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:

Title:
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
Date:
1913
Publisher:
New York, Appeal Printing Co.
Volume:
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 : record volume 4
Leaf #:
000547
Language:
English
Collection:
Government & Law and Early Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
These seven volumes contain the testimonies and supporting documents from the U.S. District Court's antitrust lawsuit against the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). Formed in 1908, the MPPC (sometimes referred to asœ"the Edison Trust" or just "the Trust") sought to control the American film industry through pooling patents and demanding that producers and exhibitors acquire licenses to those patents. Independent producers and exhibitors, who refused to license the patents, argued that the MPPC was an unlawful monopoly. In 1912 and 1913, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania heard testimonies from both MPPC members, such as Siegmund Lubin, and "Independents" who later became Hollywood moguls, such as William Fox. Ultimately, in 1915, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the MPPC in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and spelled the end for the already weakening MPPC. -- Eric Hoyt, 2012
Date Added:
September 21, 2023
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.

PHILIT J. SrHECK, DIRECT EXAMINATION. 2397 Q. How many motion picture theatres are Pearce & 1 Scheck running now? A. Eight. Q. Where are they located? A. Seven in the City of Baltimore, and one in the City of Frederick. Q. Where are those theatres located in Baltimore? A. You mean the names of the streets? Q. Yes. A. There are four on Baltimore Street, one on South Broadway, and one out in Hampton, and then we have one on Hartford Avenue, and we have an application in for another one, on North Avenue, which is not finished yet. Q. Now from whom are you getting service? A. From the General Film Company, and we are getting service for our Hampton house from the Baltimore Film Company, an independent concern. Q. What program is the Baltimore Film Company handling? A. The makes? Q. Yes, the Universal or the Mutual? A. I think they huy a mixture of them. I think, Universal, mostly. They have the Bison pictures, and things of that kind. Mr. Grosvenor: This is the Hampton Theatre, o that you speak of? The Witness : Yes, sir, it is a small house. By Mr. Caldwell: Q. Do you select your own program? A. We select the age of the films we want. Q. Do you allow the branch manager of the General Film Company to make the selection for you? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you prefer that? A. Yes, sir. Q. Would you rather have him do that? A. Yes, sir. 4 We feel that the manager knows the conditions of the neighborhood we work in, better than we would know them. Q. If you make a change in the program which has been selected by the branch manager, do you always manage to get the change that you want? A. Yes, sir. Mr. Grosvenor: I object to the form of the last question as leading, and move to strike out the answer.