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MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITORS' ASSOCIATION 619
This theater was forced to wait until a Loew theater about a mile and a half away and another chain theater about three miles north had shown a picture before it could secure the picture for exhibition. According to Mr. Brecher, he was unable to obtain the pictures of the leading distributors for either of these theaters until the chain theaters had finished with them, regardless of the price he might offer. Mr. Brecher's third theater was a low-class theater. He testified, furthermore, that each distributor sold first to his own theaters and then to the theaters of other distributors. By a process of trading, a distributor bought the pictures of another distributor for showing in his own theaters and sold his own pictures to the theaters of other distributors. In this manner the independent exhibitors were precluded from securing any pictures from the leading distributors until they had been shown by all those distributor-owned theaters that wanted to buy them.
If a theater were to maintain a high standing in its community, it was essential that the pictures presented on its screen be comparatively new. For that reason many of the better class independent theaters in New York, rather than show old pictures, produced by the leading companies, had purchased the right to exhibit first-run pictures which they did not consider to be equal in quality to those produced by the prominent producers. It was especially important that theaters in New York City show new pictures because most of their patrons watched the news of the latest pictures shown by the theaters on Broadway and could easily attend those theaters.
It was with the purpose of securing newer pictures for the independent exhibitors that the promoters of the Independent Motion Picture Exhibitors' Association, Incorporated, began their endeavors to establish the association in the spring of 1928. The principal objectives of the association determined at the time of its formation were: first, to buy pictures cooperatively, and, it was hoped, at lower prices; and second, to secure more pictures for first runs than had previously been secured by its members. The association also had other general purposes such as the cooperative purchasing of theater supplies and the regulation of new building construction on the part of its members. During the years just before 1928 many new theaters had been built in all the metropolitan cities of the United States until exhibitors in those cities were