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 5 influential contacts are the newspaper editorial comment and press criticism and of course the compelling approval or disapproval that is evident from patronage or the lack of it. Exhibitors, as points of contact between motion pictures produced and motion pictures shown in theaters, cannot make people go to see any particular motion picture. In all but the very smallest places in the United States, all of the motion pictures produced are shown among the theaters which serve any given area. The problem of selectivity for different persons in any given community is met entirely by the achievement of an industry which makes available all over the United States expensively produced motion pictures at a low cost which permits their display at all places, and gives the public so many pictures to choose from. The sponsors of the bill assume that "each of the eight major (leading) producer-distributors leases to the exhibitors during each recurrent selling season its production of pictures for the ensuing year in large blocks — often the entire output, thus affording the exhibitors no choice but to take all of the pictures offered, or none." What are the facts in connection with this charge that exhibitors must take all or none of the motion pictures produced and distributed by each of the leading companies? Several of the leading distributing companies compiled and put in the record of the hearings before the subcommittee (see pp. 268 to 271 and 303 to 305, inclusive), complete tabulations of the number of accounts or theaters that licensed and exhibited each of the feature pictures released by the company during the most recent 12 months playing season for which the figures are complete. The facts flatly refute this assumption of the sponsors of the bill, and are not contradicted. C. C. Pettijohn, general counsel for the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of Am.erica, testified in connection with these tables: At the hearings on this bill before the House committee on March 25, 1936, I put in the record schedules showing the number of theaters that played each of the pictures released by Paramount and Twentieth Century-Fox in the 1933-34 playing season. These lists appear on pages 444 to 447 of the printed record of the House hearings, which were printed and available in 1936. As I pointed out before, the records of the Senate hearings held at the same time were not printed until 2 years later, 1938, after this bill had been reported out by the Senate subcommittee. These schedules show that during the season Paramount sold, made, and released 57 feature pictures. One picture played 11,558 accounts. That picture was Mae West in I'm No Angel. The second largest number of showings Was secured for Shirley Temple in Little Miss Marker; third, for Bing Crosby in Too Much Harmony; fourth, for We're Not Dressing; and, fifth, Mae West again in Belle of the Nineties. Each of these played over 9,000 accounts. In the same block or group sold by Paramount for the 1933-34 season His Double Life played 3,977 accounts; The Great Flirtation played 4,481 theaters. Yet the same company in the same year made and sold all 57 features. How can anyone claim that compulsory block booking was foisted on all the independent exhibitors that year by Paramount? The same year the record shows that Fox made, sold, and released 51 features. The picture that played the largest number of accounts in their group, or block, was Will Rogers in David Harum, which played 10,792 theaters. Shirley Temple in Baby Takes a Bow was next, in 10,257 accounts. Will Rogers in Handy Andy was third, then Carolina, a big special. Mae West, Will Rogers, Shirley Temple — all big box-office attractions. That is what they want. That is what the record shows. One of them is as clean as a hound's tooth and the other social groups were blasting all over the country. Mae West leads one and Will Rogers the other. You talk about what the exhibitor will do. Senator. They buy box-office attractions. That is what the record shows.