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)

TRADE PRACTICES IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY 9 In no other industry are all of the risks of the manufacturer or producer passed on to the retailer and the consumer. The Big Eight designate a certain number of pictures to be paid for on the basis of a stated percentage of the gross receipts of the theaters while showing such pictures. But these designations are not made until after the box-office value of the pictures has been determined by test runs, so that no risk is involved so far as the Big Eight are concerned. The independent exhibitor, in order to get any films, is obliged to contract to accept and pay for all that the producer sees fit to release during the contract period — 1 year.13 He cannot cultivate the good will and suit the preferences of his patrons by selecting the pictures best calculated to please them. Subject only to minor exceptions, the rule is "all or none." The most penetrating analysis of the conditions which result in foisting so many undesirable and mediocre pictures on the American public and the remedy therefor are set forth with great clarity in an article by Walter Lippmann taken from the New York Herald Tribune of January 12, 1935. Effective reform depends, it seems to me, on a clear understanding of what, given the American traditions of freedom and the variety of American tastes and American moral standards, reform ought to aim at. I would rest reform of the movies on this basic principle: That audiences shall have greater freedom to choose their pictures and that artists and producers shall have greater freedom to make pictures. Within the obvious limits of the ordinary law about obscenity and provocation to crime, the best regulation would be that exercised by the customers at the box office of a theater. The best way to improve the movies would be to open the door to intense competition by independent and experimenting producers. If the customers had freedom of choice, each community would be able to enforce the moral standards it believes in. Each exhibitor would have to take the business risk of estimating correctly the tastes of his customers, and educators, dramatic critics, moral leaders in each community would be able to exert effectively whatever influence they can command. This is the system under which theaters, books, magazines, and newspapers operate and it is not an unsatisfactory system. Anyone, who can find a little capital, can produce what he chooses. But then he has to submit his production to the test of circulation. The highbrow and the lowbrow, the libertine and the puritan, tend to find their own audiences. PROVISIONS OF THE BILL The bill is founded upon the American principle of home rule and, as pointed out in the testimony, it aims more at a restoration than an innovation in industry practice.14 It first makes unlawful the compulsory block booking of motion pictures and then, to make that provision effective, it requires distributors in leasing or offering to lease pictures, to furnish the exhibitors with a synopsis of each picture. 13 The witness Saruuelson enumerated the many bad and indifferent pictures which independent exhibitors had to take last year in order to get the few really good pictures released by the Big Eight. For example, an exhibitor desiring to play You Can't Take It With You had to take the following pictures, among others, the titles of which are an indication of their type and quality: Crime Takes A Holiday, Flight to Fame, The Little Adventuress, Adventure in Sahara, Blondie, Terror of Tiny Town (with a cast of midgets), The Strange Case of Dr. Meade, There's That Woman Again, Smashing the Spy Ring, Homicide Bureau, The Lone Wolf Spy, North of Shanghai, My Son Is A Criminal, Let Us Live, Romance of the Redwoods, Blondie Meets the Boss, Whispering Enemies, The Lady and the Mob, First Offenders. Pictures of this class are rarely shown by the Big Eight in their own theaters; they are never shown in their downtown de luxe theaters. 14 The evolution of compulsory block booking and blind selling was fully developed in the hearing held by this committee in 1936, Record, pp. 68-69; also in the hearing before the House committee the same year, Record, pp. 165-109. S. Rept. 532, 76-1 2