Jimmie's Peep Shows

One booming day in 1928, officers of the newly merged Consolidated Automatic Merchandising Corp. (Camco) invited the public to invest in its stock. Directors envisaged long lines of their fellow citizens stepping up to drop their nickels in Camco's slot machines. One estimated that the corporation should make some $43,000,000 in five years. Listed among Camco's directors was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

This time Franklin Roosevelt did not hit the jackpot. By the end of 1929 citizens who still had a nickel were keeping their hands in their pockets. Camco went into receivership in 1934. Its investors lost millions. Director Roosevelt had resigned (in the fall of 1928) to run for Governor of New York. For the time being the Roosevelt interest in slot machines waned, and almost undisputed kingpin of the U. S. slot and vending machine trade (pinball games, crackerjack machines, juke boxes) was once more Chicago's Mills Novelty Co.

Founded in 1889 by Herbert Steven Mills, Mills Novelty Co. has been ably carried on by his four sons. General Manager is Son Fred Mills. He is also the company's idea man. For square-faced, affable Fred Mills, having ideas is much like pushing a lever, waiting to see if an idea will come out. Recently one did--slot-machine movies. Why not bring the art of the cinema to bars, restaurants, lunch wagons, station waiting-rooms, drugstores, wherever idle people congregate with time on their hands and minds athirst for esthetic experience?

The idea was not brand-new. It had been tried before in the '90s. But the peep-show flickers of those days were often patchy and scratchy, and the machines usually stalled. Fred Mills was satisfied that his company could lick the machine problem with a neat projector and 18-by-24-inch mirror screen. It could show 16 or 35 mm. shorts to the U. S. cinemillions outside the movie houses, if Hollywood could provide the shorts.

Last month Fred Mills sped west to find out if Hollywood could, and rumor soon had it that Warner Bros. were about to contract with him to make a series of shorts for the Mills nickelodeons. Subjects: popular songs, vaudeville skits.

But rumor had it wrong. Last fortnight Fred Mills had indeed signed a contract for slot-machine movies, but not with Warner Bros. Following in his father's footsteps, ambitious, balding Jimmie Roosevelt stepped into the picture when the Mills-Warner deal was all but clinched. With Slot Machineman Mills, Movieman Roosevelt launched the Mills-Globe Co.; Mills to provide a reported $3,000,000 of financing, Roosevelt to provide one two-and-a-half to three-minute talkie every week. Carefully Producer Roosevelt explained that his slot-machine interests in no way affect his Globe Production's agreement with United Artists.

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