Business at the box office leaped suddenly. Downtown Brooklyn, which never had heard of Loew's Royal, came around to see what all the shooting was about and Mr. Loew learned something about advertising that he never has forgotten. The Royal made a net profit of sixty-three thousand dollars that first year and carried Mr. Loew on to ownership of the most powerful string of picture and vaudeville houses in the country; to the presidency of Metro-Goldwyn, which with Famous Players-Lasky and First National forms the Big Three of pictures, all closely allied; and to a commanding position in the industry second only to that of Adolph Zukor, to whom he is closely related by ties of marriage and friendship. His son, Arthur, now titular head of the father's producing and distributing corporations, married Mr. Zukor's only daughter, and the Zukor-Loew alliance virtually dominates the business. Loew and his Metro-Goldwyn and the First National together now control nearly thirty per cent of the total seating of the country and are expanding rapidly.
The old Selig Company had discovered California as early as 1907, journeying from Chicago to finish a one-reel "Count of Monte Cristo"
[145]
