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i84 the house that SHADOWS BUILT
money. A firm begins continuous production in January, say; the film can scarcely go forth before June, and it is January again before returns from its sale or distribution reach their peak. Meantime, production, with its heavy expense, is going steadily on. Just before the second January comes the low spot. If you survive until the next June you reach a peak of returns, and all thereafter is well. But that low spot is a slough of despond which has smothered many and many a promising enterprise. Zukor approached it in the summer of 1913. A1 Lichtmann, selling states’ rights on the road, read a sinister sign in the letters and telegrams from the head office. Early in the week he would flash to New York a low cash offer for a certain piece of territory, and Zukor would spurn it. Thursday or Friday would come a telegram “Accept offer and wire money.” This, to Lichtmann’s shrewd intelligence, meant only one thing: Zukor was having trouble in meeting his payroll. Once he failed on that — down would come Famous Players like a house of cards.
Other creditors he could put off, was putting off; but his formidable payroll had become a nightmare. Zukor threw everything into the bottomless pit. One week it was the reserve of securities which he was keeping to insure his family against his disposition to gamble with business; already, in the first pinch, he had sold one thousand shares in the Loew Company — these he had been holding against the great multiplication of values