TLS, five pages, 8.5 x 11, Paramount Pictures letterhead, August 8, 1928. Letter to fellow Paramount Pictures cofounder Jesse L. Lasky, expressing his alarm over the decline in business revenue, which he surmises is due to "the fact that we have no outstanding pictures in the market in the month of August such as we usually have in the Rialto and Rivoli in addition to one or two outstanding pictures for a week's stand…As things now stand we will be obliged to put WINGS into general circulation to bolster up receipts." He continues: "With the type of pictures we are now receiving we cannot possibly maintain volume of business for the last six months of the year comparable to the first six months. This will be embarrassing as we have to meet all our commitments and obligations and fall business should therefore exceed the spring business every year, as everyone else does, instead of going down." After listing several disappointing productions, Zukor starts to question his own filmmakers, "I do not like to say this but nevertheless cannot help thinking that perhaps some of our people are worried more about their own titles and the size of their names on the screen than the actual productions," to which he writes: "I might mention at this time that FORGOTTEN FACES for the first four days at the Paramount is breaking all week day records. It did $10,000 Monday and about the same Tuesday. It only goes to show again that where you have a story and production the public will patronize a theatre even though sound is absent." The first two pages feature pencil doodles and notes. In fine condition, with binder holes to upper border, and the sheets adhered together along the left top edge.
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