Editing Paramount Pictures (section)

===1941–50: ''United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.''===
In 1940, Paramount agreed to a government-instituted consent decree: block booking and "pre-selling" (the practice of collecting up-front money for films not yet in production) would end. Immediately, Paramount cut back on production, from 71 films to a more modest 19 annually in the war years.<ref>{{cite book |last=Eames |first=John Douglas |title=The Paramount Story |year=1985 |publisher=Crown Publishers, Inc |location=New York City |isbn=0-517-55348-1 |page=115}}</ref> Still, with more new stars like [[Bob Hope]], [[Alan Ladd]], [[Veronica Lake]], [[Paulette Goddard]], and [[Betty Hutton]], and with war-time attendance at astronomical numbers, Paramount and the other integrated studio-theatre combines made more money than ever. At this, the [[Federal Trade Commission]] and the [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] decided to reopen their case against the five integrated studios. Paramount also had a monopoly over [[Detroit]] movie theaters through subsidiary company United Detroit Theaters.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/united-detroit_paramount-history.htm |series=SIMPP v. Paramount Theatres |title=The Paramount Theater Monopoly: The History of United Detroit Theaters |publisher=Cobbles.com |access-date=January 7, 2010 |archive-date=October 31, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061031065238/http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/united-detroit_paramount-history.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> This led to the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] decision ''[[United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.]]'' (1948) holding that movie studios could not also own movie theater chains. This decision broke up Adolph Zukor's creation, with the theater chain being split into a new company, [[United Paramount Theaters]], and effectively brought an end to the classic Hollywood [[studio system]].