In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants (1913)

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.

2218 Albert J. Gilligham, Direct Examination. now than he was for the same service in 1908 and 1909? A. I would say the exhibitor is getting 33% more for the money he is paying now, than he did then. Q. Why so? A. My reason for making that statement is, we are buying twice or two and a half times the amount of film that we purchased in them days, and all of different makes, thereby giving the exhibitor a much greater variety of program than what we furnished him at that time. And even at that time and later, when a custom of a daily change of three reels was first started by the exhibitor, the exhibitor only received fourteen clear reels. By a clear reel, I mean a reel that had not been shown. You were compelled to furnish him seven repeaters. Today, for the same price, the exhibitor is getting twenty-one clear reels, and in these twenty-one clear reels, we furnish two or three feature multiple reels, varying from one to three thousand feet in length, without any extra price. Q. As the manager of your branch of the General Film Company, are you at liberty to order pictures from the manufacturers on your own initiative, or are you controlled by the home office in that respect? A. I buy what will best meet the requirements of my customers. I have never been instructed by the home office to buy anything. I buy what I think, in my judgment, will best suit the requirements of the exhibitor in my territory. Q. They never undertake to interfere with you at all, then? A. No, sir. They never have. Q. To what extent is the exhibitor in your territory, your exchange, at liberty to select his own program? A. All of our first-run accounts, which are the theatres that pay the largest price for service, are given a list of our weekly purchases. They select from this list the films that they desire for their program. To the other customers, we give an advance booking schedule, showing what we propose giving them on the various days of the week, and the schedule is usually given to them two weeks in advance. If they desire a change made on any film or films on any day that this program has furnished for them, we are always too pleased to change it for them. Do anything I can to satisfy our customers. Q. How long in advance does the exhibitor know just what the character of the pictures is that he is scheduled for? A. The exhibitor knows at least one week, and anyone