Harrison's Reports (1948)

Entered as second-class matter January 4, 1921, at the post office at New York, New York, under the act of March 3, 1879. Harrison's Reports Yearly Subscription Rates: 1270 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS Published Weekly by United States $15.00 (Formerly Sixth Avenue) Harrison's Reports, Inc., U. S. Insular Possessions. 16.50 , -, Publisher Canada 16.50 New York 20, N. Y. p g HARRISON> Editor Mexico, Cuba, Spain 16.50 A Motion picture Reviewing Service Australia^New' ' Zealand.' Devoted Chiefly to the Interests of the Exhibitors Established July 1, 1919 India, Europe, Asia 17.50 ^ Editorial Policy: No Problem Too Big for Its Editorial Circle 7-4622 Sbc a Copy Columns, if It is to Benefit the Exhibitor. A REVIEWING SERVICE FREE FROM THE INFLUENCE OF FILM ADVERTISING Vol. XXX SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 1948 No. 2 LITIGATION HAS ITS POINTS BUT LEGISLATION IS THE PROPER SOLUTION Some exhibitor leaders favor a plan whereby all exhibitors will refuse to sign contracts with ASCAP, either before or after February 1, in the belief that the Society, faced with organized defiance, will not, as a practical matter, start individual lawsuits against thousands of exhibitors for copyright infringements. Moreover, they believe that such organized resistance may cause ASCAP to back down on its demands for an increase in the music tax and invite bargaining. Such a procedure is, of course, dangerous in that, if ASCAP should sue the exhibitors and win in the courts, it could exact high penalties from those who refused to pay the seat tax, the minimum statutory damages being $250 for each infringement. Other exhibitor leaders prefer to see the exhibitors pay the tax but bring suit against ASCAP on the ground that it is an unlawful monopoly. If the courts should find that it is a monopoly in violation of the antitrust laws, then the suing exhibitors could collect triple damages. Though taking ASCAP to the courts is a sane and logical procedure, it has also its disadvantages, aside from the fact that the procedure is costly and time' consuming. Supposing that the suing exhibitors, backed by their national organizations, should win in the courts, what then? Is it preferable to have one hundred ASCAPS or only one? For if the courts should declare ASCAP to be a monopoly in restraint of trade, the Society's disbanded members might individually ask for so much from the exhibitors for performing rights to their music that it would prove a boomerang to have ASCAP dissolved. It would, as a matter of fact, be practically impossible for an exhibitor to make individual agreements with the many hundreds of copyright owners who control the performing rights to the music recorded on film. Harrison's Reports believes that the only way by which the exhibitors, helpless as they are now, may be relieved of this unjust and burdensome taxation is to have Congress amend the outmoded Copyright Law, which it framed and passed before talking pic tures came into existence. At the time Congress passed the law it could not foresee such a condition as exists today — a condition whereby a combination of copyright owners is enabled to achieve a stranglehold on the entire motion picture industry. Under the present law, as it has repeatedly been stated in these columns, the exhibitor has no choice — he must either accept whatever tax ASCAP arbitrarily decides to impose upon him or go out of business. He has no voice in the selection of the music recorded on the films licensed to him, nor has he the right to delete from any such film any portion of the music incorporated therein. He has to perform the music regardless of his wishes. If exhibition is to free itself from this oppressive music tax it must do so through legislation, such as proposed by Allied States Association, which plans to introduce in Congress an amendment to the Copyright Law requiring the producer-distributors to acquire from ASCAP, not only the right to record its music on film, but also the right to perform such music, so that an exhibitor, when licensing a picture, will secure complete exhibition rights instead of incomplete, as is now the case. In the meantime, the heads of ASCAP would do well to leave things as they are. Asking for a 300% increase in the seat tax may prove to be the beginning of the end for them — the destruction of their association. MISTAKEN ECONOMY One by one the major distributors are abandoning cooperative advertising of their pictures with the exhibitors, first, for reasons of economy, and secondly, on the ground that the exhibitors are dodging their proportionate share of the cost. As to the first reason, what is saved from this move will be more than lost in reduced box-office receipts; as to the second, there can be a definite understanding with the exhibitors as to advertising costs. But looking at it from the logical point of view, the distributors should carry on the advertising even if they have to do so alone, for after all their top pictures are sold on percentage and any diminution of the receipts affects their take. There must be some common ground on which distributors and exhibitors could agree to carry on cooperative advertising, particularly now when times are not as lush as they were during the war. Unlike most of the other distributors, Eagle-Lion Films has announced that it will not only continue its established policy of sharing advertising costs, dollar for dollar, with all theatres over the normal house budgets on every one of its major releases but that it will expand the policy as well. In an address before a regional sales meeting held in Dallas last week, Max E. Youngstein, Eagle-Lion's enterprising advertising-publicity director, renewed the company's pledge not to cut promotion budgets in any way and stated that it was even prepared to increase the monies allocated for individual engagements wherever it is deemed advisable to do so. Eagle-Lion may be the youngest of the distributors, but in the matter of cooperative advertising its policy is way ahead of the others.