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UNIVERSAL PICTURES CORPORATION 141
or talking picture that would have been shown for only one week as a silent picture. Many managers of the smaller theaters were substituting a weekly change of program for the split-week program in effect before a sound reproducing system was installed.
The company had found that its stars and acting personnel were competent to produce talking pictures. The predicted difficulty in the use of motion picture stars in talking pictures had failed to materialize. Title writers also had been found competent in the writing of dialogue; thus, in many cases, the employment of playwrights had proved unnecessary.
The problem of making talking pictures for the foreign market had remained unsolved by any producer. It had been found impossible to record dialogue in more than one language without considerable expense and sacrifice of quality. Few theaters outside the United States and Canada were wired for sound reproduction, and although the larger manufacturers of sound equipment had established foreign sales branches, it would probably be some time before the foreign market was ready for sound pictures.
It was proposed by an official in the company that the major emphasis in the production of Universal features be placed on the silent picture. While the company had made no analysis of film rentals, classified as to wired theaters, it was known that the total rentals from unwired theaters in the United States and Canada and abroad in December, 1928, exceeded the total rentals from wired theaters. The pictures produced by the Universal Pictures Corporation were adaptable to the smaller as well as to the larger theaters. It was pointed out that a failure to supply high-quality feature pictures for these smaller unwired theaters would injure the sale of pictures under the complete service plan. It was further stated that inasmuch as some of the larger producers were specializing in sound productions, an opportunity existed for the Universal Pictures Corporation to take over additional business in the silent theater market.
The executives did not believe, however, that the sound pictures should be ignored. The large city theaters, upon which the company depended for the exploitation of its films, would not be interested in good silent or poor sound pictures ; that part of the market demanded high-quality sound pictures. Furthermore, the wired theaters constituted an important source of rental