The Exhibitor (1960)

42 Years of Service to the Theatre Industry F«uDd»d In 1918. Published weekly by Jay Emanuel Publications, Incorporated. Publishing office: 246-248 North Clarion Street, Philadeiphia 7, Pennsylvania. New York field office: 8 East 52nd Street, New York 22. West Coast field office: Paul Manning, 8141 Blackburn Avenue, Los Angeles 48, Calif. London Bureau: Jack Mac-Gregor, 16 Leinster Mews, London, W. 2, Engiand. Jay Emanuel, publisher; Paul J. Greenhaigh, general manager; Albert Erlick, editor; M. R. (Mrs. "Chick") Lewis, associate editor; George Frees Nonamaker, feature editor; Mel Konecoff, New fork editor; Albert J. Martin, advertising manager; Max Cades, business manager. Subscriptions: $2 per y^ar (50 issues); and outside of the United States, Canada, and Pan-American countries, $5 per year (50 issues). Special rates for two and three years on application. Second ciass postage paid at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Address all official communications to the Philadelphia publish¬ ing office. Volume 63 . NO. 24 MAY 4, 1960 SPRING IS THE SILLY SEASON (PART 2) It was a storm of exhibitor protest via letters and phone calls that occasioned last week’s editorial on the current rash of “bid before yon see” features (SPRING IS THE SILLY SEASON), and the response to the editorial was equally as widespread. Many exhibitors questioned the legality of the sales ma¬ neuver and brought their questions to us. Not being lawyers and understandably confused ourselves by some of the seemingly questionable pronouncements issuing from the Justice Department, we queried that Department as follows: “Paramount Pictures has informed exhibitors that they will be required to bid for the features, “PSYCHO” and “BELL¬ BOY” ivithout being able to screen either one. This seems to us a flagrant violation of the spirit and letter of the consent decrees which were designed to protect exhibitors from .such cavalier treatment. No theatreman can intelligenthi bid for a film he has not been allowed to .screen, and all explanations to the contrary are sheer nonsense. The former is made by Alfred Hitchcock and the latter by Jerry Lewis. Both gentle¬ men have had successes and failures in the past. Who's to say which category these will fit into. Our questions— “Can this be legal? Is there no recourse for the exhibitor asked to botv to these ridiculous demands or forfeit all chance of play¬ ing the picture?” Please advise us so we can answer the protests of many of our subscribers who feel they have gotten the short end of things from t/our department in the past.” Our telegram brought the following reply from Robert A. Ricks, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division. We are reprinting it in full in the hope that it will clear up the legal questions invoh^ed even if it may leave the ethical issues still a bit cloudy. “Receipt is acknowledged of your telegram of April 22, 1960, addressed, to Mr. Maurice Silverman of the Antitrust Division, concerning the .solicitation of bids by Paramount Pictures for the feature pictures PSYCHO and BELLBOY without these pictures being screened for the exhibitors in¬ volved in the bidding. “There is no requirement in the judg7nents entered in the Paramount case compellmg the defendant distributors to screen pictures before soliciting bids for them. Accordingly, we cannot compel Paramount to conduct such screenings. It is, and has been, our position, however, that all exhibitors in a given competitive situation must be treated equally in this respect. Therefore, if a picture is screened for any of the exhibitors from whom bids are solicited in a given com¬ petitive situation for a given run, it must be screened for all of them. “We entirely appreciate the disinclination of an exhibitor to bid for a picture without having seen it, and we have on a number of occasions discussed the matter with distributors in an effort to keep the number of instances in which this is done to a minimum. It has been the contention of the distrib¬ utors with whom we have discussed this matter that there are times when the exigencies involved in the relea.sing of a picture make it difficult, and even impossible, for a dis¬ tributor to wait until a picture is screened before soliciting bids, but we have always urged distributors to avoid doing this as much as they pos.sibly can. As already indicated, we cannot compel the solicitation of bids to wait until the picture is screened for the exhibitors involved in the .solicitation. “We propose to advise Paramount that its procedure with respect to PSYCHO and BELLBOY have given rise to com¬ plaints on the part of exhibitors.” To sum up, it would seem that there is no violation of the consent degree involved so long as all exhibitors in a competing situation are equally informed. In an attempt to get at some of the reasoning behind the “blind buying” policy, we also queried Paramount. The answers, while no attempt to justify the procedure as common practice, certainly prove that distributors have their prob¬ lems, too. “RELLBOY” is set for the important summer playing time and has not yet been completed. It had to be made available to bidding in order to receive assigned plavdates and repre¬ sents an exception rather than a rule. This makes sense. As for “PSYGHO,” the handling of the film is completely in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock and his representatives. Paramount, as the releasing agency, is bound to respect his wishes whether they make sense from an exhibitor’s point of view or not. We went out after the facts in this story because we are a news medium and desired to present these facts to our subscribers who had queried us. We are not a policing agency but a service publication. More than once a theatreman has told us that the only reason he keeps silent in such situations is because he must do business with the offending company and fears reprisal. We can understand his decision but can’t condone it. Waiting for someone else to fight our battles means that those battles will be lost. Meanwhile, it is still spring and the sillv season is still with us. Fresh from the “ELMER GANTRY” screening in Ghicago and nowhere else (also legal, according to the Justice Depart¬ ment) comes another piece of surprising news from United Artists and another new wrinkle to film distribution. Stanley Kramer’s “INHERIT THE WIND” was screened last week in New York Gity. That’s not news in itself, but let’s follow a little longer. Bids in competitive areas on the film are due on May 5. Still not news, you say, and you’re right. But here’s the payoff. The picture will not be a\Milable until Nov. 2— and that is news. The reason for the unseemly haste to receive bids and the equally unseemly late date for release? Your guess is as good as ours. It is probably the work of that “faceless” man, the producer’s representative. If it weren’t so mystifying, it would be funny.