Mr. BOREN. But suppose that for one reason or another as a producer he finds himself unable from the standpoint of finances to go out with his picture, and he decides that he wants to dispose of that picture through distributors, could he then sell it to your exhibition houses?

Mr. FREEMAN. Those Paramount-owned?

Mr. BOREN. Yes; or any others.

Mr. FREEMAN. There would be nothing in the world to prevent him from doing that, because in reaching these theaters, the theaters themselves are anxious to get good pictures, and he would have no trouble in disposing of his picture in that way.

Mr. BOREN. There would be, in your opinion, nothing to prevent the independent producer from selling such a picture if it had merit, to one of Loew's theaters here in Washington, or to one of Warner Bros. theaters in Washington, even though he might not be releasing it through Warner Bros. or one of the other major companies?

Mr. FREEMAN. There would be nothing to prevent him, because I understand there are not a half dozen or a dozen theaters in the United States today where there might not be the playing time for that picture, and I will cite you an example: In the different producers that we talk about producing pictures, the Paramount Theater in New York is the only theater in America that I know of that runs exclusively Paramount productions.

Mr. BOREN. You only run your own pictures?

Mr. FREEMAN. We do not want to run any others; we run that picture trying to operate it on 20, 25, or 30 pictures a year, and do it as a sort of flagpole of Paramount products. We make it known that it is operated by Paramount Co., plays Paramount pictures, and we are trying to create in that theater alone 100 percent entertainment that goes into it. And we would not, even if we had an opportunity to buy an outside picture for that show, we would not in that theater put on an outside picture.

Mr. BOREN. In other Paramount theaters throughout the country he would have an opportunity to sell his picture?

Mr. FREEMAN. Yes; if it is a good motion picture.

Mr. BOREN. That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. KENNEDY. May I suggest, Mr. Freeman, that we have your views on the bill with reference to the point that has been emphasized here, the so-called moral phase of the question? Would it be possible for you to touch upon that phase of the question?

Mr. FREEMAN. I will not and I cannot attempt, and I do not think it would be humanly possible to define a moral code for America. I want to tell you that it is my desire as an individual to be as moral as my fellow man. I try, by my own code, to live a moral life. I have no desire as an individual to force an immoral thing onto the public.

But in the making and the creation of motion pictures there will always be, whether you make them individually or whether you make them as a group, or whether you make them as we try to do, whatever way you do it, you will find questions that will be raised as to the moral things in a motion picture That cannot be helped; it will always be there if you have the motion picture-business as a show business, which has some place in the community.

I very seriously doubt that in any community in which any of you live that the morals of the people in that community are what we would like them to be, whether all people stand for the same thing morally that we do. And I do not believe-I can argue with you about the moral question and both of us might be perfectly honest and sincere in our positions, and yet we might utterly disagree, we might be just as far apart as the North Pole is from the South Pole.

I have heard that we make mistakes, that errors are made, and I make no defense of it; I make no defense of errors at any time. I simply say that in the conduct of making 600 pictures a year by an industry that has as many good pictures, that has as good a percentage of good pictures in it, and as long as it is striving to make better pictures I still say that it is a good business.

I heard a criticism made of a picture that I have not seen. I wish I could see all of them. I cannot. I do not have the time. That criticism was of Primrose Path. I have never heard a criticism made-I think I might say just as a matter of information the book from which Primrose Path was made-no, I meant Strange Cargo. I have not seen Primrose Path either. Strange Cargo; that was taken from a book known as Not Too Narrow; Not Too Deep, by Richard Sayle, who is a very important writer, and the book had a very fine sale.

Now, whatever the difference of opinion might be as to why we should or should not have made Strange Cargo, gentlemen, Strange Cargo did not originate as an original thought in the minds of the motion-picture producers. I still say that we have to pick out and offer to the public as an industry 500, 550, or 600 units of entertainment a year, and I still believe, and I say to you, that after you get through with that, if we have failed in a small percentage, that I do not think we should be condemned. We will always fail. We will never be perfect.

I say to you that Strange Cargo as presented on the screen might be found and as I say, I have not seen the picture not to be nearly as questionable as the book itself.

I do not think that the motion-picture producers-I think the attempt of the motion-picture producers is always to go the other way. I know that is the policy for the Paramount line.

Primrose Path is another one, and the same thing applies there. You asked me, Do I think the children should see those pictures, if the moral effect on them is good? No. No; I do not.

Can we make in an industry that relates to entertainment value, where there is being taken in at the box office approximately seven, eight, or nine hundred million dollars a year, pictures that are not on the border line, which you say, "My child can or cannot see"? We cannot do it. You cannot do it. It is impossible.

I say this, that if this had been my child, and I did not want him to see it, I would have said to him, very frankly, in my home, "You should not see that motion picture." And I think that in the system of presentation of entertainment to the public, that in the home itself there is a responsibility that will have to be followed, because if today we made motion pictures that appealed only to the child's mind and only pictures without having an effect on the child, that you say that should be made, we would have no motion-picture industry in America.

We have just made a picture that I would like for every man in this room to see. This is not a sales argument. I am not trying to sell a Paramount picture here. But, I would like for you to see it. It is called The Biscuit Eater. It was made at Albany, Ga.; was shot on location in a small community. It is as fine a motion picture as we have made at the Paramount studios. There is not one single criticism that could be made of that picture from any standpoint except at one place, I think, the little boy says, "Is Mary going to have puppies?" That is the only word in it, and yet, gentlemen, I received five letters on that; already five. I do not know how many more will come. Mr. MCGRANERY. Were they questions as to whether the puppies had come? [Laughter.]

Mr. FREEMAN. Should such a line be shown to children?

Mr. PATRICK. Was it an objection because they used the name Mary?

Mr. FREEMAN. The line being in there, the question was whether children should read a line in a motion picture of that sort. The dog's name was Mary. "Is Mary going to have puppies?" Now, maybe it should not be there. I could not have had the scene if he did not say that.

Now, that picture cost Paramount $360,000. We attempted to give the public everything in the world it had asked for. I will take a $100,000 loss on it. I will certainly take a $50,000 loss, for the company, tomorrow, and call it a day.

The public will not buy it, and we have done everything in our power, everything we can, to sell it to them. We spent money; we have gone on the radio; we have given premieres; we have had stories in Life magazine and all of the magazines, such as the Saturday Evening Post, and have done everything, every way in the world, and yet in the very towns in Georgia where the picture was made, Paramount realized as low as $10 on that picture, and yet I spent $12,000 in exploitation alone in the State of Georgia on the picture.

Now, I am only picking out Georgia, because that is the one place that you would think the public would have bought it, would have been in Georgia. In Albany, Ga., yes; they did. They paid $1,200 in Albany to go to see the picture, from which the Paramount Co. collected three-hundred-and-some-odd dollars, and we spent $12,000 to get it.

Now, of course, you say, "All of that does not stop your reference to this now." No. But, in an attempt, gentlemen, in a sincere desire to take, to make, a motion picture and see if we could sell it to the public, and we will gross on that picture less than $400,000— maybe $425,000 in the domestic market. I do not know what we will do in the foreign market.

We made a picture that I heard someone ask questions about, called The Road to Singapore. That picture will gross in the American market $1,750,000 or maybe $1,650,000. We will make money on that picture. The Paramount Co. will have received a reasonable profit on its investment.

I sat in on that picture from the day it was started until it was finished, and until 3 weeks after the final scene had been shot, I still did not know the finish of the picture, because we went back and would do what we call retakes, after having cut the picture together, we would take it down to a theater and exhibit it. We would find

where we expected somebody to laugh they would cry. We wanted them to laugh. We knew we had made a mistake. We would take that scene out, and we would reshoot it and get a laugh. That is what you call audience reaction. Of course we expected them to laugh, and if they would cry, we knew we were wrong. But, I am picking out a particular picture. We would come back when we had done a day's work. We would go down and find out that there was another scene that we had to retake.

You say, "Why don't you do all of that in the first place?" The man that can do that is worth an awful lot of money.

Mr. SOUTH. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. South.

Mr. SOUTH. Are there not more instances when you expect a laugh you get a yawn than when you expect a laugh they cry?

Mr. FREEMAN. We have attempted to be sure that they would laugh and have had them go to sleep on us.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. KENNEDY. I want to ask you one thing. You referred to the pictures made from books, and Strange Cargo, or whatever it was. How about the pictures that are made from the best-sellers? I presume the best-sellers naturally attract you on the theory that people have read them, and so forth?

Mr. FREEMAN. Yes.

Mr. KENNEDY. Do you find, as a rule, pictures made from the bestsellers usually are good box-office pictures also?

Mr. FREEMAN. Well, we find that that is the greatest insurance value that you can get. It does not always work out. We are selling a picture next year. It is called Reap the Wild Wind. The book is just presently appearing in the Saturday Evening Post in series form, then will be printed in book form. We think that it will be one of the big pictures of the year. That picture has been assigned to a gentleman named Cecil DeMille to finally bring out in a subject that can be presented on the screen. The first time I will know what Mr. DeMille will have in the script and that picture, will probably be in October or November of this year. At that time I still do not know who will play in the picture. We are seeking this man; we are seeking that one; we are trying to get a cast together; but I know Mr. DeMille.

I know the ability of Mr. DeMille to produce a motion picture. I know the confidence of the exhibitors of America in Mr. DeMille, and I am sure no exhibitor today, including all of those that are represented in the allied group, would make the statement that, on the Paramount program, that they would not agree to play Mr. DeMille's picture blind. Maybe we could not agree on price. Do not misunderstand me. Price is a matter of negotiation. But, blindly, they would do it. And you could multiply that in a series of studios. If you asked me, I could not tell you; if you asked me to give you a synopsis of Reap the Wild Wind, I would say to you, Mr. Kennedy, please read the book, because that is all I could tell you at this time. I could not make any other statement to you. If, when Mr. DeMille has finished with that picture, you ask if that synopsis is true, I will tell you; No. You could take the script and go over it word for word. It will be changed 500 times before he finishes.

235749-40-pt. 2——15

When a director goes on a set to make a picture he is more or less the man in charge of what to do, and if he finds that the lines are going wrong, not what we call jelling, where it jells in perfect presentation and on the screen, he changes it right there, and you will only know the next morning when you see the rushes on the screen. Maybe the girl should have said something else. Maybe she said, "I love you, dearie." Maybe that dearie does not sound so good and the director will eliminate the dearie and leave it, I love you.

Well, that was not in the script.

In The Road to Singapore you will not find in the script that we wrote, you cannot find a great many lines that are in The Road to Singapore. We happened to find a happy combination of two personalities in Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, that gave laughs. The public today wants to laugh. And, as they went along and as the scenes were created, they did what we call ad-libbing. They would do things that had no relation to the script whatsoever, and yet it was comedy, resulted in laughs; they added lines that we did not think of; they thought of them. If any of you have seen The Road to Singapore you will remember the line, "Pitty-pat, pitty-pat." Now, that was not in there. And just before they start a fight, that part was all thought of instantly, in the last moment. The writer did not think of that.

And bear in mind that writers are human beings.

If you get the constructive ideas of a lot of people as a picture goes along, you get better entertainment value.

This [exhibiting pamphlet] does not create a thing. You cannot put it down on paper and say, "Here is the formula and here are the exact words, and here is exactly what we are going to put on the screen, and that is what it is going to be." You cannot do it. It is impossible.

Mr. YOUNGDAHL. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Youngdahl.

Mr. YOUNGDAHL. If I understood you correctly, you are stating to the committee that in the event this legislation passes you will advise your company to curtail operations.

Mr. FREEMAN. I said in the event the Neely bill was passed, that as an individual charged with the responsibility in Hollywood of making these commitments to actors, to artists, to people interested in a volume of seven and one-half million dollars, I would be forced to advise the Paramount Co. that they could not take that chance; they could not take the chance of having that fall on them in building up pictures one by one; they would have to go out and sell and thereafter the only thing I could say is they would have to reduce the production of motion pictures.

Mr. YOUNGDAHL. Would that reduction of motion pictures reduce the number employed by your company?

Mr. FREEMAN. Definitely.

Mr. YOUNGDAHL. Have you an opinion as to the effect of the reduction of the production of pictures in your company, on distributors and exhibitors, with whom you do business?

Mr. FREEMAN. As to the effect?

Mr. YOUNGDAHL. Yes.

Mr. FREEMAN. On the exhibitors?
Mr. YOUNGDAHL. Yes.