The House That Shadows Built (1928)

A DUEL 219 shares in Paramount, I call this meeting to order,” he said. Production had taken the reins from distribution; Zukor had won. Hodkinson continued in the motionpicture business, and achieved success and a fortune with other enterprises. But, except for the negotiations preceding sale of his stock, he had no further commerce with Paramount. In the next few months, Adolph Zukor sprinkled scare-heads over all the motion-picture trade journals; he even broke into the front pages of the secular newspapers. Two weeks after Paramount elected Abrams president, he announced the amalgamation of Famous Players, the Lasky Feature Play Company and Bosworth, together with a few smaller companies which had been distributing their product through Paramount. All this time, circumstances had forced Zukor and Lasky into closer and closer cooperation. Their interests had become so nearly identical that it was only a step to that meeting at luncheon when Zukor remarked, suddenly and casually, “Why don’t we combine?” A decade later, Lasky said: “We weren’t nearly so big as Famous Players at the time. I expected that he’d offer us a minor partnership, and that we’d settle down to traffic and bargain. I cleared my throat and asked, ‘On what terms?’ and Adolph answered casually, ‘Oh, about fifty-fifty!’ Adolph thinks so far and on such big terms that he never haggles over a thing like that. He