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 (1914)

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:
1914
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 5
Leaf #:
000405
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.

Otto P. Halt,, Direct Examination. 2855 Q. And you have stated their seating capacity, have you not? A. Yes, sir. Q. You say that you turned this theatre over to a corporation? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was this a corporation which combined one or more theatres? A. Yes. The Prince Theatre was built by the United Amusement Company, a corporation, and it was afterwards turned into the interests of the Grand, or the Montgomery Amusement, and the United Amusement Company, and the S. A. Lynch interests combined and formed a new company called the Southern Amusement & Investment Company, which now control those three houses. Q. After the combination did you have occasion to learn what the other theatres had been doing? A. Yes, sir. Q. How did the business that they had been doing during the preceding fifteen or eighteen months compare with the business that your theatre had been doing? A. The only theatre that I had a chance to get the facts from was the Grand Theatre in Jacksonville, and comparing it with the Prince Theatre in Jacksonville which I operated, the Prince Theatre and the Grand Theatre were on an even basis, having cleared in a year something like ten thousand dollars. Q. Yours was using an entirely independent service? A. Yes, sir. Q. And the other was using entirely the licensed service? A. Yes, sir. I want to say that with the exception of the time the Kinetograph Company came into existence which was about the eight weeks that I speak of there. Q. Have you been acquainted with exhibitors in Atlanta, and the number of houses for the past four years? A. Yes, sir, I have. Q. Have you known of the changes that have taken place in the business from time to time? A. In what respect? Q. In respect to the personality of the managers or the owners of motion picture houses in Atlanta? A. Yes, sir, I have. Q. What percentage of those who were in business in the early part of 1910 are now in business? A. In Atlanta? Q. Yes. A. Well, I would say a very small per cent. That is about the best answer I can make on that. Q. You mean by that practically all of these houses