In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants (1913)

Record Details:

Title:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants
Date:
1913
Publisher:
New York, Appeal Printing Co.
Volume:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants : record volume 3
Leaf #:
00060
Language:
English
Collection:
Early Cinema and Government & Law
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
These seven volumes contain the testimonies and supporting documents from the U.S. District Court's antitrust lawsuit against the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). Formed in 1908, the MPPC (sometimes referred to asœ"the Edison Trust" or just "the Trust") sought to control the American film industry through pooling patents and demanding that producers and exhibitors acquire licenses to those patents. Independent producers and exhibitors, who refused to license the patents, argued that the MPPC was an unlawful monopoly. In 1912 and 1913, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania heard testimonies from both MPPC members, such as Siegmund Lubin, and "Independents" who later became Hollywood moguls, such as William Fox. Ultimately, in 1915, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the MPPC in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and spelled the end for the already weakening MPPC. -- Eric Hoyt, 2012
Date Added:
September 21, 2023
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

1286 H. N. Marvin, Direct Examination. of moving pictures. The prices in that theatre range from ten cents to fifty cents. The people in the upper balcony pay ten cents, the people in the boxes of the balcony, to which they are taken by an elevator, pay fifty cents. Now, you can go a block or so from that theatre, and see the same performance, the same motion picture dramas being exhibited in small shows, for five cents, but the surroundings, of course, the accomodations, the accessories in the fine theatre are much better than they are in the little store show, so that the increase in price of admission has not been due to an advance in the cost of service, but has been due to the accessories with which the exhibitions are surrounded, the conveniences. Q. The one point that I want to make clear is this : Are there just as many five and ten cent exhibitions today as there were in 1908? A. I should say that there are a great many more than there were in 1908. Q. And would you say that the quality of them had improved, in the meantime? A. The quality of all the exhibitions in the country has enormously improved, because the quality of the productions released and distributed by the licensed manufacturers and rental exchanges at the same price as formerly charged, has enormously increased, and that, notwithstanding the fact that the cost of these productions has increased fabulously. Where the maximum cost of productions formerly was measured in hundreds of dollars, it is now measured in thousands of dollars. Q. Is it feasible for the producers of motion pictures to rent directly to the exhibitors? A. No. That is not ordinarily feasible, because motion picture exhibitors require a large variety of motion pictures, a much greater variety than any one producer so far has been able to furnish. Q. Then you would say that there is a necessity for a rental exchange? A. I would, yes. Q. What is the chief advantage of a rental exchange to the exhibitor? A. Well, the rental exchange offers to the exhibitor a collection of productions gathered from a large number of producers. It offers a temporary use for a comparatively small sum, of this great variety of subjects, that are gathered together by the exchange, from all over the world. It enables him to vary his program to suit the requirements of his audience, and to obtain this