Leaders All — Raymond Pawley, Financial Executive (1924) 🇺🇸

Leaders All — Raymond Pawley

Because prior to his entrance into the motion picture industry he accumulated many years experience in general business; because before coming to the exchange division of the industry he learned the difficulties encountered by the exhibitor and never forgot them; because by reason of the sound judgment he brings to business problems fortified by his wide knowledge of contract forms and business procedure his counsel is highly appreciated.

One of the lesser known of the important motion picture executives is Raymond Pawley, treasurer of the W. W. Hodkinson Corporation from its inception. We are speaking of the trade at large, because among those who have to do with the financial side of motion picture making and distribution Mr. Pawley has been a familiar figure for many years.

It was twelve years ago, to be exact, when he cast his lot with the motion picture. Mr. Pawley was in 1912 in the real estate and insurance business in Asbury Park, the big ocean resort town in New Jersey, which state, by the way, is that of his birth, he having been born in Lakewood.

All of Mr. Pawley’s business life had been spent in the Park, and among his investments was a valuable bit of unimproved property. On this land he erected a theatre, the Lyric, at that time the largest and best the municipality, with 1,000 seats.

After a diligent search for a manager for the Lyric Mr. Pawley employed William E. Smith of Newark. After that business problem had been most happily solved the new owner found he was, faced by another — that of securing satisfactory product for his fine new house.

It was just at this time that Adolph Zukor entered upon the scene with his first personally made feature product — The Prisoner of Zenda. Mr. Pawley and his brother organized the Famous Players Exchange and contracted for the rights of the output of the Famous, Players organization for New Jersey.

Later the first picture of Famous Players, Queen Elizabeth — a foreign made subject — was taken over for distribution and a second office was opened in Philadelphia.

When the Lasky Company entered upon production the two exchanges added its outlet to their list.

Mr. Pawley was one of the five organizers of Paramount Pictures, Corporation, the others being W. W. Hodkinson of San Francisco, Hiram Abrams of Boston, James Steele of Pittsburgh and William L. Sherry of New York. Mr. Hodkinson became the president of the new body and Mr. Pawley the treasurer.

An additional exchange was organized, in Washington, and Mr. Pawley began distribution of the Paramount product in the territories of New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

In his real estate work Mr. Pawley, although not a lawyer, had had much to do with contracts. Consequently it was the natural thing for him to think along the lines of agreements between business men.

As the chief fiscal officer of Paramount he supervised the contracts that were drawn between the distributing company and the Famous Players, between the company and the Lasky company and later Frank Garbutt of the Bosworth company.

Consequently it was perhaps a logical outcome of securing a guaranteed product for his exchange that he should seek to secure for that material a guaranteed outlet. So it was that he made contracts with exhibitors stipulating that the latter on their part would take the pictures that his, exchange would release.

So far as known these were the first of the block bookings to be made in the East — Mr. Hodkinson previously, as Mr. Pawley learned, had adopted the same methods in the West.

Mr. Pawley retired from the Paramount Corporation simultaneously with Mr. Hodkinson. In December, 1917, at the organization of the Hodkinson Corporation he became its treasurer. At the beginning of the present year at the time of the reorganization, when F. C. Munroe became president of the company, Mr. Pawley took over also the office of first vice president.

Mr. Pawley’s experience as an exhibitor always has been helpful to him in handling distribution problems. It gave him the theatre owner’s slant on the questions of the trade and an appreciation of the “other side of the shield” as it looks to the man who buys films — in other words, exhibitor needs.

He came into the exchange business, without prejudices and at the closing of one era and the beginning of another. Up to that time the bulk of the exchange business had been done by companies like General Film and the Mutual.

Employees entering the Paramount exchanges formerly had been mount exchanges formerly had been affiliated with old line exchanges. Frequently Mr. Pawley was told that “You just can’t do this thing that way. It is not being done and never was.”

Nevertheless he saw reason why the film business should be any different from the real estate or any other business with the details of which he was familiar. His decision to make contracts with exhibitors promising on the part of the exchange to supply product to them even in advance of its being made and to protect the buyer from subsequent overbidding was one of the occasions when he brought protests from his new assistants.

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Collection: Exhibitors Trade Review, 17 May 1924

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