Robert Montgomery before a Senate committee in Washington, D.C., on April3, 1939 to oppose a bill designed to prohibit block booking
Block booking is a system of selling multiple films to a theater as a unit. Block booking was the prevailing practice in the Hollywoodstudio system from the turn of the 1930s until it was outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948). Under block booking, "independent ('unaffiliated') theater owners were forced to take large numbers of a studio's pictures without knowing much about them. Those studios could then parcel out B movies along with A-class features and star vehicles, which made both production and distribution operations more economical."[1] The element of the system involving the purchase of unseen pictures is known as blind bidding.
Paramount Pictures, under Adolph Zukor's leadership, was largely responsible for introducing the practice of block booking to Hollywood. General manager Al Lichtman suggested to Zukor that the studio produce 52 films a year and that they sell their yearly program in advance:[2]
Using this leverage, Paramount was able to insist that prospective exhibitors interested in, say, the Pickford films, acquire them in large blocks along with a quantity of less attractive titles. These block-booking arrangements typically included groups of from 13 to 52 or even 104 titles. Paramount salesmen offered a variety of different product lines, from the top-quality Artcraft releases of Pickford, Fairbanks, and Hart to the more modest Realart productions, in which stars such as Bebe Daniels were being developed. Because these films had not yet been produced, exhibitors were required to "buy blind" from a sketchy prospectus or campaign book.[3]
The rest of the studio system, with the exception of United Artists, copied these policies to varying degrees. For much of the 1920s Paramount and Warner Bros., in particular, "relied heavily on block booking and blind bidding".[1] In 1921 the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation of the studios' booking practices that would last for 11 years. A 1927 cease and desist order was disregarded by the majors.[4] Smaller distributors such as Associated Exhibitors that attempted to retain open booking were eventually driven to accept the practice.[5]
The system's growth
With Hollywood's conversion to sound film in the late 1920s, block booking increasingly became standard practice: in order to get access to a studio's attractive A pictures, many theaters were obliged to rent the company's entire output for a season.[6]Paramount Pictures President Adolph Zukor obtained the Paramount-Publix chains of theaters that totaled in 1,200 screens, and insisted that the exhibitors and independent theaters sign a contract with their company if they wanted the exclusive, top-of-the-line Paramount productions.[7] With a whole season's worth of films offered up on an all-or-nothing basis, theaters were not just bidding on movies they had not seen, but on many movies not yet even made. This was also called "blind bidding" because, other than knowing the genre, the actors and actresses, and a brief overview of the plot, the exhibitors knew nothing about the films they were acquiring. In one case, Zukor pressured theater operators to buy a block of 104 films each year and forced them to show two films per week for 52 consecutive weeks.[7] With the B movies—less expensively produced films intended to run as the lower half of double features—rented at a flat fee (rather than the box office percentage basis of A films), rates could be set that essentially guaranteed the profitability of every B movie. Block booking and blind bidding meant that the majors did not have to worry over much about the quality of these B pictures:
Knowing that even the poorest picture would find an outlet, the studios could operate at full capacity. In the process, the majors shifted the risks of production financing to the independent exhibitor. The long-term effects of the policy also stifled competition by foreclosing the market to independent producers and distributors. In short, block booking allowed the majors to wrest the greatest amount of profits from the marketplace.[8]
Life magazine, in a 1957 retrospective on the studio system, described the less-attractive films as "million-dollar mediocrities":[9]
It wasn't good entertainment and it wasn't art, and most of the movies produced had a uniform mediocrity, but they were also uniformly profitable ... The million-dollar mediocrity was the very backbone of Hollywood.
Along with the blocks of features, exhibitors were required to take the major's shorts as well—a practice known as full-line forcing.[10] The smaller Hollywood studios—known collectively as Poverty Row—did not have the big pictures with A-list stars that would have allowed them to compel theater owners to directly block book. Instead, they mostly sold exclusive regional distribution rights to so-called states' rights firms. These distributors in turn marketed blocks of movies to exhibitors, typically six or more pictures featuring the same star (given that the films' source was Poverty Row, a relatively minor star).[11]
The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 controlled the interstate commerce with different trust-busting provisions and were brought to bear against studio system monopolistic activities.[7] Block booking and blind bidding were at the heart of the practices charged as illegally monopolistic.[12] The Department of Justice filed suit against the distribution arms of Hollywood studios in the Famous Players–Lasky antitrust case of 1928. The Department of Justice charged the ten entities that controlled 98% of the domestic theatrical distribution. Appeals were filed and the studios were able to prevent charges from being followed through until 1929, due to the collapse of the stock market and the Great Depression happening at the same time, making this issue moot.[7] The major studios controlled the programming of their theaters and also negotiated wide-ranging distribution deals that constricted the financial state of independent theaters.
On October 29, 1940, the Big Five studios (Loews/MGM, Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Warner Bros.–First National, and RKO—the majors that owned large theater chains) signed a consent decree in an attempt to settle the case. It provided, among other things, that "block booking would continue, but in blocks no larger than five films; trade shows would be held regularly to provide exhibitors with advance screenings; [and] forcing of shorts and newsreels was banned."[13] Because the decree was forged after the September 1 beginning of the 1940–41 exhibition season, the new blocks-of-five arrangement did not go into effect until the 1941–42 season.[14] When the consent decree lapsed in 1942, most of the majors continued with blocks of five, though MGM went with blocks of twelve for two years. In contrast, Warner Bros. abandoned blocks altogether in 1943.[15] The practice was entirely outlawed by the Supreme Court's 1948 decision, United States v. Paramount, against the studios in the Paramount antitrust case.[16]
In concurrence with decisions held by the lower courts, the Supreme Court ruled that all of the major movie studios had prevented domestic and foreign competition through their control over theaters. In its 1948 decision, the Supreme Court ordered the elimination of block booking and demanded a separation of theater holdings from production and distribution. Without control over block booking, studios feared that they could no longer force theaters to buy up to 400 movies each year. In anticipation of mass profit-loss, studios cut production schedules and terminated contracts with actors, producers, directors and other staff. Newly unemployed artists began pursuing careers in television, following earlier predecessors. [17] As popular movie actors transitioned from the silver screen to the television screen, viewers followed their favorite artists to the new medium. In 1951, almost all cities with television stations saw a significant increase in movie theater closures corresponding with a simultaneous increase in television viewership.[16]
Balio, Tino (1993). Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press (published 1995). ISBN0-520-20334-8.
Koszarski, Richard (1990). An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press (published 1994). ISBN0-520-08535-3.
Schatz, Thomas (1988). The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. London: Faber & Faber (published 1998). ISBN0-571-19596-2.
Schatz, Thomas (1997). Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press (published 1999). ISBN0-520-22130-3.
Taves, Brian (1993). "Chapter 8: The B Film: Hollywood's Other Half". In Balio, Tino (ed.). Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press (published 1995). pp.313–350. ISBN0-520-20334-8.
Torre, Paul J. (2009). "Block Booking Migrates to Television: The Rise and Fall of the International Output Deal". Television & New Media. 10 (6): 501–520. doi:10.1177/1527476409343797. ISSN1527-4764. S2CID154355283.
Ward, Richard Lewis. When the Cock Crows: A History of the Pathé Exchange. SIU Press, 2016.
First National Pictures was an American motion picture production and distribution company. It was founded in 1917 as First National Exhibitors' Circuit, Inc., an association of independent theatre owners in the United States, and became the country's largest theater chain. Expanding from exhibiting movies to distributing them, the company reincorporated in 1919 as Associated First National Theatres, Inc. and Associated First National Pictures, Inc.
Gladys Marie Smith, known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-born American actress, producer, screenwriter and film studio founder, who was a pioneer in the US film industry with a Hollywood career that spanned five decades.
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production and distribution company and the namesake division of Paramount Global. It is the fifth-oldest film studio in the world, the second-oldest film studio in the United States, and the sole member of the "Big Five" film studios located within the city limits of Los Angeles.
Adolph Zukor was a Hungarian-American film producer best known as one of the three founders of Paramount Pictures. He produced one of America's first feature-length films, The Prisoner of Zenda, in 1913.
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature. However, the US production of films intended as "second features" largely ceased by the end of the 1950s. With the emergence of commercial television at that time, film studio B movie production departments changed into television film production divisions. They created much of the same type of content in low-budget films and series. The term "B movie" continues to be used in its broader sense to this day. In post-Golden Age usage, B movies can range from lurid exploitation films to independent arthouse films.
United Artists Corporation (UA) was an American production and distribution company founded in 1919 by D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as a venture premised on allowing actors to control their own interests rather than being dependent upon commercial studios.
Major film studios are production and distribution companies that release a substantial number of films annually and consistently command a significant share of box office revenue in a given market. In the American and international markets, the major film studios, often known simply as the majors or the Big Five studios, are commonly regarded as the five diversified media conglomerates whose various film production and distribution subsidiaries collectively command approximately 80 to 85% of U.S. box office revenue. The term may also be applied more specifically to the primary motion picture business subsidiary of each respective conglomerate.
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 U.S. 131 (1948), was a landmark United States Supreme Court antitrust case that decided the fate of film studios owning their own theatres and holding exclusivity rights on which theatres would show their movies. It would also change the way Hollywood movies were produced, distributed, and exhibited. It also opened the door for more foreign and independent films to be shown in U.S. theaters. The Supreme Court affirmed the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York's ruling that the existing distribution scheme was in violation of United States antitrust law, which prohibits certain exclusive dealing arrangements. The decision created the Paramount Decree, a standard held by the United States Department of Justice that prevented film production companies from owning exhibition companies. The case is important both in American antitrust law and film history. In the former, it remains a landmark decision in vertical integration cases; in the latter, it is responsible for putting an end to the old Hollywood studio system.
William Wadsworth Hodkinson, known more commonly as W. W. Hodkinson, was born in Independence, Kansas. Known as The Man Who Invented Hollywood, he opened one of the first movie theaters in Ogden, Utah in 1907 and within just a few years changed the way movies were produced, distributed, and exhibited. He became a leading West Coast film distributor in the early days of motion pictures and in 1914 he founded and became president of the first nationwide film distributor, Paramount Pictures Corporation. Hodkinson was also responsible for doodling the mountain that became the Paramount logo also in 1914. After being driven out of Paramount, he established his own independent distribution company, the W. W. Hodkinson Corporation, in 1917, before selling it off in 1924. He left the motion picture business in 1929 to form Hodkinson Aviation Corporation, and later formed the Central American Aviation Corporation and Companía Nacional de Aviación in Guatemala.
The double feature is a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatres would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which the presentation of one feature film would be followed by various short subject reels.
Lewis J. Selznick was an American producer in the early years of the film industry. After initial involvement with World Film at Fort Lee, New Jersey, he established Selznick Pictures in California.
A studio system is a method of filmmaking wherein the production and distribution of films is dominated by a small number of large movie studios. It is most often used in reference to Hollywood motion picture studios during the early years of the Golden Age of Hollywood from 1927 to 1948, wherein studios produced films primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under often long-term contract, and dominated exhibition through vertical integration, i.e., the ownership or effective control of distributors and exhibition, guaranteeing additional sales of films through manipulative booking techniques such as block booking.
The Famous Players–Lasky Corporation was an American motion picture and distribution company formed on June 28, 1916, from the merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company—originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays—and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.
Film Booking Offices of America (FBO), registered as FBO Pictures Corp., was an American film studio of the silent era, a midsize producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films. The business began in 1918 as Robertson-Cole, an Anglo-American import-export company. Robertson-Cole began distributing films in the United States that December and opened a Los Angeles production facility in 1920. Late that year, R-C entered into a working relationship with East Coast financier Joseph P. Kennedy. A business reorganization in 1922 led to its assumption of the FBO name, first for all its distribution operations and ultimately for its own productions as well. Through Kennedy, the studio contracted with Western leading man Fred Thomson, who grew by 1925 into one of Hollywood's most popular stars. Thomson was just one of several silent screen cowboys with whom FBO became identified.
Alexander Lichtman was a film salesman, occasionally working as a film producer. He was president of United Artists in 1935. He proposed the process of block booking to Adolph Zukor, which became industry standard practice. Variety called him "perhaps the greatest film salesman in the history of the business".
Hiram Abrams was an early American movie mogul and one of the first presidents of Paramount Pictures. He was also the first managing director of United Artists.
The B movie, whose roots trace to the silent film era, was a significant contributor to Hollywood's Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s. As the Hollywood studios made the transition to sound film in the late 1920s, many independent exhibitors began adopting a new programming format: the double feature. The popularity of the twin bill required the production of relatively short, inexpensive movies to occupy the bottom half of the program. The double feature was the predominant presentation model at American theaters throughout the Golden Age, and B movies constituted the majority of Hollywood production during the period.
Cosmopolitan Productions, also often referred to as Cosmopolitan Pictures, was an American film company based in New York City from 1918 to 1923 and Hollywood until 1938.
Stephen Andrew Lynch, known more commonly as S.A. Lynch, was an early motion picture industry pioneer.
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA executive David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name. Two years later, another Kennedy concern, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum.
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