The motion picture industry has long been concerned with the problem of what to do with the old film, writes Robert Joseph to the New York "Times." Under average circumstances a picture of the usual Hollywood dimensions has a running life of about a year and a half from the date of its first showing at, say, New York City's Music Hall, to its fifth run in Colombo, Ceylon. After that final showing prints are returned to home vaults, where they gather dust, In rare instances home offices may decide to re-issue old pictures, or the Hollywood Academy or Museum of Modern Art Film Library may choose to revive it as a historic relic.
But Ralph Jester has some better ideas than that. He is the man who makes little ones out of big ones. He fashions documentaries and short subjects for constant use and posterity out of what might have otherwise been just another dated epic. He shears down nine and ten reel features to a single reel, reduces them from 35mm. to 16mm., strikes off 200 prints of the completed subject and distributes and sells the final product through à number of film libraries throughout the country dealing in films for clubs, churches and schools,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.