The House That Shadows Built (1928)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




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.

128 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT the officers and stars of the Trust. For the opposition was using its own rough tactics. Sometimes a new negative of a Trust firm came from the film bath rotting and ruined by the addition of some insidious chemical; and simultaneously a photographic expert, newly hired a few days before, would disappear without collecting his pay. Eventually, the fight came out into the open. Both sides appealed to the public. The Trust emphasized its legal right and the moral purity of its product. The independents played on the “trust-busting” spirit of the time. The first modest moving-picture journals had their inception in the militant necessities of this fight. While the bankers and mechanics at the head of the Trust struggled to maintain their monopoly of film production, they did not neglect their opportunity for monopoly of distribution. At first, they proceeded on the “states’ rights” plan. To some local entrepreneur the producer sold the exclusive franchise to peddle its films in New York or Louisiana or California. The purchaser let out the subsidiary rights to exhibitors, and pocketed his gains or his losses. All these states’ rights buyers were supposed to handle Trust films exclusively. Often, they tried to supplement their incomes by surreptitious addition of outlaw films. When the Trust discovered them at it there followed legal actions, withdrawals of patronage, even dramatic raids,