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HINDI! PEN IDE NT IXHDEDTOIR
FILM BULLETIN
VOL. 1 No. 36
WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 1935
PRICE 10 CENTS
PRODUCERS DISTORT THE FACTS TO SAVE BLOCK BOOKING
The flood of propaganda in favor of the block booking system being disseminated by the major producers via their MPPDA-Hays organization shows a brazen disregard for truth and fairness on the topic. The tactics of the Big 8 demonstrates clearly with what grave seriousness they view the prospects of the Pettengill bill, aimed to outlaw the vicious, monopoly-perpetuating system of compulsory "blind" and "block" selling.
Enclosed with the May 1st issue of "Selected Motion Pictures," a movie evaluation service published by the Hays organization, was a four-page pamphlet, an "epic of distortion," titled "What Do You Know About Block Booking?" It was unsigned, undoubtedly leading some of the church and civic group leaders who received copies to regard it as coming from an impartial source.
The pamphlet is crowded with half-truths, one-sided arguments and bald falsifications of facts. Because it will enlighten exhibitors on the tricks employed by the major producers to save this enslaving block booking system, FILM BULLETIN is reprinting the full contents of the leaflet, pointing out the misstatements and refuting the bogus arguments put forth by the producers. Our remarks are in the parentheses following each disputable point in the Hay's pamphlet.
What Do You Know About Block Booking?
Although the quality and social value of motion pictures are now so fine as to have turned criticism to praise, some believe that even more could be done to improve pictures if the motion picture trade practice of "Block Booking" could be abolished.
What Is Block Booking?
Block booking is the wholesale renting of pictures by which the exhibitor contracts to take two or more or all of the pictures offered by a certain distributor, thus securing them more cheaply than if they were rented singly.
[The expression "two or more" pictures does not imply block booking to anyone in the industry. This is an obvious attempt to make outsiders believe that exhibitors have an onoortunity to take only two pictures from any major lineup.]
Why Has This Business Practice Come to Be Discussed As a Social Welfare Problem?
Because certain exhibitors over the country have told groups interested in better pictures that they have no choice of pictures but are compelled by contract to show whatever was listed in their block booking agreement. So,
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