Block booking
Encyclopedia
Block booking is a system of selling multiple film
s to a theater
as a unit. Block booking was the prevailing practice among Hollywood
's major studios
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 sight unseen. Those studios could then parcel out second-rate product along with A-class features and star vehicles, which made both production and distribution operations more economical." The element of the system involving the purchase of unseen pictures is known as blind bidding.
, under Adolph Zukor
's leadership, was largely responsible for introducing the practice of block booking to Hollywood:
All of the other major studios, with the exception of United Artists
, ultimately copied these policies to varying degrees. For much of the 1920s, Paramount and growing Warner Bros.
, in particular, "relied heavily on block booking and blind bidding." Already, in 1921 the Federal Trade Commission
had launched an investigation of the studios' booking practices that would last for eleven years. A 1927 cease-and-desist order was disregarded by the majors.
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. 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. With a whole season's worth of films offered up on an all-or-nothing basis, theaters weren't just bidding on movies they hadn't 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 had pressured theater operators to buy a block of one hundred and four films each year and forced them to show two films per week, for fifty-two consecutive weeks. With the B movie
s—less expensively produced films intended to run as the lower-half of double feature
s—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 didn't have to worry over much about the quality of these B pictures:
Along with the blocks of features, exhibitors were required to take the major's shorts
as well—a practice known as full-line forcing. The smaller Hollywood studios—known collectively as Poverty Row
—didn't 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). In July 1938, the Justice Department
's antitrust
division filed a suit, United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. et al.
, charging the eight major Hollywood studios with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act
.
The Sherman Trust Act of 1890 controlled the interstate commerce with different trust-busting provisions and were brought to bear against studio system monopolistic activities. Block booking and blind bidding were at the heart of the practices charged as illegally monopolistic.
The Department of Justice field 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 ninety eight percent 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. The major studios controlled the programming of their theaters and also has 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." 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. 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. The practice was entirely outlawed by the Supreme Court's 1948 decision, United States v. Paramount et al., against the studios in the Paramount antitrust case.
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. 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. The substantial rise in television’s popularity during the 1950s can be largely attributed to the Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw block booking.
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s to a theater
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
as a unit. Block booking was the prevailing practice among Hollywood
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
's major studios
Studio system
The studio system was a means of film production and distribution dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early 1960s. The term studio system refers to the practice of large motion picture studios producing movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under...
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.
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 US 131 was a landmark United States Supreme Court anti-trust case that decided the fate of movie studios owning their own theatres and holding exclusivity rights on which theatres would...
(1948). Under block booking, "independent ('unaffiliated') theater owners were forced to take large numbers of [a] studio's pictures sight unseen. Those studios could then parcel out second-rate product along with A-class features and star vehicles, which made both production and distribution operations more economical." The element of the system involving the purchase of unseen pictures is known as blind bidding.
Origins in the silent era
Paramount PicturesParamount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, under Adolph Zukor
Adolph Zukor
Adolph Zukor , born Adolph Cukor, was a film mogul and founder of Paramount Pictures.-Early life:...
's leadership, was largely responsible for introducing the practice of block booking to Hollywood:
At a time when star prominence was the single most important factor determining a film's box-office success, Zukor had cornered the market. In a 1918 popularity poll...the six top stars on the list—Mary PickfordMary PickfordMary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
, Marguerite ClarkMarguerite ClarkMarguerite Clark was an American stage and silent film actress.-Early life and theater:Born to a farming family in Avondale, Cincinnati, Ohio, Clark was educated at a Roman Catholic boarding school in Cincinnati...
, Douglas FairbanksDouglas FairbanksDouglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro....
, Harold LockwoodHarold LockwoodHarold A. Lockwood was an American silent film actor and one of the most popular matinee idols of the early film period during the 1910s.-Career:...
, William S. HartWilliam S. HartWilliam Surrey Hart was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is remembered for having "imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity."-Biography:...
, and Wallace ReidWallace ReidWallace Reid was an actor in silent film referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover".-Early life:Born William Wallace Reid in St...
—were all under contract to Zukor.
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 DanielsBebe DanielsBebe Daniels was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent movie era as a child actress, became a star in musicals like 42nd Street, and later gained further fame on radio and television in Britain...
were being developed. Because these films had not yet been produced, exhibitors were required to "buy blind" from a sketchy prospectus or campaign book.
All of the other major studios, with the exception of United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
, ultimately copied these policies to varying degrees. For much of the 1920s, Paramount and growing Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, in particular, "relied heavily on block booking and blind bidding." Already, in 1921 the Federal Trade Commission
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...
had launched an investigation of the studios' booking practices that would last for eleven years. A 1927 cease-and-desist order was disregarded by the majors.
The system's growth and demise
With Hollywood's conversion to sound filmSound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
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. Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
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
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
productions. With a whole season's worth of films offered up on an all-or-nothing basis, theaters weren't just bidding on movies they hadn't 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 had pressured theater operators to buy a block of one hundred and four films each year and forced them to show two films per week, for fifty-two consecutive weeks. With the B movie
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
s—less expensively produced films intended to run as the lower-half of double feature
Double feature
The double feature, also known as a double bill, was a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatre managers would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.The double feature, also known as...
s—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 didn't 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.
Along with the blocks of features, exhibitors were required to take the major's shorts
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
as well—a practice known as full-line forcing. The smaller Hollywood studios—known collectively as Poverty Row
Poverty Row
Poverty Row is a slang term used in Hollywood from the late silent period through the mid-fifties to refer to a variety of small and mostly short-lived B movie studios...
—didn't 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). In July 1938, the Justice Department
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
's antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...
division filed a suit, United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. et al.
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 US 131 was a landmark United States Supreme Court anti-trust case that decided the fate of movie studios owning their own theatres and holding exclusivity rights on which theatres would...
, charging the eight major Hollywood studios with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act
Sherman Antitrust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of violating the Act. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by...
.
The Sherman Trust Act of 1890 controlled the interstate commerce with different trust-busting provisions and were brought to bear against studio system monopolistic activities. Block booking and blind bidding were at the heart of the practices charged as illegally monopolistic.
The Department of Justice field 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 ninety eight percent 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
Stock market
A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...
and the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
happening at the same time, making this issue moot. The major studios controlled the programming of their theaters and also has negotiated wide-ranging distribution deals that constricted the financial state of independent theaters.
On October 29, 1940, the Big Five studios (Loews
Loews Cineplex Entertainment
Loews Theatres, aka Loews Incorporated , founded in 1904 by Marcus Loew and Brantford Schwartz, was the oldest theater chain operating in North America until it merged with AMC Theatres on January 26, 2006. From 1924 until 1959, it was also the parent company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. The...
/MGM, Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Warner Bros.-First National
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, and RKO—the majors that owned large theater chains) signed a consent decree
Consent decree
A consent decree is a final, binding judicial decree or judgment memorializing a voluntary agreement between parties to a suit in return for withdrawal of a criminal charge or an end to a civil litigation...
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." 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. 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. The practice was entirely outlawed by the Supreme Court's 1948 decision, United States v. Paramount et al., against the studios in the Paramount antitrust case.
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. 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. The substantial rise in television’s popularity during the 1950s can be largely attributed to the Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw block booking.
Sources
- Balio, Tino (1995 [1993]). Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press). ISBN 0-520-20334-8
- Koszarski, Richard (1994 [1990]). An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915–1928 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press). ISBN 0-520-08535-3
- Schatz, Thomas (1998 1988). The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (London: Faber and Faber). ISBN 0-571-19596-2
- Schatz, Thomas (1999 [1997]). Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press). ISBN 0-520-22130-3
- Taves, Brian (1995 [1993]). "The B Film: Hollywood's Other Half," in Balio, Grand Design, 313–350.
- Torre, Paul J. (2009). "Block Booking Migrates to Television: The Rise and Fall of the International Output Deal" (Television New Media 2009 10:501). p. 503-504. DOI: 10.1177/1527476409343797