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6io HARVARD BUSINESS REPORTS
Sun Theater was not at all modern. The admission charge was 20 cents and the program included a feature picture, a short subject, and a newsreel, with organ accompaniment. The Sun Theater was the only theater in that vicinity with membership in the Exhibitor's Co-Operative, Limited.
Membership in the Exhibitor's Co-Operative, Limited, originally included 30 independent theaters, unaffiliated in any way with any theater chain or motion picture company. The association was organized in July, 1928; in December there were about 35 members, a majority of which were located in the suburbs of Toronto. Each theater in the association had one vote. The theaters represented had capacities ranging from 400 to 800 seats. Nearly all the member theaters exhibited motion pictures only, and most of them ran double-feature programs. Some ran double bills during the first half of the week only; others changed their programs 3 times weekly.
There were, in 1928, approximately 100 theaters in Toronto with an aggregate seating capacity of 50,000. There had been very little building of theaters during the preceding few years, mainly because of depressed conditions resulting from the World War. General conditions were improving, however, and several new theaters were planned, including one very large house.
The association was formed largely because the motion picture industry in Toronto was rapidly being monopolized by one large distributing company. The immediate cause was the action of a subsidiary of this company in trying to force independent exhibitors to sell their theaters under threats of building in competition or of refusing to supply hlms. Five or six theaters had been coerced in this manner. The distributing company, through its exhibition facilities and its buying power, controlled the first-run theaters in Toronto and could determine the disposition of nearly all the better films produced. Theater owners were also disturbed by the practice of film exchanges of playing one theater against another to obtain higher film prices. It was believed that some theaters were paying from 50% to 100% higher film rentals than they could afford to pay. A third factor in the formation of the association was what was considered the unsatisfactory manner in which cases were decided by the Film Board of Trade, an unincorporated association organized and maintained by distributors, with membership composed of local managers of the dis