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 H exkibitors are placed in determining whether in their business judgment they can afford to pay more for certain motion pictures separately than when purchased in combination with other motion pictures, and that how much more they could afford to pay would vary with each exhibitor and with each picture. Some exhibitors might believe they could afford to pay 150 percent in excess of the wholesale price for selection of a choice picture. Others might believe that they could not afford to pay more than 25 percent or even 10 percent. It is obvious, too, that the increase which a distributor may in the first instance ask for, and more or less insist upon as to separate pictures taken out of a group, would depend upon the ability of the distributor's salesman readily to sell the pictures not taken by other theaters in the same area and would depend also upon the varying numbers which the exhibitor offers to take or accepts. A quotation on separate individual pictures is indicative that the salesman is attempting to conclude a transaction. How then could a salesman ever know that the price at which he at first offers or later insists upon as a condition of agreement for an individual picture in relation to the prices for the picture offered in a group, is such a price as makes his conduct a crime. No matter how honestly or carefully a salesman would weigh these very circumstances in each individual case, he could never know that he had not violated the law as long as he offered a motion picture separately at a price higher than such motion picture in a group. The uncertainties of section 3 may best be illustrated by supposing that one of the 14 exchanges for distribution of motion pictures present in Washington, D. C, sends a sales representative to deal with one of the exhibitors operating a theater in Wasliirigton, D. C. Under tliis provision the salesman, m offering the motion pictures separately and severally in comparison with tlie prices at wliich they may be offered as part of a group, must be sure that such relative prices he offers (a) do not operate as an unreasonable restraint upon the freedom of the exhibitor to select only such films as he may desire and prefer to procure; or (b) so as to tend to require the exhibitor to lease the entire block or forego the lease of any number therein; or (c) so that the prices quoted or the deal made shall not substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in production, distribution, and exhibition of motion-picture films. Can any salesman ever be sure that the prices he quoted were such that the exhibitor felt himself free from restraint to select only such films as he may desire and prefer? Does the exhibitor himself know definitely and surely that fact? Can the salesman get into the exhibitor's mental operations to know which he desires and prefers? ^ What makes the exhibitor desire and prefer motion pictures to be exhibited to the public as entertainment for profit, if not mainly the profit that the exhibitor believes may be derived from such exhibition, a factor which is dependent in good measure upon the price at which he is able to conclude a deal for a picture? Moreover, even if the distributor's salesman should feel finally that he has offered a price which gives the exhibitor absolute freedom to take those which he desires and prefers, can the salesman ever be sure that the price he has quoted did not tend to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in production, distribution, and exhibition of motion-picture films? This would be a rule of law which no sales