To prohibit and to prevent the trade practices known as "compulsory block-booking" and "blind selling" of motion-picture films in interstate and foreign commerce (1939)

6 TRADE PRACTICES IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY added significance when we consider who actually makes the pictures, as distinguished from those who control the industry. Frank Capra, a most distinguished motion-picture director, with such pictures as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, and You Can't Take It With You to his credit, says: About six producers today pass upon 90 percent of the scripts and cut and edit 90 percent of the pictures. This potent faculty of an immense educational institution — to use Professor Blumer's characterization — which prescribes the curricula for 17,500 classrooms, was not chosen by the parents and welfare organizations of the communities in which those classrooms are located ; nor is this faculty in any manner responsible to these parents or welfare organizations. REMOTE CONTROL OF LOCAL ENVIRONMENT IS UN AMERICAN AND HAS ALREADY HAD THREE BAD EFFECTS The advent of the movies has introduced a new major factor into the fundamentals of our American environment. Hitherto responsibility for the moral and spiritual atmosphere in which American boys and girls have matured has been determined by the home, the church, the school, the neighbors, and the books available in the community. The control of this environment, so far as it needed control, has been local. Now comes the local movie theater with its dazzling entertainment. Control of this new major factor resides in the offices of the Big Eight in New York City and in their studios in Hollywood. There is no local power of selection of programs except in the 2,500 theaters that the Big Eight themselves operate, and then only by grace of the New York-Hollywood combine. In the fifteenthou sand-odd theaters that are independently owned no local power of selection exists because of the block booking and blind selling trade practices which the bill is intended to prohibit. State and municipal governments can grant no relief because any interference with interstate commerce by such governments would be invalid. These trade practices are a part of the conduct of a monopoly that distributes 25,000 miles of films daily in interstate commerce. Only Federal law can restore freedom of action to the thousands of communities entangled in this far-flung financial network. The bill is one to free, not to regulate. The departure from fundamental American methods of environment control and education which has resulted from these two trade practices has led to three unhappy results: It has undermined the morals of part of a generation of American youth; it has resulted in a loss of independence and initiative on the part of local welfare groups; it has created a highly centralized propaganda power which at any time may be thrown into gear in order to emotionalize the American people. 1. The moral effect of the cycle of objectionable pictures in the years before the forced 9 establishment of the unofficial censorship board now operating in Hollywood was serious enough to stir up an organized Nation-wide protest in the form of the Legion of Decency 6 The force here referred to is the force of outraged public opinion.