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

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

by William A. Johnston

J. D. Williams is one of those “initial” fellows.

You wouldn’t think of calling him “James” or “Jim,” or just plain “Williams.”

If you did, people would say: “Oh, yes, you mean ‘J. D.’ Williams.”

So, “J. D.” he is.

This manner of nickname signifies his democratic principles. You don’t have to approach J. D. through his secretary or valet, or by special dispensation of the Church.

You simply ask if he’s in; and a kindly voice is apt to yell out over his secretary’s head; “Sure, come on in.”

This matter-of-fact appellation also signifies, to X-ray analysts like ourselves, a man who is always on the job, a practical cuss, and a constructive, conscientious worker.

J. D. is a Showman. That’s his proper classification. As a Showman, he’s an uplooker and an onlooker, and a widelooker.

That is to say, he’s an optimist, and he looks and builds ahead; and he has broad vision. The first time we met J. D. which was when the New York Strand opened and when W. W. Hodkinson came out of the West, and big theatres and big photoplays were on the rise, he started right in telling us what theatres would be like a year hence.

And every time he has written us since them — from Australia, India, Japan, San Francisco or Chicago, he always forecasted approaching developments.

And he’s always about right.

He thinks of, and his heart interest is in, the bigger development of films, big houses and big chains of houses.

So naturally he is now where he is — general manager of the First National Exhibitors Circuit.

The idea was his; and it was such a good idea that a lot of big theatre men grasped it immediately.

J. D. is fair, fat and forty. Just turned forty, by the way, on February 27.

He’s a Virginian. And, consequently he likes fried chicken, hominy, corn syrup and poker — just a li’l’ game, you know, among friends. In the latter connection he rises so easily that his friends call him Mr. Yeast. He radiates good humor, does J. D.

His greeting is always— and we say this pointedly to future subjects in this series: “How are you? Have a cigar.”

Then he generally says: “Sure, I’ll be glad to.” (Referring not to your return proffer of a cigar but to the request you make.

If you stay and gossip he’ll start pretty soon with “When I was in Australia —”

For J. D. put Australia on the motion picture map.

He owned and operated there the first continuous theatre. Then he organized Greater J. D. Williams Amusement Company, which built and organized a chain of big modern houses, afterward amalgamated with West’s and Spencer’s Amalgamated Pictures, Ltd.

So J. D. has always had the idea of a nation-wide chain of theatres, booking on the cooperative plan.

He’s a born Showman, jumping right into the business from high school, and probably calling himself at that time James Dixon Williams.

The show business, added years, his democracy and cosmopolitanism have simmered him down to J. D.

He first entered the Carnival business, revoluting on the Western wheel. Pictures caught his eye and he catapulted from the wheel into three picture theatres in Vancouver, B. C, and then into the theatre and exchange business in Seattle.

He is, we are pleased to say, a born advertiser. Yet for an advertising Showman he’s the most unassuming man, in a personal way, we have ever met.

He’s a quiet, modest listener; and he’s fair.

When he agrees with you he says, “Well’s that’s logical.”

He’s — and this is as fine a thing as we can say of any man — loyal to his friends.

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

Collection: Motion Picture News, January 1918

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see also J. D. Williams (1929)