Antitrust.

In 1948 the Supreme Court ordered the major Hollywood studios to sell their theater holdings, ruling that the system of film distribution was anticompetitive, and the way Hollywood movies had been produced and delivered to audiences since their beginnings abruptly changed. The Supreme Court decision had many unintended and surprising effects, not the least of which was to restructure the business radically.

Selling the Theater Chains.

Early in 1951 the major movie studios — Universal, Columbia, Paramount, Warner Bros., M-G-M, 20th Century-Fox, and RKO Radio — agreed with the Justice Department on the details of selling the theater holdings. The theater chains were sold, freeing a market that for decades had been run as separate monopolies, each studio distributing its own films to its own theaters. The sales had the effect of reducing the number of films produced by the studios, since there was...