|
|
|
|
Working at the Majestic Theater
I started working at the Majestic as an usher in 1929 and worked my way up to head usher, then assistant manager, and finally manager. Our big features ran Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Hollywood producers got a percentage of our take on these -usually around 35%. We ran low budget films on Wednesday and Thursday, and a slightly higher class product on Friday and Saturday. We usually paid a flat fee of around $100 for these pictures, and everything we made past that was profit. I was the one who came up with the idea of "Bank Nite" on Thursdays. At first, you had to be present at the drawing to win. If the person whose name was drawn wasn't present, the amount would simply be increased the next week. I think the highest it ever got was around $2,500, which was a lot of money in those days. It was enough to go out and buy a small house or a new car. The crowds often got to be too large so I came up with the idea of simply having everyone who bought a 25 cent ticket fill out a slip of paper with their name, phone and address on it. Then if their name was drawn, they automatically received the money. We often had a uniformed police officer on hand for the drawing - a certain lieutenant named Joe Keyenberg. This lent an air of authenticity to the proceedings, and gave us added security since large sums of money were sometimes involved. We also had an interesting gimmick called Crazy Auction. This was done on Friday or Saturday nights. We would obtain various items from local merchants (such as a Charlie McCarthy radio) and auction them off on stage. There was a guy named Bill who was the emcee and he was very good at it. We got taken one time when a man said "I'll give you fifty bucks for that set of earrings." He came up and claimed the bid item and handed Bill fifty dollars worth of play money. When challenged about this, he reminded us that his bid was fifty bucks - not dollars. We gave him his prize and decided not to make an issue of it. For weekend shows that were very popular, we sometimes took in so much money that it was lying around on the floor of the ticket booth. When we had finished with the receipts for the evening. I called the police station and they sent a man over. We took the money in heavy cloth bags to the police station which was only three blocks away. The next morning, I picked the money up and took it over to Southern Illinois Bank at Broadway and Collinsville Avenues for deposit in our account. I don't remember anyone ever trying to rob us. A guy named George Wilhelm was our day stage manager. He worked from just before the time we opened at ten in the morning until five p.m. Then "Bat" Nelson worked from five p.m. until closing. We tried not to run anything past midnight because union operators got overtime for that. I scheduled the showings by starting out with a newsreel followed by a cartoon. On Friday and Saturday nights we added a serial. Then we showed the second feature, followed by the main feature. When I worked as an usher in the early Thirties, I participated in a strike for higher wages. Ushers were paid peanuts compared to everyone else. We were paid about $20 a week at the time. We lost our shirts in that work stoppage because all of the other union workers crossed our picket line. Stagehands made $77 a week and operators made $95 because they had a union. The assistant manager made only $30 a week and the manager made $65. I finished my movie career in 1941 in Edwardsville while managing the Wildey Theater in Edwardsville. - Bill Newbold of Belleville
|
|
|
