Critics --- Who Needs 'Em?


After the way I hauled 4 For Texas to the Dumpster yesterday (didn't mean to be harsh on Frank or Dean --- I'm actually a fan of both), I thought it only fair to take stock of how inconsequential critics really are in the overall moneymaking scheme of things. Here’s a Nebraska exhibitor having a little joke at the expense of "Mr. Kountze," a local scribe whose efforts to spray-can business at the Orpheum and Omaha Theatres were rebuffed by second week holdover crowds laughing themselves silly at Take Her, She’s Mine and Palm Springs Weekend in late 1963. That sourpuss caricature in the middle is presumably Mr. Kountze, whose reviews as excerpted in the accompanying article really weren’t all that corrosive, but showmen can be unforgiving sorts, especially when someone’s trying to get between them and a patron’s coin, thus the drubbing. Don’t know about Take Her, She’s Mine, as I’ve only seen parts of it, but Palm Springs Weekend has a place in my heart by virtue of having played on the old CBS Thursday Night Movie many years ago. Lively promotion and imaginative ad art from those waning days of grassroots salesmanship.