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)

12 TRADE PRACTICES IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY An exhibitor states: As an exhibitor who has been in this business for 20 years, and as a leader who has talked with scores of exhibitors and knows the operation of a local theater, I wish to state that any exhibitor who goes contrary to the will of the best people in his community might just as well close his doors. Undesirable pictures would certainly not be run in the theater where the community at all expressed its feelings in reference to them, if the exhibitor himself has the power to make the selection. Another exhibitor says: A small town exhibitor is naturally conversant with the tastes of his particular community. With S. 280 a law, the exhibitor will have information as to the type of pictures he is leasing at the time he negotiates the lease. With such information, he can select those pictures that will suit his particular community. * * * Community opinion will assert itself because it will realize that the exhibitor has no alibi behind which he can hide. 2. Will not injure the industry. — Assertions that compulsory block booking is necessary in order to insure a market for the products of the studios are nullified by the fact that the Big Eight do not exhibit the poorer pictures in their own theaters and do not enforce block booking against one another. The verified bill of complaint in United States v. Paramount et at. alleges: 17 Block booking is seldom, if ever, enforced by the producer-distributor-exhibitor defendants (the Big Eight) against each other. On the contrary, the exhibition contracts between and among the defendants herein are usually placed upon a selective basis, whereunder each defendant and its affiliated theaters may play such product or pictures of the other, or others, as it may select. In the case of the independent exhibitor, however, he is compelled to contract and pay for a whole block or group of pictures in order to obtain any of them which he may desire. It was shown that in Washington, D. C, approximately 200 pictures annually released by the Big Eight are not played in their own first-run downtown theaters. Independent neighborhood and suburban theaters are, however, required to contract for, and accept those pictures. If the producers refrain from showing their poor pictures in their own theaters, and do not force them upon one another, it is manifestly unfair to force them upon the independent exhibitors. The significant fact is, that by this discrimination, the Big Eight have withdrawn 2,500 of the largest and best situated theaters from the assured market for films and look only to the independent exhibitors to underwrite the cost of producing poor pictures, plus a profit for the producers. The enactment of this bill cannot result in loss to the industry as a whole. The amount of playing time on the screens of the United States is fixed. It cannot be reduced by the abolishment of compulsory block booking. The sources from which pictures can be obtained are, for the present, limited. Approximately 80 percent of the feature motion-picture films are produced each year by the Big Eight or their subsidiaries or associates. These sources will continue to supply the films that will consume this fixed playing time until new competition enters the field. Therefore, loss from the curtailment of playing time for poor pictures will be more than compensated for by the increased playing time of good pictures. The market will still be there — an assured market — but the good pictures will earn more and the poor pictures will earn less. i? Equity suit against the Big Eight under the Sherman law, mentioned supra.