WEBVTT - The Paramount Decrees: Paramount’s Beginnings - Pt. 1 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.279 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.360 of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:16.720 I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy d Wilson. Tracy, It's 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:19.799 time for a little bit of film history, which I 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:25.040 always love. This is one that seems especially engaging to 0:00:25.120 --> 0:00:27.520 me because of this weird time we're loving through. We 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:31.000 can't help but look at everything through that lens um. 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:35.400 We know that this pandemic is impacting virtually every industry 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:37.519 in a variety of ways, and the film industry is 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.920 no exception. Studios, of course shut down in the spring 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:44.639 when the pandemic was declared, but so did theaters. Some 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:48.560 have reopened, some have not. And as we've all seen, 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:51.080 films that were already made or in post production have 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:53.200 been all over the place in terms of how they've 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:57.240 been distributed to consumers. And that, along with some other 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:00.319 stuff that we will get to as may me think 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:06.480 about film distribution historically, and so initially I wanted to 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:10.600 talk about the paramount decrees of That is a case 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:12.600 that's been in the news lately, and it's a good 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:14.839 example of how things that have happened in the past 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:19.120 still offer up some surprises decades later. But as I 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:22.399 started working on it, I really found myself wanting to 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:25.360 dig a little bit deeper into how things got to 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.520 the point where that particular court case happened, starting with 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:33.160 how the studios developed, because those two things are inextricably intertwined, 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:36.679 and because it has roots in very early days of 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:40.080 the motion picture industry in the US, So just how 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:44.080 the studio system grew led to what happened legally, and 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:46.199 this becomes a lot, so we are splitting it into 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:48.480 two parts. So in this first episode, we're going to 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:50.720 talk about the people and events that led to the 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:54.800 establishment of Paramount Pictures as a key player in the 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:57.600 movie industry. And then in the second episode, we will 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:00.760 talk about the two court cases against Paramount out as 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:03.160 well as other defendants in the first half of the 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:06.080 twentieth century. And then we're going to touch on recent 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:08.919 developments that are related to all of those legal proceedings 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:14.440 which went on for years and years and recent means recent, 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:18.000 very weeks ago as of when we are recording this. 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.079 So to really get to the roots of this story, 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.320 we have to start with Adolph Zuker. Zucker was born 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:28.799 on January seventh, eighteen seventy three and richer Hungary, and 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.000 in Hungarian his last name would be were like Zuker, 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:35.880 but he seems to have stuck with a pretty Americanized version. 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:38.840 By the time he was seven, he had already lost 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.240 both of his parents. He never really knew his father, 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:45.240 who died when Zucker was one, and although his mother 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.800 had remarried, instead of staying with his stepfather, he was 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:52.040 moved to live with his uncle. And though the family 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:55.919 had hoped that Adolph would become a rabbi, his fascination 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:58.840 was studying religious history was really all about the stories 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:01.640 and much less about the spiritual aspects of Judaism, at 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:04.880 least as a personal calling. As a teen, at Off 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:07.760 instead became an apprentice to a shopkeeper, and it was 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:11.600 through the shopkeeper's daughters that he learned about pulp fiction 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:15.560 from the United States. The prospect of being a shopkeeper 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:18.520 was really not any more appealing to add Off than 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.520 becoming a rabbi had been. He eventually convinced his family 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.280 to let him sail to the United States with a 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:29.560 tiny sum of money it's estimated at forty dollars. Who's 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:31.840 gonna try to start a new life Yeah, that probably 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:34.240 didn't seem like a tiny sum at the time, but 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:36.800 when you think about starting a brand new life somewhere else, 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:40.680 it doesn't go very far. This whole thing was a 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.440 really arduous undertaking. So first of all, he had to 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:46.840 book the lowest class of passage for the journey UH 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:49.680 that came with no amenities. There was a degree of peril. 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.920 Their stories about how he sowed his forty dollars into 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:54.840 the lining of his clothes so that no one would 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:57.200 rob him when he slept on the boat. And then 0:03:57.240 --> 0:03:59.800 once he arrived in New York, he didn't know anybody 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:02.720 and he had to start entirely from scratch to try 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:06.320 to find work. He eventually settled into a position as 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:09.600 a furrier's apprentice. He first, according to most stories, started 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:11.720 out just sweeping the floor and then kind of became 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.640 an apprentice, but he was also taking classes at night 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:17.160 to improve his English, and some stories say he also 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.880 took classes uh in business as well. With then just 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:23.880 a couple of years, he had become a skilled designer 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:26.839 and started working as an independent furrier by the age 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:30.000 of nineteen. He moved to Chicago a year later in 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.400 eighteen ninety three, when the World's Colombian Exposition was there. 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:35.920 He wound up staying in the city and becoming a 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:39.360 partner in the novelty for company with a fifty percent share. 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:42.960 The business made a lot of money, but after a 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:47.760 misstep and predicting trends, Zucker really found his fashion career 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:50.720 on a downslide. And while he moved back to New 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:52.760 York and got back on his feet thanks to his 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:56.120 connections in the fur industry, Zucker was already starting to 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:59.479 think about film. He also got married during this time 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:02.400 in eight nine seven to a young woman named Lottie Kaufman. 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:04.960 They stayed married for the rest of their lives. One 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:07.640 of the four years that Zucker became friends with during 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:11.159 this time was Marcus Low. That name is familiar to 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:15.440 you because of Low cinemas. There's a reason Zooker even 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:17.920 took an apartment across the street from Low, and their 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:23.520 families remained friends for life. So he had previously mispredicted 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:26.400 a trend, the opposite happened in nineteen o two. He 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:30.719 made a small fortune after correctly predicting a trend for 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:34.280 Red Fox that year, and Zucker wanted to invest all 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:36.479 this money that he made it was somewhere between a 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:40.120 hundred thousand and two hundred thousand dollars. His choice for 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:44.239 this was investing into the entertainment industry at often. Several 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.120 of his friends in the fur industry invested in a 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:50.760 penny arcade that was opened by Mitchell Mark in nineteen 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:54.880 o three. It was on Fourteenth Street near Broadway. This arcade, 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:59.159 nicknamed Automatic Vaudeville, made a hundred thousand dollars in its 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:03.400 first year. Zucker left the fur business completely soon after 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:07.479 that to expand his penny arcades into other locations, and 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:10.479 the next evolution of his entertainment business was to set 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:13.839 up an arcade with a theater to show motion pictures. 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:17.440 So the top floor of Zooker's Automatic Vaudeville was outfitted 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:20.640 with two hundred seats, and for a nickel, customers could 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:24.640 watch a fifteen minutes show. This shift to showing motion 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:29.120 pictures required some enticement. Zucker described this change in the 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:31.800 offerings of the arcade later in his life quote, we 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.000 had this empty floor over the arcade, about forty ft 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.840 by two hundred fifty feet. We put in two hundred 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:40.360 seats and then began to worry because it seemed like 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:43.440 an awful lot, especially as most of our customers didn't 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:46.320 know what moving pictures were and we're used to paying 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.880 one cent, not five. So we put in a wonderful 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.159 glass staircase. Under the glass was a metal trough of 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:56.320 running water like a waterfall, with red, green, and blue 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.800 lights shining through. We called it Crystal Hall. And he 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.000 well paid their five cents, mainly on account of the staircase, 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:07.800 not the movies. It was a big success. This is 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:11.960 like such great packaging, right That staircase sounds pretty cool? 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:15.320 It does. Zoocker routinely sat in the sixth row of 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.080 the Crystal Hall theater while movies ran, and he would 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:20.520 turn around and watch the faces of the audience in 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:23.000 the rooms behind him as they reacted to the movies 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.320 that were being shown. And he noticed the patterns in 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:28.960 what worked for audiences and what didn't, and he used 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:32.160 that information to make decisions about what films to offer. 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.720 In nineteen o four, the St. Louis World's Fair featured 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:39.720 a novelty movie experience called Hale's Tours of the World, 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.840 was named for their inventor, George C. Hale. The attraction 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:47.200 was basically a decommissioned train car that had been set 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.680 up as a theater. The theater attendants dressed as train conductors, 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:54.160 and once they were inside, customers were shown travel films 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.880 while the car rocked and shook and the bell clanged 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.840 as though the whole thing we're traveling through a u 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:04.080 a Pean town our countryside. Zooker loved this thing. Uh. 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:07.320 He bought the rights to offer Hales Tours in New York, 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:10.800 and then he opened Hales Tours in Coney Island, Newark 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:14.760 and Pittsburgh after that. And initially they were really huge draws. 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.960 But two things ultimately doomed the Hales Tour to a 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:22.360 short life. One, once an audience had experienced this, the 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:24.280 novelty kind of wore off. There were a lot of 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:26.760 people that wanted to keep going back on the same tour. 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.960 Two new films were not being made, even though Zooker 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:33.120 is said to have asked the team at the newly 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:36.360 formed motion picture Patents company that is also known as 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:38.640 the Edison Trust and will reference that name a bunch 0:08:38.720 --> 0:08:41.440 coming up to make more of them, but they were 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:45.000 not really interested in going in filming the European Countryside anymore. 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:50.040 Despite its initial success. Hales Tours ultimately landed Zooker's company 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:53.600 and six figure debt. While his business partners wanted to 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.920 consider declaring bankruptcy, Zucker would not hear of it. He 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:00.640 had another idea. Over the next two years, Zucker let 0:09:00.720 --> 0:09:03.880 a project that turned all of the Hales Tour locations 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:07.679 into regular movie theaters. At the end of those two years, 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.120 the company was out of debt and turning a profit, 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.440 but he still had the problem of not having enough 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:18.120 new films to satisfy him. In nine, Zooker's company combined 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.680 with that of his friend Marcus Low. Low had also 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:25.480 been opening successful theaters of his own, and once the 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:29.360 companies combined under the Low Enterprises name at alf Zookers 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:34.320 work shifted completely. He focused on movies entirely, not so 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:38.800 much on the marketing or the locations or building out theaters, 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.160 but just the movies first, by traveling both the US 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:45.120 in Europe and simply going to the movies and watching 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:48.880 the audience and kind of tracking their reactions. We're going 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:51.480 to talk in a moment about how the information that 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:55.480 Zooker collected led him to develop bigger projects, but first 0:09:55.520 --> 0:10:07.320 we will pause for a quick sponsor break. Adolph Zucker 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:11.080 wanted to explore the idea of longer form content instead 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:13.760 of the short films that were being produced in the 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:16.600 early nineteen hundreds. He had a vision that was for 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:19.960 a movie that was not just something for casual foot 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:22.640 traffic crowds of a busy city, but a level of 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:25.080 entertainment that would draw a crowd the same way as 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:28.120 theatrical play mind and that is how he came to 0:10:28.240 --> 0:10:31.880 found the Famous Players Company, which was named for his 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:36.640 motto of famous players and famous plays. As that motto suggests, 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:41.000 Zucker wanted to get talent with established name recognition from 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:44.400 theater to star in films that were based on well 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:47.640 known plays. Yeah, in a lot of cases it was, Hey, 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:50.120 you got famous doing this play on Broadway. Can we 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.559 film that play and make it a movie. Famous Players 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.280 Company was actually set up more as the distributor to 0:10:56.320 --> 0:11:00.320 release Zooker's first movie after production was already completed. That 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.760 movie was Queen Elizabeth, which starred Sarah Bernhardt. The film 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:06.480 had been shot in France and it was a British 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:09.719 French production with the title les a mur de la 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:14.560 Elizabet or simply La Elizabeth, and Zooker secured the U 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:17.840 S distribution rights for either thirty five thousand dollars or 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:20.880 forty thou dollars, depending on who you listen to. That 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:25.760 was considered an absurdly high amount of money, but Zooker 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:28.000 paid it, and then he had the film premiere at 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:31.760 Broadways Lyceum Theater on July twelfth, n twelve as a 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:35.800 huge event. The ticket price was massive for the time, 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:38.600 it was a dollar. Remember, he had been charging five 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:42.760 cents for his theaters in the automated vaudeville. But Zooker's 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:46.360 effort to market this longer length film, trading on Bernhard's 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:49.480 fame and the fresh concept of a longer form it 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:54.160 ran more than forty minutes, was ultimately very successful. So 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:57.319 from there things moved really quickly for Zooker. He got 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:00.560 more Broadway actors to make films based on plays that 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:04.160 they were already famous for this time with his company 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:07.640 actually making the films. He made versions of The Prisoner 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:10.320 of Zenda and The Count of Money Christo and several 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:13.559 other films, and less than a year he also left 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:17.280 low enterprises to focus on famous players company full time. 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.760 He transitioned Mary Pickford to film, initially paying her five 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:24.160 hundred dollars a week, which was more than two and 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:26.720 a half times when she was making on Broadway. And 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.560 then Pickford was of course catapulted to stardom, and well, 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:34.320 she probably could never have anticipated eventually getting paid ten 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:36.840 thousand dollars a week just a few years later. That 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:41.800 is not adjusted. That's ten thousand dollars in nineteen teens money. 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:46.079 In nineteen sixteen, Adolph Sucker merged his company with another 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:50.640 film company run independently by Jesse Laski. They created famous 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:54.760 players Laski. While Zucker was establishing himself in film, he 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:58.520 had also gotten into business with a man named W. W. Hodginson, 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:02.200 who was working on his own venture in the entertainment world. 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:05.360 So we're gonna talk about Hodginson for a minute. William 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.560 Hodginson was born in eighteen eighty one in Pueblo, Colorado. 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:12.640 His middle name was either Wallace or Wadsworth, depending on 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:15.800 what source you look at. Some sources include both of them. 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:18.880 The Online Archive of California, for example, which has a 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:22.280 collection of his papers, even lists him both ways in 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.720 the finding aid that accompanies that collection. There's not a 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:28.800 whole lot of information about Hodginson's early life. He worked 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:31.760 on a railroad, telegraph and as a salesman for a 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:36.079 correspondence school before moving into the entertainment business. In nineteen 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:38.640 oh seven, he opened one of the first movie theaters 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:41.679 in the United States. That was in Utah. Uh Yeah. 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:44.280 He originally started out in Ogden and eventually spread to 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:49.240 other places. He has some Salt Lake footprints. But Hodkinson 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:54.000 founded Paramount Pictures in nineteen fourteen. That Paramount Pictures not 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:57.520 what we think of today. It was strictly a distribution company, 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.120 but Hodginson was completely changing the way films were distributed. 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:05.800 Up to that point, distribution had to primary models. First, 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:10.920 there were regional rights, also called states rights. In this model, 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:14.319 the movie producer would sell their films to a salesperson 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:18.000 who had a regional distribution network, and then that person, 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:20.960 who then owned a copy of the film, would take 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:24.560 that copy to theaters to be played for audiences. The 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:28.480 salesperson would be paid by the theater owner. This usually 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:31.400 meant that the same film would be played basically until 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:35.040 it was unwatchably damaged. Because the regional person wanted to 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.120 make as much money off their investment in purchasing that 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:41.200 copy of the film as they possibly could. This meant 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:44.160 money up front for the producer, but then the regional 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:47.560 salesman made all the money after that. It also meant 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:50.200 that the producer had no control over the quality of 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:53.000 their film that the audiences might see. If you were 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:55.280 seeing it late in the run, it might look terrible. 0:14:56.880 --> 0:14:58.880 We have all been to second run theaters and you 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.960 know how it is a different experience, so imagine that 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.880 getting worse and worse and worse. The second distribution model 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:08.120 at this time was called the road show, and in 0:15:08.160 --> 0:15:11.560 this scenario, the producer would enter into a contract with 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:14.920 a popular first run movie theater to run their movie 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.400 as a limited run special engagement. So this was treated 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:20.200 sort of like a special event. Think of it like 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:23.800 a touring production of a play. And ticket prices reflected 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:26.640 that the road show approach made a lot of money 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.840 for producers upfront because of the higher cost to the consumer, 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:33.400 but that also only lasted for a short period of time. 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.280 These two approaches were often used in combination, so the 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:40.480 producer would have the limited run road show and then 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.840 would sell States rights copies. The road show screenings would 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:46.960 serve as part of the advertising model to drum up 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:50.040 interest as the film made its way into other markets 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:54.240 through this regional rights distribution. But Paramount Pictures was designed 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:57.440 to get out of that regional approach. Hodkinson thought that 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:00.920 it would be better to arrange nationwide distribution plans with 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:03.880 producers getting a cut of the profits from the box office. 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:06.120 Instead of doing this weird we sell you the movie 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:08.440 and you sell the movie to theaters. It was we 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:10.920 arranged for the theaters to do this and we'll all 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:13.800 make money together. This was so that there would be 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:17.320 a motivation for production companies to focus on quality. Better 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:21.680 films would draw more audience and make more money for everybody. Typically, 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:24.360 Hodkinson took thirty five percent of the profit and the 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:27.960 producers got and that went on as long as the 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:31.200 picture played, so a big change from producers giving up 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.680 all rights to profit once they had sold a print 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:37.680 to a regional distributor. Also, Paramount was providing money to 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:40.800 filmmakers as part of their deals, so while the company 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:45.120 wasn't making movies, it was financing them. Hodkinson, with a 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.920 much bigger stake in films, got exclusive distribution rights, so 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:52.160 he got control over how and where they were shown. 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:55.920 He would determine what markets and what specific theaters were 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:59.520 the best match for a given film. He negotiated deals 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:03.200 with UMAs that he arranged for marketing. This cut out 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:07.800 the sale of Prince to regional salespeople entirely. Another interesting 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:12.800 aspect of Paramount was that it wasn't exclusively Hodginson's company. 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:15.760 The producers who were part of his distribution model all 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:17.879 owned a piece of the business. They were kind of 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:22.120 like foundational members. Hodkinson started working on this idea when 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:25.400 he was working for the General Film Company in nineteen eleven. 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:28.600 The General Film Company was the distribution company that was 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:33.520 created by the Motion Picture Patents Company that is, once 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:38.240 again the Edison Trust. But while Hodginson's test efforts in 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:41.080 this model did really well, things did not go over 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:43.440 so well with the Edison Trust. And we're going to 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:46.199 talk more about the Edison Trust and its practices, but 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:57.480 first we will take another quick sponsor break. Now. The 0:17:57.520 --> 0:18:00.800 Motion Picture Patents Company had formed in nineteen o eight 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:02.960 in an effort to get the film industry, which was 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:05.320 kind of all over the place in terms of technology 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:09.000 and stability, to homogenize and settle on one standard. We've 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:10.960 talked about this a little bit on previous shows, like 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:13.520 when we talked about the Lumire brothers and and some 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:16.439 others and how everybody was developing like their own films, 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.920 their own cameras, etcetera. But this trust involved a lot 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:22.080 of companies, some of which you have also heard of 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:26.159 on the show before. So obviously Edison, Vitograph, Biograph S 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:31.520 and a Sellig Lubin, Callum path A, Melliaise, and Gaumont. 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:34.800 All of these different players had been involved to some 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:38.600 degree in the patent wars around the various technologies that 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:42.400 had been developed in this new industry. But by assembling 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:45.440 as a trust, they had almost all of the industry's 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.000 patents and they were in a position to demand that 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.080 anyone showing a motion picture had to pay the Trust 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:55.240 a licensing fee for the technology that was involved. Eastman 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:59.840 Kodak was under contract to only sell film to licensees 0:18:59.880 --> 0:19:03.520 of the Trust. Film length was limited by the Trust 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:07.119 to ten to twenty minutes, and actors were not credited 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:10.200 per their rules. Yeah, the Edison Trust was like, don't 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:13.000 credit actors because famous actors will start asking for more money. 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:16.520 We're going to create a financial problem. Also, like they 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:21.480 just wanted to control everything. Rolled my eyes really hard. 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:27.640 As you can imagine, independent filmmakers and small theater owners 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:29.639 were not big fans of the Trust. And we mentioned 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:33.000 before that you know, there was a desire for longer films, 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:34.960 but if they weren't letting enough film be sold to 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:38.840 make longer films, that couldn't happen either. Some of these 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:42.199 creators opted to import film and equipment from Europe to 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:45.520 try to get around the trust's monopoly, and the Trust 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:49.760 was really not keen on Hodkinson's ideas, which shifted things 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:51.960 around in a way that would change their model of 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:54.879 extracting licensing fees for everyone along the line in a 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:58.560 film's production and distribution and ultimately mean that they made 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:02.400 less money. The us In Trust was eventually undone through 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:07.399 lost legal battles and legislation. In nineteen thirteen, the U. S. 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:10.879 Supreme Court ruled in Bower and Ce versus O'Donnell that 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:15.280 a patent holder couldn't fix pricing related to use of 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:20.240 that patent. The following year, Congress passed the Clayton Antitrust Act, 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.560 which was designed to regulate businesses and prevent monopolies, and 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:27.040 its regulations meant some of the trust's practices were illegal. 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:30.240 There was also a nineteen seventeen case of mp PC 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:34.000 versus Universal Film Manufacturing Company, in which the court ruled 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:37.480 in Universal's favor that once a patent was licensed, the 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:40.400 licensey was not legally bound to the licenser for any 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:43.720 other reason. By the time all of these paddles played out, 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:46.840 most film producers had migrated to Hollywood to get away 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:49.960 from the Edison Trust and do things their own way. Anyway, 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:53.919 back to Hodginson, he approached this issue of wanting to 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:57.800 convince his bosses that he was onto something important really methodically. 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:00.919 At the end of nineteen twelve, he made two charts 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.280 that compared the projected future of the film industry with 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:08.199 this method in place, versus the continuation of the States 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:10.960 rights and road show approach. He took these charts and 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:13.399 all of this data to New York to meet with 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:18.159 General Film Company leadership, but he was ultimately unsuccessful. Hodginson 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:22.080 had already implemented his distribution model in northern California as 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:25.120 part of his nineteen eleven testing, and his bosses told 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:27.600 him to change it back to the old way. He 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:31.080 refused and was fired in May of nineteen thirteen. Yeah, 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.919 for the record, like The theater owners in in the 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:38.800 San Francisco area loved this model. They were completely good 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:42.199 with it. But Hodginson did not leave the industry. He 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:44.560 believed in his new approach, and so he formed a 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:48.800 company to distribute films for independent producers. That company, the 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:53.080 Progressive Company, got distribution deals with Famous Players Company and 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:57.280 Lasky Feature Play Company, which became founding members of Paramount. 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:01.439 Before those two companies merged together. Hodginson and Zooker had 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:03.800 actually meant when Hodginson had gone to New York to 0:22:03.840 --> 0:22:07.000 plead his case with the heads of General Film. The 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:11.440 story behind the switch to Paramount from Progressive is that 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:14.480 Hodginson discovered on a visit back to New York there 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:17.320 was already a Progressive Pictures. It was in the New 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:20.760 York phone Book. This is also when he has said 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:23.320 to a first doodle the sketch of a mountain and 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:26.240 stars that has been the basis of the Paramount Pictures 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:30.440 logo ever since. Yep, they're still using it. Uh. In July, 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:34.919 Paramount took out a two page ad in the periodical 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:39.159 Moving Picture World touting the distributor partners throughout the US 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:41.359 that they had arranged with a map of the United 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:44.680 States showing how almost every part of the country could 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:47.119 be reached through Paramount, with the call to action to 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:50.480 local exhibitors quote, get in touch with our distributor in 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:53.879 your territory and procure the finest motion pictures the world 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:58.400 has ever seen. Famous Players Film Company, Jesse Alaski, Feature 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:02.000 Play Company, and bos Were Incorporated are all called out 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:06.600