Cinema: Taxes Five Times Profits

At a convention of moviemen in Minneapolis last week, Hollywood Spokesman Eric Johnston said that it is too soon to toll the death of the industry. Weekly admissions run close to 55,000,000, "and that's a third of all the people in the United States." What's more, the number of new drive-in theaters more than offsets the number of houses closing down. The real problem, said Johnston, is not television but taxes. The 20% federal admission tax alone in 1951 amounted to some $250,000,000—or five times the net profits of all U.S. theaters.

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