony • Sightlines • Seats • Air conditioning • Sound
Editor's Notes
- Regional chain, ~130 theaters: TN, KY, AL, AR, MS, NC Crescent and 14 subsidiaries Park Theatre c. 1949, Full Façade.People unknown but notice the African-American man looking at a movie poster in front of the left lobby door. Gabe Clericuzio, Photograph Albums, Private Collection.
- Krogers, Walgreens, J. C. Penny, Woolworths – main streets of small towns. EX, half of all J.C. Penny’s were in towns less than 5,000 (Esperdy, 25)Movie industry late to national chain making movement --- in the early 1920s, chains were commonly understood and 1925, the era was called the “chain store age” (Esperdy, 26)BIG FIVE:Warner Bros., Loew’s/MGM, Fox, RKO, and Publix/ParamountUS v Paramount 1948 but in works since 1940vertically integrated companies – meaning they produced films in Hollywood, distributed their product to independent, unaffiliated, and affiliated theaters throughout the nation, and owned anetwork of prime exhibition sites in urban centers – and various combines controlled or manipulated each aspect of the industry. Booking restrictions“Runs are the successive showings of a film in a metropolitan area.”“Clearances are the periods of time, usually stipulated in license contracts, which must elapse between runs of the same feature in a particular area or in specified theaters.”“Zones are the areas into which a city is divided for purposes of granting exclusive rights to runs.” Block booking: contracts fulfilled an independent exhibitor’s film need for a year or more with products from a single distributor, limiting the business owner’s ability to negotiate for more quality filmsBUT movie theaters didn't’t actually start consolidating into national chains until 1920s, REGIONAL CHAINS before“merger mania” before the stock market crash – focused on more urban/higher density places to make national exhibition chains ------ left TN and KY out of scramble b/c only represented 1-4% of rentals and rural (subsequent run) theaters only accounted for 25% of total ticket receipts RURAL THEATERS made up 70-80 % of all theaters thoughsound 1928, more fervent consolidation and Crescent brought in for the Nashville marketBUT BEFORE THAT….
- Warner Building (later Sudekum Building) built in 1932, 12 story Marr & Holman (Church and 6th, across from NPL) The circuit began work in 1927 to permanently establish itself as a regional power with the early planning of an office at Sixth and Church Streets in downtown Nashville. This location would later be the Sudekum Building and the Tennessee Theatre but in 1927, plans were being made house the corporate headquarters above the Crescent’s Capitol Theatre. A Florence Times-News article notes that “the paint shops, booking offices, in fact, all departments of the Crescent company…will be housed in the new offices.” The company’s officers go on to note that the larger space “will facilitate the handling of the business and booking [needs] of the steadily growing organization.”At the tail end of the merger trend, three of the Big Five – Warner Bros., RKO, and Publix – began to target the Nashville market, a city with a population over 100,000. To acquire and control the capitol city, the affiliated companies had to strike a merger with Crescent, which owned nine of the city’s theaters. Warner ultimately secured a contract for Crescent’s 61 theaters and planned to modernize and equip the houses with sound.Early in 1931, the deal feel through and the two companies agreed to give Warner a four-year option to purchase Crescent for $1,000,000 if conditions improved. As the financial downturn began affecting ticket sales in 1932, Warner, like other national affiliated companies, struggled to hold their extensive holdings together. The same days the Film Daily, an industry newspaper dedicated to needs of exhibitors, announced the 1930 Crescent-Warner merger, the publishers also noted Warner’s other acquisitions. At Warner’s greatest, the Hollywood company owned or leased 700 theaters but by the mid-1930s began terminating contracts and selling theaters to bring the number down to 400. Each of the Big Five's history reflects this purchasing trend. At present, it appears that after Warner’s option expired in January 1935, affiliated companies left Crescent alone to grow and gain a regional monopoly.After the merger with Warner Bros. disintegrated, Crescent operated out of the Sudekum Building. They began buying out independents in smaller towns, taking advantage of weak competitiveness and bankruptcies as a result of the Great Depression. (Chains across the nation engaged in this practice). JUSTICE WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS, in summarizing the Supreme Court decision, USED “WARFARE” to describe Crescent and allfiate’s practices. Crescent built their circuit up to approximately 150 theaters primarily in cities and towns with a population below 10,000 in the Southeast78% of the circuit’s theaters operated in cities and towns will less than 10,000.
- DISTRIBUTION – RR LINESAll theaters in chain
- DISTRIBUTION – RR LINES1940 TN RR LINES
- DISTRIBUTION – RR LINESRR active today
- Closer look at TNIn examining the location of Crescent’s theaters and Tennessee’s population distribution in 1940, several commonalties arise. The railroad lines run through areas where there are towns that are more populous. Entire gaps across the state are also seen. Though the company did not own all of the theaters operating in the state, the chain operated in 30% of the 58 towns that whose population ranged from 900 to 2,500 and in 36 of the 45 towns between 2,500 and 10,000. While it is currently unknown how many independent theaters operated in the unaffiliated towns, numerous were in operation. [CLICK] An example is in Sumner County; business people in Portland, a town of 1,212 in 1940, opened theater in 1938 and maintained it into the 1950s when it closed. The Portland theater, like Crescent’s theaters, was on important transportation arteries. The transportation network necessary for efficient distribution limited the location of the chains’ theaters to cities and towns on railroad lines.As the map shows, every Crescent theater in Tennessee is located on a railroad line operating in 1940. The need for transportation explains why the region east of Jackson, west of Lawrenceburg, and southwest of Dickson did not have a single Crescent theater in 1939. Similarly, the towns north of Crossville, Cookeville, and Carthage to the Tennessee-Kentucky state line do not have a Crescent theater and there is a clear absence of railroad tracks through the region. While the Publix chain operated theaters in Jackson, it is currently unknown the extent of their operations in the described region. This same gap in theater distribution is seen across Tennessee.
- CombineSudekum or Stengel (son-in-law) end up with 50% of your stockBrought into the Franchise Agreements Clearances, runs, and zoning that mimic urban areas McKenzie BUT I CAN’T GET FILMS!!!!!BuyoutsPay for their “goodwill” and don’t keep any of your stockImproved Crescent’s bargaining power
- Branding The regional circuit did not brand their theaters with a common name like Publix named their theaters “Paramount.”only 25% of the parent company’s theaters were called “Capitol” and another 20% were called “Princess.” The only subsidiary to brand their company was Strand Enterprise, which naturally gave half of their twenty theaters an eponymous name. A majority of the remaining theaters had names like “Dixie,” “Lyric,” “Palace,” “Ritz,” and “Roxy” or names that reference the locale/opulence. “Local touch” Nashville office booked films to meet their different local audiences For national chains: The national Publix chaincompleted all of their books from the New York headquarters but then sent the planned schedule down to the several managers. Each manager, which oversaw a progressively smaller area, and was able to add a “‘local’ touch” and eliminate “regionally offensive films.”For chains to successfully operate in small towns, managers had to book movies and shorts their audience actually wanted to see or approved of.WESTERNS not shown in First Runs or A Class theaters but all the time in small towns, Douglas Gomery notes that theaters in the South practically operated like specialty theaters, showing primarily WesternsManagement Become one with community Be a community institution BabysitterFlashlight Report to HQ and keep tight booksTicket pricesLike with runs, clearances, and zoning, the eight major distributors fixed admission prices for every exhibitor, whether affiliated or independent, and the films they handled. A1944, first-run evening show ticket : .60-$1. LATER RUNS could only go as low as ten cents. Admission prices within the Crescent network reflect this pricing structure. While current research has been unable to determine whether the prices for particular show times or films, the vast majority the 1939 ticket prices were between “.10, .20 and .25” and only eleven theaters charged thirty or more cents. Film contracts would not allow the theater manager or owner to lower their prices because it would lower the prices across the board, inevitably causing the distributors and producers profit. SegregationSunday Shows
- Local contracts doing work but regional architects like Marr & Holman or Speight & Hibbs installing building materials brought from national suppliers