Leaders All — Jesse J. Goldburg, Independent Pioneer (1924) 🇺🇸
Leaders All — Jesse J. Goldburg
Because not alone is he one of the pioneers in independent production and distribution but he has given intensive study to systematizing methods of state rights circulation of product; because he was among if not the first to devise territorial divisions based upon percentages and upon all the factors of seating, population, railroad facilities and time; because he is a believer in continued service.
Jesse J. Goldburg, president of Independent Pictures Corporation and a prominent member of the Independent Motion Picture Producers and Distributors’ Association, has been affiliated with the independent division of the motion picture industry for twelve years.
In the face of many obstacles and discouragements he has adhered to his determination, with the result that in 1923 following the organization of his present company he scored a marked success and plans to do even a larger business for the coming year of 1924–5.
Mr. Goldburg was born in New York forty years ago. His early education, after his graduation from the New York public schools, embraced a four years’ course in the Dwight Preparatory School, established by Professor Dwight, formerly of Yale University.
Afterward he took a three-year and post-graduate courses in the New York Law School, being graduated at the head of his class, which numbered over seventy men.
At the age of nineteen years Mr. Goldburg was selected by the National Committee of the Republican Party as one of the comparatively few speakers on its paid list. For ten years he was an accredited speaker for the National Committee, touring the country from coast to coast.
He was also a speaker on the roster of the National Security League, making addresses throughout the United States prior to the World War on patriotism and preparedness, talking in many cities under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A., the Y. M. H. A., the Red Cross and other patriotic bodies.
During the war Mr. Goldburg was one of the four-minute men, speaking tmder the auspices of the national government. At the request of Harold Edel, the well-remembered manager of the New York Strand, the film man was assigned by the Department of Public Information as the only speaker at that house during the various Liberty Loan campaigns.
Mr. Goldburg is credited with having made the record duration speech of that drive. On the final night of the campaign he spoke, without stopping, from 8:55 until 12:10, or three hours and 15 minutes, and accomplished the record of $185,000 Liberty Bonds disposed of in that period.
The achievement gave the blue star to the Strand, which at the time was in competition with the Rivoli and Rialto theatres.
As a speaker Mr. Goldburg’s services have been in demand for a good many years by public and charitable enterprises.
It was about twelve years ago he became interested in the Commercial Motion Pictures Corporation, engaged in the manufacture or making of positive motion picture prints for Universal and other independent producers who were then allied against and fighting the General Film Company and the owners of what was known as the Latham patent, which for a time controlled the motion picture projection machines of the country.
Mr. Goldburg saw the opportunity to produce independent pictures and to distribute them among independent exchanges. He organized the Life Photo Film Corporation and purchased the screen rights for what now would be considered a nominal sum such popular stage plays and novels as The Greyhound, Captain Swift, Northern Lights, The Banker’s Daughter, Springtime and The Avalanche.
This was the beginning of a series of monthly feature releases and which has been credited as being the creative force for the present method of independent production and distribution.
Mr. Goldburg’s experience in the early days of his film activity were replete with dramatic incidents. He has met all kind of obstacles, but has pursued his determination to manufacture independent motion pictures.
Among the stars engaged by him were Lionel Barrymore, Mary Nash, Florence Nash and Lillian Gish.
In the coming year the producer has contracted to make and distribute twenty-four five-reelers. eight six-reel features and fifty-two single-reel subjects, the latter to be known as the Screen Book of Knowledge.
The producer points out that while he intends to increase his output he has no intention of competing with the larger or old-line concerns “within whose province there lies the right, the privilege and the market to make what are commonly termed ‘Specials.’
He believes there are two distinct classes of productions — those made by companies controlling their own first changes and oftentimes their own first runs and those made by the producers who confine their activities to making popular priced pictures.
Mr. Goldburg maintains that the forte of the independent producer as he sees it is in the making of lower priced subjects — that these the old line companies cannot afford to vouch, as it costs as much to distribute a picture costing $20,000 as it does one that entails an expenditure of $200,000.
Goldburg is a believer, too, in assisting his distributor-customers after his product is sold; in a policy of service, and that the only permanence of an institution lies in the permanence of service.
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Collection: Exhibitors Trade Review, 24 May 1924
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