What Kind of a Fellow Is — Patch? (1918) 🇺🇸

Being a glance at the real human side of the big men of the picture game caught in action

Some few months ago William Moore Patch broke into the Times Square section of “fillum sassiety” with the first Official Italian Battlefront Pictures.

Previous to that time the name always brought to the minds of trade paper readers a picture of Pittsburgh, and tales of unusual stunts in presenting pictures. He was an “exhibitor” — though the word seems out of place in describing a showman of William Moore Patch’s type.

For William Moore Patch is one of the few men in America who early succeeded in elevating pictures to a plane level with that of the legitimate theatre. David Griffith [D. W. Griffith] did it — and still does it — by supplying the ammunition for showmen like Mr. Patch. George Kleine did it with Quo Vadis.

But Mr. Patch was about the first theatre manager we can recall who got the idea that a real big picture presented in a real big way is just as big an attraction a s any legitimate play — and he clung to his idea season in and season out.

And he clung to it successfully — despite the knockers who always expected him to change face with the next attraction.

For three years he operated the Pitt theatre in Pittsburgh as a high-class picture house, with two performances daily only, and admission prices ranging from 50 cents to $2.00. Many pictures that played for ten, fifteen and twenty-five cents, played to capacity business in the Pitt theatre at $2.00.

He is the most untheatrical-looking man in America. He wears no diamonds, dresses in dark blue or black entirely and is most unassuming and matter-of-fact.

Mr. Patch has never had his picture in a newspaper or magazine, and swears that he never will. The Motion Picture News succeeded in getting the first sketch that has ever been made of Mr. Patch.

He is, at one time, one of the most serious and most humorous of men. He illustrates practically everything by a story, a striking phrase or a quotation from some well known author or philosopher sending his meaning home in no uncertain way. He speaks three languages and is a book-fiend of the first order. His personality is what one might call dynamatic. He can work harder and longer than any one in New York: and never even becomes fatigued.

Unfortunately, Mr. Patch is very deaf and often has to use an ear trumpet. But he does not seem to mind this in the least — in fact has a great deal of fun out of it. He claims that he keeps his deaf ears for scandal and his ear trumpet for business.

He comes of an army family, his father and three brothers having graduated from the Military Academy at West Point. His brothers are all in France with General Pershing. He is probably the youngest prominent producer and exhibitor in America — only being twenty-nine years of age.

Aside from these points, one of the most outstanding factors about William Moore Patch is the fact that he is a Roosevelt fan. He’ll talk Roosevelt to you morning, noon and night — if you will let him. And if he is not talking David Griffith and big pictures.

Mr. Patch is of the opinion that we ought to have a hundred odd Griffiths in this business — beg pardon, art.

He believes that too many broad-visioned creators are frittering their time away on the ten, twenty, thirty style of entertainment when they could be producing classics that would live in history.

And that would — incidentally — provide showmen with more attractions that could be blazoned “Two Dollar Top.” But truth to tell: Friend Patch is so anxious for more “Two Dollar Top” attractions that we strongly suspect one of these days will find him out on a studio lot staging a spectacle of his own.

And why not?

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Illustration by: Harry Palmer (Harry Samuel Palmer) (1882–1955)

Collection: Motion Picture News, 14 September 1918