Victor M. Shapiro — Spotting a Comer (1927) 🇺🇸
Victor M. Shapiro, of United Artists, his friends predict, is slated for big things, judging by past performances and present results — a fine record
by Merritt Crawford
In this kaleidoscopic industry predictions — whether of personalities or policies — are always apt to be subject to modifications or must be made with reservations. There must always be allowed a margin for the contingencies and changes which cannot be foreseen, although this margin steadily grows narrower as the film business becomes more stabilized.
Nevertheless, were a list to be compiled today — based on past performances and present results — of the ten most promising young men from whom this industry might reasonably expect the most during the next few years, it surely would include the name of Victor M. Shapiro.
In thus boldly putting his name upon the records, for what may seem to be a rather large order, the writer promises his prediction on a friendship and an acquaintance which goes back to the day, when Victor Shapiro first came into this industry and upon a close observation of his progress and achievements since that date, now nearly a dozen years ago.
At that time V-L-S-E, the feature organization formed by Vitagraph, Lubin [Siegmund Lubin], Selig [William Nicholas Selig] and Essanay, was in its heyday. Came a young man, only a year or two out of college, lured by the romantic possibilities of the motion picture. His credentials consisted of a diploma from New York University and a business record that included a period on Hearst’s Magazine a brief experience as promotion manager for Leslie Judge and a job as staff cartoonist on the Detroit Journal.
Of the motion picture he was quite ignorant, except that he knew it was a new and tremendously vital business that somehow appealed to his budding imagination. So he got the job.
He handled here among other things, the press book on Charlie Chaplin’s A Burlesque on Carmen and told the world about the box office merits of Lillian Walker, Edith Storey and Clara Kimball Young. He made good.
Now he heads a department, which publicizes the pictures of most of the biggest stars in celluloid and he is still making good, because he knows publicity and advertising, as applied to the motion picture, as few men do. His knowledge is exact and scientific and comes not only from painstaking study and observation, but from the fact that he is never satisfied with second hand information.
Only his own initiative and research form the basis of his opinions and as a consequence he is always able to assign his reasons for any policy he may recommend or the reverse.
On March 1st, Victor Shapiro completes his first year as Advertising and Publicity Director of United Artists. He was appointed by the late Hiram Abrams, immediately after the announcement of the expansion of that company last year. He was selected because he had shown himself to be an organizer of the first rank, a good man-picker and because he knew the business of film advertising, publicity and exploitation from the ground up.
He has made a great record. In 1926 Hiram Abrams, President of United Artists, died, as did one of their great stars, Rudolph Valentino. Both were big news stories, requiring delicate and most intelligent handling. They got it.
During the year Gloria Swanson, Norma Talmadge, John Barrymore, Morris Gest, Buster Keaton, Samuel Goldwyn, Fred Niblo and the Duncan Sisters have joined United Artists. Announcement was made of plans for twenty pre-release theatres. Ten pictures were released by United Artists — more than in any previous year. All these matters and a lot of lesser ones received most efficient handling.
A volume distribution sales plan also was inaugurated and foreign expansion instituted. It was far and away the busiest year in the history of United Artists and much of the brunt of it naturally fell upon Shapiro’s newly organized department.
And with every new test Shapiro’s judgment and organizing ability showed up better. If you asked him he would probably pass on a lot of this credit to his associates. That’s his way. And, doubtless they deserve their fair share.
Bruce Gallup, in charge of advertising — who has a record of his own with Hodkinson, First National and Fox going back for some years: Warren Nolan, in charge of publicity — a New York newspaperman, with four years training on the N. Y. Times and two years as movie critic on the N. Y. Telegram: Fred Shaefer, charge of exploitation — former managing editor of a Louisville daily and a veteran showman; Charlie Moyer, in charge of foreign publicity — an ex-newspaperman, who has traveled through all the countries of the world with Burton Holmes and who learned his movie abc’s under the late Hiram Abrams, in his time the greatest of salesmen and showmen.
There are plenty of others besides these, who might be named if space permitted, to whom Victor Shapiro would award some of the credit, if they would let him. But none of them would do so, although there is plenty for all.
Ask any of them about “Vic” and they will tell you that he is headed straight for the biggest executive job in the business. Part of that probably is because of their loyalty and enthusiasm for an understanding boss. A lot, however, is due to the fact that daily seeing him at his work, they recognize his outstanding talents and possibilities.
Personally, I think that the war brought out qualities and talents in “Vic“ Shapiro that he never suspected he had. As with many others, the war developed characteristics that might have lain dormant otherwise. At least he learned to measure himself and his own opinions at face value. Fie sized himself up and realized that he was pretty good stuff.
I recall quite vividly, the impression he made on me, when I met him just after his return from France. He was still in his second lieutenant’s uniform, not having yet been mustered out. He had been a year and four months in France, much of the time in the Argonne with his regiment, the 306th Infantry, 77th Division. When he went away he was still a boy inexperienced and unsure of himself. He came back a full sized man.
Before he left, he was just one of the average crowd of good, hardworking youngsters to be found in any big organization. When I saw him again, any one would have picked him out of a crowd as a distinct personality. He couldn’t by any possibility have been overlooked.
After the war Shapiro was in turn Pathé’s publicity and exploitation manager, Samuel Goldwyn’s personal representative in the East and United Artist’s advertising and publicity director, the job he now has. At Pathé he handled the films of Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, Mack Sennett, Hal Roach, Our Gang Comedies, Will Rogers, Robert Flaherty and other celebrities. He handled the promotional activities of Harry Langdon’s first Mack Sennett comedy, just as he sat in at the Goldwyn helm when Lois Moran, Vilma Bánky, Ronald Colman and the sensationally reestablished Belle Bennett first attained fame on the screens of America.
Probably the best tribute that could be paid to Victor Shapiro’s ability and keen exploitation judgment is the present standing of Vilma Bánky, Ronald Colman and Lois Moran, all of whom have risen to their present heights in two short years.
In the past year he has been responsible for the handling of the films of Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin, Valentino, John Barrymore, Buster Keaton, Joseph M. Schenck and Samuel Goldwyn, as well as Resurrection, the forthcoming Inspiration-Carewe feature with Rod LaRocque starred and Dolores del Río featured.
And in all the big jobs he has handled, Victor Shapiro has done well — so well, that it is whispered he is being groomed for far bigger things. My own idea is that he is grooming himself. His progress, in any event during the next year or two or three surely will be most interesting to watch.
Two things I have omitted to mention and they are perhaps those of which Victor Shapiro is proudest. He is a past president of the Associated Motion Picture Advertisers and a Commander of the S. Rankin Drew Post, American Legion.
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An Example of Relative Importance
Chauncey L. Greene, Minneapolis, Minn., sends me a clipping from a newspaper setting forth the fact that Chicago motion picture theatres played to capacity houses without any music at all when the musicians went on strike.
Greene remarks: “Remember the incident of the orchestra conductor who remarked to the projectionist (In New York City. Ed.): “You are but a common workman; I am an artist?”
“I well remember your comment to the effect that the orchestra leader and his entire aggregation could walk out some day, and the audience would not seriously object, provided the projection of the picture be not interfered with. Seems as though coming events do cast their shadows before.” Now, mark you well, I am not intending to in any way, shape, manner or form slam the musician, or to in any way interfere in the Chicago musicians’ scrap with the managers. That is their affair.
However, I take this opportunity to reiterate the statement I have ofttimes made during past years, viz.: that projection is the one most vitally important thing in the motion picture theatre, hence the projectionist is, aside from the exhibitor and manager themselves — without whom the theatre could not operate at all — the one most important man in the entire theatre organization or staff.
Except in a comparatively few theatres like the Capitol of New York City, where music lovers are directly catered to at literally enormous expense, the picture is the one thing which bring audiences into the motion picture theatre. All other things are more or less incidental and may be dispensed with if necessary, but projection cannot possibly be dispensed with.
It is quite true that music which has been carefully selected with view to enhance certain scenes in a picture may add very measurably to the effect of some productions, and may add something to the average production, but on the other hand music selected more or less at random — as is too often the case — may not only add nothing to the effect, but may, in fact, be a distinct annoyance. I have often found
it so when horn-tooters (not every one in a motion picture theatre orchestra is a musician, as- I can personally testify) blared forth that which could only be justly termed strident noise, the same having no connection with the scene upon the screen.
However — and here is the kernel of this particular nut — the horn-tooter joins with the real musician blatantly declaring himself to be a musician, whereas the motion picture projectionist, absurd as it seems, actually insists that he is only a machine operator, which means he is merely the attendant upon a machine — a man of slight importance, hence a cheap man.
This “I am a musician” declaration of the horn-tooter has actually worked wonders for him. It has helped the musician, too, but the musician doesn’t really need help, since he has the real goods to deliver. It has been nothing less than a life-saver for the horn-tooter, though.
But will the machine operator follow that lead? Answer: He will not — not if he can help it.
Take a lesson from this, brother. The orchestra man gets by, though time and again it has been proven that he really is ment that his end of things, and therefore a non-essential, by convincing the manage himself, is of vast importance, whereas but very few projectionists, and no machine operators at all, expend appreciable energy in an attempt to convince the exhibitor and manager that “operating a machine” is merely one small, unimportant adjunct to projection, which is really an optical problem of magnitude, and one which varies widely in different theatres.
And right there lies the great error in procedure. Almost every one I know visualizes projection as being almost wholly electrical and mechanical, with its optical problems all nicely worked out by the lens makers. With optical problems the machine operator, as they call him, has little or nothing to do.
As a matter of fact, there are a dozen highly important optical problems in projection with which the Jens makers have nothing whatsoever to do. Those problems are, or should be, up to the projectionist, and unless he is capable of handling them intelligently the whole show will inevitably suffer because there seldom is any one else in or directly connected with the theatre who knows anything at all about them.
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A Case of Dodging the Responsibility
I am advised that there was a film fire in the Nelson Theatre, Fairmont, W. Va., the night after the local men, whom the papers say were only machine operators, walked out after a week of argument concerning wages and working conditions.
That the local papers dub them merely machine operators does not prove they were nothing more. Probably they were. Two other theatres in the city acceded to the demands made by the men.
It is not the purpose of this department to engage in local wage arguments. I am prompted to deal briefly with this matter because of the fact that the men who took the strikers’ places excused the fire by saying that the projectors were working badly, setting up the presumption that the strikers had damaged them, or so the Fairmont “Times” says.
Permit me to say that such talk is rank nonsense. There were two men on duty at the time of the fire, and certainly if the projectors were working badly, as is claimed, one of them should have been right there beside the offending mechanism every second of the time. If he was, then may I ask, why the fire? If he was not, then why was he not?
If a projectionist or machine operator is working alone, and is obliged to do rewinding and other tasks requiring his absence from the projector, then there may be some excuse for an aperture fire getting beyond control. With two men on duty, who know their business and attend to it, however, there is no possible excuse that I know of for an aperture fire getting away from the aperture, utterly regardless of the condition of the projector, and that is flat and final. Looks as though these men are sidestepping responsibility in an endeavor to cover up incompetency.
Which I think you will all agree is quite some considerable answer.
Collection: Moving Picture World, February 1927