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was doubled and the paper work in every department greatly increased. Had the plan been continued it was estimated that prices would have had to be increased at least 40% in order to avoid actual loss. Exhibitors complained bitterly of their inability to be assured of a quantity of Paramount pictures for their future needs and objected strenuously to being required to bid competitively for each individual picture. So bitter were they that large numbers of Famous Players-Lasky Corporation's best customers purchased the product of competing companies in block and left no time on their programs for Paramount pictures. The strictly unit policy of selling, therefore, had to be abandoned.
The fact that the practice of block booking was general in the industry was considered by some twenty distributors to speak favorably for its fairness. Also several exhibitors testified that in their opinion the practice of block booking was beneficial to exhibitors as well as to producers and distributors. They admitted the truth of the distributors' contention that individual selling would so increase the cost of distribution that the cost of pictures would be too great to be borne by many of the very small exhibitors.
In its main brief in the action before the Federal Trade Commission, the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation maintained:
Theaters cannot exist and prosper on a succession of superspecial pictures, each widely exploited and each advertised as the greatest picture made. The rentals which distributors of such pictures are forced to ask require exhibitors to operate their theaters at capacity and at prices too great to be consistently maintained. The backbone of the exhibition business is the ordinary program picture, few of superspecial quality, none bad but all of a consistently good average quality. Such pictures cannot profitably be sold or purchased on a strictly individual basis. The producer must be assured in advance of a considerable and continuing income in order to maintain consistent quality production. The most businesslike method of securing this assurance is to offer the program pictures in blocks sufficient in number to distribute widely the risk of occasional failures. From the standpoint of the exhibitor the assurance of a definite supply of pictures, upon whose quality he has learned from experience to rely, is worth the deprivation of the opportunity of always being able to buy the proven, outstanding picture of the week.