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152 ^> ^> -^ The Motion Picture Industry
sale of the entire year's program of pictures with every exhibitor, and the final result depended upon the bargaining ability of the parties to the negotiation.
Mr. Cochrane testified that his company had tried to sell pictures individually but that this method u. . . ran up sales cost to such an extent that we simply could not go on with it. We had to charge so much for the pictures in order to cover the sales cost on the repeated trips of the salesmen to every exhibitor, and we had to go into block booking to get anything at all. The only place where we do that (sell individually) now is on what we call superfeatures — a picture that is big enough to justify a salesman on that particular picture." Mr. Cochrane said that the Universal Pictures Corporation produced from two to five superfeatures each year.
The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation stated that it had made two attempts since its adoption of block booking to sell pictures individually, but that both attempts had been unsuccessful.
In its reply brief the respondent said:
In 1919, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation sought to put into effect a more selective method of selling pictures than the then existing star series system. The plan resulted in tremendously increased selling costs necessitating increased prices to exhibitors (about which much has been said by Commission's counsel in this proceeding) and exhibitors would not support the policy. It had to be abandoned.
Again, in 1923, after the taking of testimony in this proceeding was well on its way, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, thinking that the exhibitors were perhaps then ready for a purely selective method, endeavored to get wholly away from any offering of pictures in blocks and offered its product a picture at a time as released. Again the exhibitors would not have it. The task of selling pictures singly necessitated more salesmen and more frequent visits to exhibitors. Where a salesman formerly sold an exhibitor a large block of pictures for three months at a time, the new plan required a call for each picture or each two or three pictures. Adequately to cover the territory the salesforce had to be multiplied by four. Sales costs were multiplied by two. Work in the contract departments of the exchanges