During the eight years of which I am writing the average business of these theaters was definitely fixed at about three thousand five hundred dollars a week. The fluctuations of business were nominal, the people wanted our shows, just as to-day there is a fixed demand for talking pictures, not for a good picture, although already one may see evidences of discrimination on the part of the public which, I fear, the picture companies are no more prepared to gratify than we of the old popular-priced theater were in our day. All we had to do was to see that our weekly running expense came to five hundred dollars less than our share of the take—then multiply this by forty, as the houses were open forty weeks a year, and we had a profit of twenty thousand a year from each show. During each of these years we had from seven to thirteen plays of my writing on this circuit. [Illustration: ELIZABETH DREYER “And a few months later and with much more difficulty persuaded her to become a member of the Davis family.” ] [Illustration: LAURETTE TAYLOR “One of the best soubrettes I ever saw.” (_Photograph by Ira L. Hill. From the Messmore Kendall Collection_) ] Then one day—and let me call the attention of the rulers of the motion picture business to this—Mr. Woods and I were struck by a great notion. “We will,” we said, “increase this average business of $3,500 by putting out a show so much bigger than any of the others that we can safely count on over-capacity business to pay our increased expense and yield us a greater than average profit.” No sooner said than done. NELLIE, THE BEAUTIFUL CLOAK MODEL took to the road and played for a year to an average of four thousand dollars a week. What could be more natural than to continue the good work? The next season we put out three more “big shows” and allowed them to cost us about thirty percent more than our old average of expense. By this time our rivals, attracted by the reports of our big business with our “Super-Specials” began to compete for this added revenue and produced a flock of “Super-Specials” which in a season, since all things are comparative, educated the public to expect “big shows.” Thus, the average show now costs a sum of money that could only be drawn by an extraordinary show, and in three years the popular-priced theater business was dead.