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EXIT MARY PICKFORD
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Scarcely had Mary Pickford begun work in the Hollywood studio under her new contract when the unrestful business had another upheaval and Adolph Zukor saw another creeping danger.
Production, distribution, and exhibition are the three main branches of the industry. Zukor, by his judiciously bold stroke in 1912, had revolutionized production; and by his victory over Hodkinson in 1916 had placed distribution in its modern relation to the business as a whole. Now, he began to look ahead into the future of exhibition, and to worry. Moving-picture houses, springing up like mushrooms all over the United States, were showing a decided tendency to assemble into “strings.” Next the strings were twisting together into strong ropes which might yet strangle the producers. Corporations in New England, the Middle West, and California owned their ten, fifteen, even twenty-five new, well-equipped city theatres. They bought on the wholesale plan. Already, they were beating down prices. The time might come when the more powerful groups would combine and hold producers at their mercy. It was ['the danger which Zukor had foreseen when he fought for control of Paramount and of his own distribution; one step further removed, but the same.
However, the impetus which started the industry on its third great movement toward modern form came not from Adolph Zukor but from an unexpected source and in an unexpected manner. J. D. Williams, who got