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146 ^> ^> ^> The Motion Picture Industry
of block booking. Subscribers to this service were entitled to receive each week during the period of the subscription a complete program composed of a feature picture and the necessary short pictures, all to be selected by the exhibitor from the pictures released by the Universal Pictures Corporation. A few of the very best pictures each year were excluded from this service. The International Newsreel, which was distributed by the Universal Pictures Corporation for the International Newsreel Corporation, was not included in the service.
Another large distributor of motion pictures, First National Pictures, Incorporated, practiced another method of block booking. This company had been organized as a cooperative buying association in 1917 by a group of 28 exhibitors who were dissatisfied with the kind of pictures then being offered by the producers. Later it had started producing its own pictures. The original 28 exhibitors and those who subsequently joined the company signed contracts whereby First National Pictures, Incorporated, licensed and required these exhibitors to show all the pictures which the company itself might produce.
Educational Pictures, Incorporated, which released only short pictures such as comedies and newsreels, advertised and released its pictures by series without giving emphasis to the individual picture. Its productions were usually listed, for example, as "10 Charlie Bower Comedies, 8 cartoons, 10 Lupino Lane Comedies", etc. Its salesmen attempted to sell as many series as possible in a block to each exhibitor. As regards its newsreels, Educational Pictures, Incorporated, like other producers of newsreels, sold a service calling for two issues per week for one year. The reels of news films never were sold individually. Other producers of short films released their productions in the same way.
The practice of selling pictures in blocks has been common among distributors since about 1920. The Famous PlayersLasky Corporation, in its brief in reply to the Federal Trade