Entertainment, Inc.

Last month's entertainment merger seemed a large one--Pathe, Keith, Orpheum and the Cecil B. DeMille interests (TIME, May 2). Last week's announcement dwarfed it. With the Keith-Orpheum chain of 97 theatres will now be merged the B. S. Moss nationwide organization. To that combination will then be added the huge Stanley Co. Result: more than 600 cinema and vaudeville houses under unified control, a $250,000,000 entertainment trust supplying all its own celluloid features from the merged studios of First National, Pathe and Director DeMille, with the Producer's Distributing Corp. to determine when and where who shall laugh or weep at what. Scenting the arrival of mammoth theatres, the Fox Film Corp. also has plans afoot--30 first-run theatres, to cost five to twelve millions each and seat four or five thousand people each, with stores and office buildings adjoining, in major U. S. cities.