Word: block
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...General Marshall and the Army guard in the Canal Zone well knew, the next one might be timed to block the Canal...
Among 300-odd miners, farmers and hunters who gathered before the auction block were many on WPA or relief, some who had come to buy the homes in which they lived. Mrs. Mary Zuzak, hefty, straggly-haired wife of a man who had worked in the Pattontown mines (closed in 1938), planked down $350 in cash for a house she had lived in since the town was built (1919). Others found themselves dispossessed. Including the Mercantile Building, which brought $1,600, parceled Pattontown was sold for about...
...real pig's ear or two, a few guaranteed bristles: "three Gables, four Rooneys, two Mervyn LeRoy specials," etc. To get these, an exhibitor must buy a full schedule of unknowns, many of which will prove to be not pigs but turkeys. This is the system known as block booking and blind selling...
...years exhibitors-especially independents-have objected. In 1927 Iowa's Smith Wildman Brookhart introduced the Senate's first anti-block booking bill. Last of 17 successors-none of which passed-was the third Neely Bill. Movie lobbyists kept it at bay until 1939, when the Senate jammed it through in two days. Hollywood lobbyists quaked when Sam Rayburn, Democratic House leader, objected to Frank Capra's biting Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, blurted, "It won't do the movies any good." Nevertheless they stopped the Neely Bill in the House...
Last week the storm passed. Five of the Big Eight signed with Arnold a consent decree effective Sept. 1, 1941 for three years. (Columbia, Universal and United Artists, who own no theatres, refused to sign.) The decree has three main provisions: 1) one-shot block booking is out; producers must sell in units of five or less; 2) blind buying will be replaced by trade showing held every few weeks in each...