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Block Booking <^> <^ <^> <^> <^ <^ <^> 165
being forced to choose their pictures in blocks, frequently were unable to show some of the outstanding pictures of the year contained in the blocks sold by producers from whom they did not buy. This exhibitor said :
Block booking denies to the public in certain localities certain pictures. Now, taking my own case as a specific instance, in Newton I can use only 234 pictures a year. The estimates vary, and I do not know the exact number, but there are some 600 to 700 that are released. If I should buy under this block booking system the numbers that are forced on me by each of the various distributor-producers, and if I should buy the leading films, or the films that are considered to be leading, I would buy Famous Players, 70; Metro, 50; First National, 50 ; a total of 220 ; 12 and the balance of the 400 pictures, good, bad, or indifferent, could not be bought or shown in that theater. That is what the block booking does. Locked out by reason of the block booking condition are the pictures of Pathe, Warner, Universal, United Artists, F.B.O., Columbia, Tiffany, Commonwealth, and others.
Several exhibitors testifying before the Federal Trade Commission declared that block booking forced many exhibitors to buy more pictures than they could use. They testified that distributors frequently forced exhibitors to take complete blocks, even though they knew that the exhibitors did not have sufficient playing time open during the year to show them. These statements were corroborated by exhibitors testifying at the hearing on the Brookhart bill. An exhibitor in Pennsylvania made the following statement about conditions in that state: 13
The condition confronting the independent theater owners of western Pennsylvania is more precarious, I believe, than in any other district of the United States on account of the coal strike taking part in that territory. We find theaters that have been bound through this order of block booking to overload themselves.
As an illustration of this, I cite the town of Bentleyville, Pennsylvania. One man there bought out the other theater. There are three
12 This obviously is a misprint in the report. He probably meant to include also 50 pictures from the Fox Film Corporation.
13 Testimony of Fred J. Harrington at hearing of the Brookhart bill.