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228 HARVARD BUSINESS REPORTS
The actual practice varied somewhat as between the different distributors. The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation each year, as soon as its program was announced in the spring, sent its salesmen into the field to sell its pictures to the exhibitors in groups or blocks. In its brief the company stated: " These blocks vary from 10 to more than 40 in one block; Famous Players-Lasky Corporation has never had more than 40 in one block. Its average number per block since 1920 has been about 25. It has never offered less than two blocks per year and in some years as many as four blocks." It was the goal of every salesman as far as possible to sell each block in its entirety to each exhibitor in his territory. The salesmen were instructed, however, whenever they found it impossible to sell to an exhibitor a block as offered, to try to sell him one containing a smaller number of pictures. The salesmen's instructions permitted them, when selling an exhibitor an entire block as offered, to accept a lower price per picture than would be acceptable when selling a corresponding exhibitor a smaller number of pictures.
Motion pictures were not sold at any standard price. The price on each picture was the result of a process of bargaining between the distributor and the exhibitor, and varied according to the number of seats in the exhibitor's theater, the type and location of the theater, the value of its competition, the protection required over other theaters, the reputation of the theater, etc. It was said1 that in the progress of negotiations with an exhibitor the distributor's salesman frequently tried to compel a sale of the entire block by making the statement that if the exhibitor did not buy all of a block he would not be permitted to buy any, but that unless the salesman was able to dispose of the entire block to a competitive theater he always was willing to sell such individual pictures as the exhibitor might select.
Mr. Sidney Kent, general sales manager of the Famous PlayersLasky Corporation, testifying before the Federal Trade Commission,2 said:
The element of compulsion in block booking is bound up to the degree of salesmanship, quality sales effort, that you can bring upon an exhibitor to get him to buy, as a matter of negotiation, the
1 Federal Trade Commission v. Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, record of testimony, pages 1 7384-1 7393.
2 Record of testimony, pages 1 741 i-i 7420.