On Borrowed Time

In the past year, prodded by the Department of Justice, Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp. and Paramount Pictures, Inc. have agreed to split their production-distribution operations and theater-owning functions into independent halves (TIME, May 17, 1948 et seq.). But the three other members of filmdom’s “Big Five”—Loew’s Inc., 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. and Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.—decided to continue fighting Justice’s antimonopoly suit. Although they knew they would probably have to yield in the end, the longer they could stave off the splitup the more money they might make from continuing to show their own pictures in their own chain theaters.

Last week a federal statutory court in New York shaved their borrowed time a little more closely. The court told the three companies that they could make and distribute pictures or exhibit them, but not both at the same time. Even so, an appeal to the Supreme Court might still stave off the final divorce decree for as long as four years.