Neatly capitalized on a modernistic fagade in Manhattan, the word Trans-Lux last week made its first public appearance in the world of entertainment. Trans-Lux means: 1) a machine to project images onto a screen from behind it; and 2) Trans-Lux theatres.
Trans-Lux projection has advantages over the common method of projecting film from in front of a screen because it can be used in a low-ceilinged, fully lighted room. A Trans-Lux lens placed eight feet behind a screen projects a picture eight feet wide. Standard film can be used. It passes over the wide-angled Trans-Lux lens which throws the image on the reverse side of a translucent screen through which it is visible from the front. Ordinary screens for movies are opaque, made out of heavy cloth painted with certain chemicals. Screens used in Trans-Lux are molded of a chemical composition of which gelatin is the base. A combination of properties in the lens and the screen prevents the image from penetrating beyond the screen. Trans-Lux first became commercially practicable about two years ago. Early Trans-Lux machines in brokerage houses illumined the ticker-tape quotations of the 1929 crash.
Percy Furber is president of Trans-Lux Daylight Picture Screen Corp. which owns 40% of the stock in Trans-Lux Movies Corp. Fifty per cent more of the stock is owned by RKO, the rest by the president of Trans-Lux Movies, Courtland Smith, on whose first theatre the new word made its appearance last week in large violet letters. This theatre, about (he size of a small drugstore, has 158 comfortable arm-seats, a turnstile in front and a svelte modernistic interior in which newsreels now flicker from 10 a. m. till midnight. There are no ushers; a ticket girl, two operators (union requirement) and a manager run the house. Admission is 25¢. Two more such theatres will be opened in Manhattan in a month.
For the present, Trans-Lux theatres will show only Pathe, Paramount or Universal newsreels. Courtland Smith, who two years ago opened Manhattan's highly successful Embassy Theatre for newsreels only, was convinced by the success of this enterprise that a chain of newsreel theatres would be profitable. The Embassy cost $19,000 and made $150,000 in one year. In the same year, Roxy's, which cost $12,000.000, made $440.000.
Mr. Smith was discouraged by the discovery that there were only 38 theatres in the U. S. sufficiently cheap, small and well-situated to be incorporated into a news-theatre chain. He therefore investigated the possibilities of Trans-Lux projection, found that by projecting from behind the screen he could make miniature movie theatres out of small stores and offices at nominal cost. All Trans-Lux theatres will have big comfortable chairs, rows far enough apart for patrons to sit with their legs crossed. They will be too well lighted for the operations of leg-pinchers and knee-rubbers, who make the grandest cinema palaces their playground.
Originally a newspaper man, Promoter
Courtland Smith went to Washington with Will Hays in 1921, followed Hays into the movies, there became associated with William Fox to whom he expounded the merits of sound-with-pictures. Trans-Lux newsreels will all be talkies. Trans-Lux Movies Corp. owns the sole rights to Trans-Lux projection.
The New Pictures