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UNIVERSAL PICTURES CORPORATION 143
the present case a further determining factor was the fact that other producers were selling sound pictures in substantial numbers.
On the other hand, there were many reasons why the company should not commit itself unreservedly at this stage of the development to a program of sound pictures. A test campaign to determine public sentiment was impossible. This company might, therefore, have allowed others to experiment, profiting itself by their experience. Furthermore, a heavy initial investment would be required. It might be argued that to offer unsatisfactory sound pictures might permanently prejudice the patrons against them. It was not easy to adapt scenarios, casts, etc., that had been assembled for silent pictures to the sound product. It should have been remembered too that sound pictures could not be shown in an unwired house and a large number of the theaters were not wired. Universal Pictures Corporation owned some motion picture theaters, most of which were small. It exhibited its pictures in these as well as in many other small theaters. The latter would naturally be wired last of all. A final argument might be that the foreign market was not ready for sound, and consequently the export of Universal pictures would be substantially reduced.
From many points of view it would have been much wiser, therefore, not only for Universal Pictures Corporation but for motion picture companies generally to have entered upon the production of sound pictures far more cautiously than they did. How far their decision was influenced by a desire to get the industry out of the rut in which it was conceded to be in 1927-1928; how far motion picture executives yielded to the high-class selling pressure of electrical companies having equipment for sale; and how far they were "carried off their feet" by the fear that competitors would capitalize unduly upon their early sound experiments is not an issue that can be settled. It is doubtless true, however, that although technicians had been developing sound apparatus for some time, the motion picture industry was in no way prepared for its sudden advent.
In the present case, with practically every other producer committed to sound, Universal Pictures Corporation probably had no alternative but to follow a similar policy. November, 1929 H. T. L.