AI & Allied

Behind a closed door in Milwaukee's old but elegant Pfister Hotel one day last week, 334 delegates to the Allied States Association of Motion Picture Exhibitors Convention were locked in lively dispute. Outside the door another delegate, a heavyset, compelling man whose jet hair is flecked with grey, stood talking casually to a friend. Suddenly the door jerked open, an excited head popped through.

"Al, you've got to come in."

"Why, can't you push this thing through?"

"They're asking a lot of questions. Why don't we leave this for the committee to handle?"

"No, I want the committee to handle this on direct orders from the convention. You go back in there and put it through that way."

"They're asking so many questions we don't know what to do. We can't do this without you."

The man who was so frankly admitted to be the kingpin of the Allied States convention last week and who presently went in to dominate it was 46-year-old William Alfred ("Al") Steffes, for 22 years an independent theatre owner in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where he owns one cinemansion in each city, both named The World. Lately Al Steffes' two Worlds have largely run without him, for he is currently the leader of a revolt by the Allied States Association which has the moguls of the movie industry thoroughly alarmed.

Independent theatre owners have many a grievance and six years ago they banded into the Allied States Association, which now has 5,000 members. Only in the past year have they gotten anywhere. " For the first five years," says Al Steffes, "we kidded ourselves that we could obtain at least a little relief from block-booking and other evils over the table through conference." Last year the Association gave up conferences, launched a vigorous legislative attack on the eight great cinema companies which it says control the production and distribution of films.* Al Steffes lays most of the troubles of the independent cinema business at their doors and that of Cinema Tsar Will Hays. Year ago, he was wildly cheered when he shouted: "Hays must go!" This year he is chairman of a special Defense Committee empowered to lead the attack on the several evils particularized in last week's convention.

Biggest hate of all independent theatre owners is block-booking, or sale of blocks of films to exhibitors sight unseen. Enlisted in Allied's fight against block-selling are church groups, women's clubs and parent-teacher associations which believe that one result is the inclusion among the pictures booked of offensive films which the independent owner is compelled to take. Producers retort that this is untrue because block-booking contracts provide a 10 to 15% cancellation privilege. Great advantage of block-booking from the producers' point of view is that it gives them a constant, steady, measurable market for all the films they make. Independents retort that this dominance forces them to all sorts of evils like double-feature billing and Bank Nights. "Why do we have double features? Because the big boys wanted their theatres to use up the entire product of the studios so we'd have to take everything second-hand," explains Al Steffes bitterly. He admits that the independents had a share in building up Bank Night but asserts: "We were getting such rotten pictures that we had to do something to get people into the houses."

Allied is fighting block-booking by both national and State legislation. Before Congress in Washington is the Neely-Pettengill bill which outlaws block-booking. Last year the bill stuck in committee. This year Lawyer Abram Fern Myers, onetime chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, is trying to drive it through. Meanwhile Al Steffes is leading the drive for State legislation to outlaw block-booking and to divorce theatre ownership from producers and distributors. Such bills of divorcement bogged down in Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan, Nebraska and Illinois. One did pass in North Dakota, where it goes into effect in a year. The big producers are marshaling their forces to test its constitutionality in court. Last week North Dakota's Governor William A. Langer journeyed to Milwaukee to promise the Allied delegates that his State will bear the cost of the defense.

Allied's third big objective, outlined at the convention, is to strike at the "big boys" through legislation to tax theatre chains just as chain groceries are now taxed in Louisiana (TIME, May 31). A model tax bill was presented basing the tax on the number of seats. Above 500 the tax would be 5-c- a seat, above 1,000 10-c- a seat, etc., etc. If adopted, such legislation would hurt many members of the Allied States Association,, but, said Al Steffes last week, "big independent chains should be curbed too."

*Warner Bros., RKO, Paramount, Metro-Golchvyn-Mayer, Twentieth Century-Fox, United Artists, Universal, Columbia.

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