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68 MONEY BEHIND THE SCREEN
onwards. Even after the overwhelming success of their first full-length sound films and especially of Al Jolson's " Jazz Singer " (1927) they were seriously hampered by their lack of national exhibition facilities until their position was remedied by their control of First National.
Among the other companies R.-K.-O. was organised under the auspices of the Radio Corporation of America, at the end of our period (1928) as a merger of several production and exhibition interests, including the American Pathe unit. Universal and Columbia for a long time confined their activities to the supply of low cost features, with a few special efforts annually to act as their publicity front. Universal's theatre acquisition policy was mainly restricted to the lesser " neighbourhood " halls, while Columbia entirely refrained from this field. Lastly, United Artists arose as the distributing organisation of a number of independent producers and stars, too expensive for any of the large companies to maintain on their permanent pajrrolls.
From the financial point of view this phase is marked by the entry of Wall Street interests into the film world. The policy of financing their enterprises from their o^vn profits which had sufficed for the earlier stages of the industry's development, proved inadequate in face of the vast new capital demands arising from the incomparably more expensive star-feature films and the theatre acquisition campaigns of the post-war years.
The Famous Players-Lasky group (Paramount), were the first to enlist the support of a Wall Street banking firm (in 1919) and until their last reorganisation, Kuhn Loeb & Co., acted as their main banking affiliation. Within a few years Loew, Pathe and Fox shares were listed on the New York Stock Exchange and by 1924 the securities of a dozen movie corporations were handled by Wall Street bankers. Wilham Fox at first employed the services of the John F. Dry denPrudential Life Insurance group, later changing over to Halsey Stuart & Co., while the Rox}^ Cinema, a New York hall he acquired immediately after its construction, had been financed by S. W. Straus & Co.
Warner Bros, obtained the support of the Los Angeles banker, M. H. Flint for their earliest sound experiments, and through Flint's recommendation, they soon afterwards secured the backing of the Wall Street firm Goldman, Sachs & Co., who with Hayden, Stone & Co. remained their chief bankers until the crisis. The latter banking firm had entered the movie field as supporters of First National, one of their partners having been one of the chief figures behind a move to convert First National into a closely knit merger during the final stages of their struggle with Paramount.
Loew's chief banking affiliation was Dillon, Read & Co., one of whose representatives appears still to hold a position on the