Chicago's Picture Prosperity
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Source: Variety, 17 January 1916, pg. 15.
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To a man the picture theatre owners and
managers of Chicago predict that the year 1916 will be the most
prosperous in the history of the show business. They say that the
forecast is not based on the usual "hope" that prefaces each
theatrical season, but that there is ample proof not only in the Loop
district of the Windy City but within the outlying show territories.
Some of Chicago's oldest theatre men are of the opinion that there
will be less playhouse building activity hereabouts in the future, as
the old town and its ambient districts are now well supplied to take
care of the play and film devotees as fast as they line up at any of the
box offices.
Not only has Chicago an abundant supply of theatres of all
description and there are some in the making, with at least two more to
be built within the Loop, according to announcements from several
sources, but every one of the outlying sections seems unusually well
supplied with theatre entertainment, particularly in the film end.
There is no doubt but that the majority of the newer picture houses
now running full blast in the "neighborhoods" can compare
favorably with those of the more modern mold in New York, Philadelphia,
or anywhere, for that matter. All these houses have sprung up like
mushrooms in the last five years.
Chicago has long had a vast array of photoplay houses within the
Loop, but the outlying sections seemed rather timid about expending vast
sums in picture house building. Now a trip to any of the neighborhoods
adjacent to the Chicago surface and elevated lines running out of the
Loop will readily convince one that Chicago is in the front rank with
its class of "neighborhood film houses." All this has come
within the past three years.
The newspapers are full of reports that the United States in
general is enjoying vast and untold prosperity, due principally to the
war mania of foreign nations and the great drain forced as a result of
the European mixup upon Uncle Sam's wonderful resources. Now in the
passing Chicago is getting its share and of course this is bound to make
the amusement places profit as a natural consequence.
In the picture strife here, such men as Jones, Linick &
Schaefer, Alfred Hamburger, the Ascher Brothers, the men behind the
Strand Theatre project, and others, have not only made unprecedented
success of playing pictures but they have been enabled to build numerous
film theatres costing many fortunes. And not only that, but these men
are continually in the market for extending their photoplay theatre
building and adding houses already constructed to their picture chains.
One of the biggest surprises of the year and probably the latest
has been the unexpected results with the Strand. For years the old Globe
(Seventh street and Wabash avenue) had tried every form of amusement
policy imaginable, yet each in turn had failed to make the house pay.
Not many months ago the Strand Amusement Company, comprising local
capital and brains, leased the Globe, remodeled the house and gave it
complete and novel lighting effects outside and opened with feature
films. The answer is that the house is doing a wonderful business in its
supposedly out-of-the-way location and that night after night one sees a
long line of autos and carriages outside.
There is no use talking that moving picture theatres and the
feature film policy of poor man's prices have come to stay. They are "not
going back" and they "are making 'em pay" in Chicago.
[End of news article]
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Page compiled: 18 February 2000
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