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Block Booking <^ ^> o o -qv ^> <^> 145
Motion pictures were not sold at any standard price. The price on each picture, which was the result of a process of bargaining between the distributor and the exhibitor, varied according to the number of seats in the exhibitor's theater, the type and location of the theater, the value of its competition, the protection required over other theaters, the reputation of the theater, etc. It was said 2 that in the progress of negotiations with an exhibitor the distributor's salesman frequently tried to compel a sale of the entire block by making the statement that if the exhibitor did not buy all of a block he would not be permitted to buy any, but that, unless the salesman was able to dispose of the entire block to a competitive theater, he always was willing to sell such individual pictures as the exhibitor might select.
Sidney Kent, at that time general sales manager of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, testifying before the Federal Trade Commission,3 said:
The element of compulsion in block booking is bound up to the degree of salesmanship, quality sales effort, that you can bring upon an exhibitor to get him to buy, as a matter of negotiation, the greatest percentage possible of your output, and everybody tries for that strenuously.
Q. And the degrees of effort put forward vary without limit, do they not?
A. Yes, I think that is true.
Q. And so far as Famous Players is concerned, does it ever stand pat and refuse to sell an exhibitor who does not want to take the entire block?
A. Not to my knowledge.
In the same way the Universal Pictures Corporation sold most of its feature pictures in blocks. It also had a special service particularly designed for smaller exhibitors, known as the Universal Complete Service Plan, which was a type
2 Federal Trade Commission v. Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, et al., record of testimony, pp. 17384-17393.
3 Ibid., pp. 17411-17420.