Scope and arrangement
The Sam Shain papers (1931-1970) document his career as an editor, publisher, and Twentieth Century-Fox Film executive through correspondence, publication subscription invoices, articles, company reports, legal documents, and prospectuses. The collection is largely comprised of material gathered by Shain concerning motion picture and television broadcasting regulation, corporate finance, broadcast advertising, and tax law.
Correspondence is both personal and professional in nature. The majority of the personal correspondence dates from the 1930s to the 1940s and is from family members, most notably Shain's nephews, George M. Cohen and Joe Rogantick. Professional correspondence spans the majority of Shain's career, from his time as a journalist for Variety until his publication of Space & Time. Topics of correspondence include Shain's resignation from Fox, business travel plans, ideas for stories, and the activities of entertainment business executives. Interoffice memoranda at the Motion Picture Daily document policies and changes in the magazine's news coverage, staff research efforts for stories on television networks, and the distribution and circulation of the magazine. Primary correspondents include reporters, news editors, film and theater producers, and businesses and executives who subscribed to or advertised in Space & Time and The International Motion Picture Exhibitor. Paul Lockwood, vice president of Schenley Industries during the 1960s, is a frequent correspondent.
Articles, company reports, and legal documents in the collection concern broadcast television regulation; corporate finance; securities law; and companies, such as NBC, CBS, and Paramount Pictures. Articles are sometimes published, though several are drafts written by Shain while he was editor for the Motion Picture Daily in the 1940s, such as "A Draft of a Consent Decree Regarding the Sale of Motion Pictures." Annual reports are present for Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation; American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.; Columbia Pictures Industries; and NBC. Shain's study of entertainment corporation finance is documented through annotated exchange offers and preliminary and final prospectuses for companies such as The Walt Disney Corporation, Inflight Motion Pictures, Inc., the National General Corporation, and Cinema V Distributing, Inc. Other reports document liquor shipments, imports, and alcohol consumption rates by state. Legal complaints, statements, and memoranda document the activities of The Distilled Spirits Industry (DSI), the National Association of Alcoholic Beverage Importers, and Schenley Industries from the 1950s to the 1960s, particularly regarding finance regulation of alcohol distilleries and broadcast advertising of hard liquor. Sometimes Shain's notes are interspersed amongst the articles and reports.
Other legal documents consist of briefs, complaints, and memoranda concerning American film sales and exports, "Free TV," "Pay-As-You-See Television," and other topics surrounding the development of mainstream television in the 1950s. Parties involved include the Federal Communications Commission, the State Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, network television executives from CBS and NBC, and the Motion Picture Association.
The collection holds issues of the Motion Picture Exhibitor dating from 1937 to 1969. Contracts and correspondence regarding advertising within the publication precede the chronological run of the newspaper. A limited amount of Space & Time newsletters from the mid to late 1960s are also present and are accompanied by subscription invoices. A large portion of the invoices are for Schenley Industries and span over twenty years. Other companies represented through the invoices include Westinghouse Electric, NTA Telefilm (Canada), Cunningham & Walsh, and American Tobacco Company.
The collection contains a scrapbook on confectionery in movie theaters dating from 1946 to 1948. It holds photographs of concession stands at theaters in New York and New Jersey in 1946. Articles and descriptions of indoor concession markets, and confectionery marketing surveys and statistics are also present. The scrapbook also holds issues of Extra Profits, a supplemental publication of the Motion Picture Exhibitor, dating from 1956.
Arrangement
The collection is arranged into the following categories: Correspondence; Articles, Reports, and Legal Documents; International Motion Picture Exhibitor; Space & Time; and Scrapbook.