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.
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION 227
want; that it assured the distributor an income on all pictures regardless of their quality; that it caused overbuying on the part of exhibitors; that it enabled a distributor to usurp the playing time of exhibitors to the exclusion of other distributors; and that it had other harmful effects. In the course of its investigation the Federal Trade Commission conducted extended hearings to determine whether or not block booking should be ordered stopped as an unfair trade practice.
While the investigation of the Federal Trade Commission was in progress, Senator Smith W. Brookhart of Iowa, in an effort to hasten the settlement of the block booking problem, introduced into the United States Senate an anti-block booking bill (Senate bill 1667, Seventieth Congress, First session) which provided with regard to block booking that ". . . it shall be unlawful ... to lease or offer for lease for exhibition in any theater or theaters, copyrighted motion-picture films in a block or group of two or more films at a designated lump-sum price for the entire block or group only, and to require the exhibitor to lease all such films or permit him to lease none; or to lease or offer for lease for exhibition such motion picture films in a block or group of two or more at a designated lump-sum price for the entire block or group and at separate and several prices for separate and several films; or for a number or numbers thereof less than the total number, which total or lump-sum price and separate and several prices shall bear to each other such relation as to operate as an unreasonable restraint upon the freedom of an exhibitor to select and lease for use and exhibition only such film or films of such block or group as he may desire and prefer to procure for exhibition . . . ' Certain testimonies at the hearing on this bill before the Interstate Commerce Committee of the Senate are presented in this case because they explain more fully the attitude of some exhibitors toward block booking than did some of the testimonies before the Federal Trade Commission in its case against the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation.
Except for the United Artists Corporation, virtually all large distributors and most smaller distributors practiced block booking. The distributors who handled only five or six pictures per year, however, seldom sold in that manner. Several different types of block booking were in use.