Cinema: Bank Night Bans

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According to figures released last week, gross box-office receipts for the cinema industry in 1936 were a billion dollars, $250,000,000 more than last year. Weekly theatre attendance was 81,000,000—compared to 71,000,000 in 1935, 54,000,000 in 1933. Main reasons for the industry's gain were undoubtedly increased prosperity and better pictures. A contributing reason was undoubtedly "Bank Night"—currently a weekly fiesta at 5,000 of the 15,000 active U. S. cinema theatres.

Bank Night is a copyright scheme invented by a onetime Fox booking agent named Charles U. Yaeger, who leases it to theatres for from $5 to $50 a week depending on their size. What it amounts to is a clever evasion of state & municipal lottery laws whereby, by registering his name at a theatre, a patron becomes eligible to win a substantial prize if he is present at the theatre on "Bank Night"— when the prize is awarded to the holder of a lucky ticket after a drawing on the theatre stage. Since Bank Nights started in 1931, Inventor Yaeger's enterprise has grown from a two-room office to a Denver building and a chain of theatres. Perpetually under fire from state and municipal authorities who hope to find some way in which to bring it under local lottery laws, Bank Night last week experienced the worst storm of its stormy history in Chicago.

Estimated Bank Night prizes in Chicago theatres last year totaled $6,000,000.

Last week $100,000 in unclaimed prizes were on hand when Police Commissioner James P. Allman suddenly announced that Bank Night drawings violated a city ordinance, arrested 16 theatre managers, warned 250 more to stop Bank Nights forthwith. Making their arrests during the distribution of prizes, police were roundly booed by Chicago cinema audiences. In one theatre, the winner of a $10 prize had it confiscated as evidence before he could grab it.

Hardest hit by the Bank Night ban was the Balaban & Katz chain of 39 Chicago theatres whose Bank Night profits are estimated at $60,000 a week. First move of Balaban & Katz was to discontinue Bank Night in all their theatres.

Four days later Balaban & Katz's Iris Theatre got Superior Court Judge Walter T. Stanton to issue an injunction restraining police from interfering with drawings on the ground that Bank Night did not come under the lottery laws. Balaban & Katz promptly re-opened Bank Night drawings. Warner Bros, and smaller Chicago chains planned to follow suit.

How Chicago's Bank Night row would end or whether theatre patrons would ever get the $100,000 in prizes which have drawn them into Chicago theatres, there seemed no way of guessing until the 16 arrested theatre managers' cases are heard in court next week. Meanwhile, Corporation Counsel Barnet Hodes promised that police would continue to raid Chicago theatres that gave away prizes.

Outside Chicago last week, Bank Night was still holding its own against state lottery laws. In Topeka, Kans., the Supreme Court ruled that Bank Night as practiced by certain Fox Theatres was illegal. In Albany, N. Y., the Court of Appeals ruled Bank Nights legal.