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156 ^ -^ ^> The Motion Picture Industry
fered in a block or to buy none. In its brief the Federal Trade Commission made the following statements:8
Numerous witnesses testified that they were compelled to buy all of Paramount pictures or none and that they were not permitted to select those pictures which they desired to buy and which they considered most suitable for their communities and clientele.
.... The respondents' exchange managers and salesmen who testified in this case, without exception, admitted that when they start out to sell a block of pictures they have a sales-sheet naming each picture that has been released and is ready for the market, and placed opposite each picture is the price demanded, and they try to sell the entire block to each exhibitor but they say that if the exhibitor does not desire the entire block they permit him to pick out the pictures he wants, and say that when he makes such selection they raise the prices of the pictures he selects from the prices set opposite the pictures on the sales-sheet about 50%, so that if the exhibitor selects two-thirds of the pictures offered they will cost him the same as the entire block. This restrictive condition imposed upon those exhibitors who seek to buy less than all, as testified to by the respondents' own exchange men who absolutely superintend the sale of Famous Players-Lasky Corporation's entire production, together with the positive testimony of the many witnesses for the Commission that they had always been compelled to take the entire product in order to get any part of it, conclusively disproves all of the percentage figures contained in these exhibits that respondents have had their economists preparing for the last two years.
Such restraints imposed upon the exhibitor by the salesmen are for the purpose of compelling him, and do in effect compel him, to buy their entire product in order to get any part of it. These unreasonable restrictions and restraints upon the exhibitors are of the same nature and character and have the same effect as the "tying restrictions" and "restrictive clauses" condemned by Justice Day in U. S. Shoe Machinery Co. v. U. S. (258 U. S. 451). Under section XX we have shown that block booking is not only an unfair method of competition against other producers and distributors but is an outrage on the exhibitors, as well as on the public who patronize the picture shows.
In reply the company stated in its brief: 9
8 Brief for the Commission, Part II, pp. 271-274.
9 Brief on behalf of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation in answer to supplemental brief for the Federal Trade Commission — Docket 835.