Cinema: Prospectus

Main idea of a cinema sales convention is to put the coming season's production program over with a bang. At one of this year's conventions the spirit of Hollywood enterprise was neatly summed up by firing tommy guns loaded with blanks. At other conventions, this year's plans for some 500 feature pictures, to cost some $150,000,000, were introduced with less noise, no less ballyhoo. By last week salesmen were visiting the nation's 16,558 exhibitors, talking up next season's shows. Under the block-booking blind-selling system of distribution to which the sprawling cinema industry is...

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