Word: bankes
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...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...
Estimated Bank Night prizes in Chicago theatres last year totaled...
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...
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...