Rocky Roxy

A colossal monument to cinematic lavishness, is the Roxy Theatre in Manhattan. Showmen, long impotent in creating new superlatives, can murmur nothing except "titanic" when they think of the $10,000,000 that went into its erection. But few stockholders in Roxy Theatres Corp. are proud of their palatially gaudy enterprise. For, despite the fact that Fox soon bought control, Roxy A stock has declined from its offering price of $40 in 1925 to $22, has never been listed on any exchange. And Roxy performances, while resplendent with tinseled stage-shows, redundant with the harmony of a vast 80-piece orchestra, nevertheless seldom seem to include good pictures.

Last week Roxy stockholders held a most unusual meeting. It was unusual because instead of the customary five or ten, 500 came; unusual because instead of being complacent stockholders, they were armed with the spirit of "We want to know why!"; unusual because they practically declared a dividend without their directors' approval; unusual because President Samuel Lionel ("Roxy") Rothafel, an exMarine, confessed in a long theme-song of woe that his stockholders have made him cry like a baby.

First in the stockholders' minds was the question as to what relationship there might be between the present Fox difficulties and Roxy Theatre. All through the meeting stockholders kept shouting remarks relative to this. To the question "How much money does Fox owe the theatre?" "Roxy" replied "Not a red cent," and then added that he intends to cooeperate with Cineman William Fox to the best of his ability. To the pointed query of how much Fox makes "Roxy" pay for pictures, Chairman Saul Rogers explained that the theatre pays a percentage of box office receipts: "Right here, let me tell you, Fox hasn't done so badly by you. The few outside pictures run this last year were the worst money-getters we had."

A point especially interesting to stockholders was the reading of the annual report. Although this was delayed by confusion and heckling, the year's profits were finally revealed as $643,047 against $607,677 in 1928, and the gross admissions as $5,131,675 against approximately $5,000,000 for 1928. However, the balance sheet showed that a surplus achieved only by a generous estimate of "good-will."

When the report was digested, "Roxy" began his message. Gaily colorful is "Roxy" who, in 1907, after seven years in the Marine Corps, borrowed chairs from an undertaker and started a motion picture house in Forest City, Pa. Immensely genial, he proclaims that his chief ambition is "to live to see the day when I could throw all cares aside and go some place in a little flat-bottomed boat. And there in that boat I could sit under a big sunbonnet, with a little, old fishing pole, and I could sit all day and fish for sunfish and perch."

Until that far-distant time, however, "Roxy" amuses himself with arranging tremendous stage-performances, augmenting the size of his orchestra, drilling his ushers in Marine fashion, giving great "Roxy" parties for children, and mouthing happily over the radio. Indeed, energetic and young-appearing at 47, never until last week's confession would one have thought that "Roxy" walks under the shadow he described so feelingly, interrupted only by baiting from unsympathetic stockholders.

"In the first place," began the "Roxy" lament, "I want to tell you that at the beginning I was betrayed. My partner sold me out and left me to carry this awful load. I have received scurrilous letters from you stockholders, and some of the accusations which have been made against me have caused me to cry like a baby. After I was betrayed I stuck only because I felt that most of you people had bought stock because it was my project. I got nothing out of it. I have lost a larger personal fortune in sticking with you. I have nothing besides my salary, and that is nothing to what I could make for my family if I was free to accept other offers."

When the meeting drew to a close after three hours of bickering, the stockholders proceeded to vote themselves a dividend. This they did by passing a motion that the annual report be mailed to stockholders, with an amendment that it be enclosed with a dividend payment to Class A stockholders.

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