Quins' Contract

When the Dionne Quintuplets clung to life 31 months ago in Callender, Ont. and the world outside woke up to their uniqueness, Photographer Fred Davis of the bustling Toronto Star suggested selling their pictures to newspapers and services to help meet the expense of keeping the

Quins alive. The Star was willing to handle Canadian sales and in July, when the Quins were seven weeks old, it called for bids on the U. S. rights. Newspaper Enterprise Association's $2,050 for six months was top. When that contract expired, NEA and Hearst's King Features Syndicate got together to halt a bidding contest at $10,000. In the spring of 1936, the NEA-Quins contract was renewed at the same figure.

Last week NEA, a little breathless after a scrimmage with "another American com-petitor" (not Hearst), signed up to pay the five little Dionnes about $50.000 a year for the exclusive privilege of making their "still" pictures for newspapers, magazines and commercial users,* for by now the Quins have become the world's greatest news-picture story, subscribed to for 1937 by 672 U. S. dailies with an aggregate circulation of 13,116,637.

Extremely profitable to themselves, the Quins' cherubic features are not, however, the gold mine for NEA that might be supposed. NEA gives them to the 710 clients of its regular feature service at no extra charge, and now at a cost to itself of about $100,000 a year. Hearst thought the new $50,000 was too high, so NEA hurried around last week placing new Quin contracts. Takers included the Boston Post, Atlanta Journal, Detroit News and, for exclusive U. S. magazine rights, TIME Inc.

*Twentieth Century-Fox still holds the Quins' contract for feature cinemas, Pathe for newsreels and ''shorts."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.