Peer Review: 1920s Theater Reviews by the Goetz Brothers

Following on from the previous post, I’d like to share a few gems from one of the earliest Goetz sources I’ve found.

“What The Picture Did For Me” was a regular column run by Exhibitor’s Herald, a widely-circulating trade paper, in which theater operators shared their business experience. Pictures that drew a large crowd were praised; those that didn’t were panned. I don’t know how representative the sample of reviews presented was, certainly there are periods when the Goetz Brothers wrote in frequently, but there are also long periods where Leon and Chester were silent. My suspicion is that Exhibitor’s Herald periodicaly canvassed subscribers and simply printed what they got as they needed to fill space on their pages.

Having said all that, these reviews are fascinating not only for their lingo, but for the brutal honesty about the films in question. I’ve posted a cluster of them from May 22nd, 1920 below— the review of Broken Blossoms made me laugh because I thought it was pretty slow myself.

By the way, the “Monroe Theater” mentioned is not the same one that exists today. The 1920 Monroe Theater had just been taken over by Leon from the curious husband-wife team who ran it previously. By this time Leon had at least four years of experience in the business, but Chester had only recently left working with their father as a merchant tailor. I like to imagine the proud new managers carefully filling out various reviews for the first time!