the United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. antitrust case of the 1940s. This action, brought by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, claimed the five integrated studio-theater chain combinations restrained competition. The Supreme Court heard the case in 1948, and ruled for the government. As a result, Warner and four other major studios were forced to separate production from the exhibition. In 1949, the studio's net profit was only $10 million. Warner Bros. had two semi-independent production companies that released films through the studio. One of these was Sperling's United States Pictures. In the early 1950s, the threat of television emerged. In 1953, Jack decided to copy United Artists successful 3D film Bwana Devil, releasing his own 3D films beginning with House of Wax. However, 3D films soon lost their appeal among moviegoers. 3D almost caused the demise of the Warner Bros. cartoon studio. Having completed a 3D Bugs Bunny cartoon, Lumber Jack-Rabbit, Jack Warner ordered the animation unit to be closed, erroneously believing that all cartoons hence would be produced in the 3D process. Several months later, Warner relented and reopened the cartoon studio. Warner Bros. had enough of a backlog of cartoons and a healthy reissue program so that there was no noticeable interruption in the release schedule. In 1952, Warner Bros. made their first film (Carson City) in "Warnercolor", the studio's name for Eastmancolor. After the downfall of 3D films, Harry Warner decided to use CinemaScope in future Warner Bros. films. One of the studio's first CinemaScope films, The High and the Mighty (owned by John Wayne's company, Batjac Productions), enabled the studio to show a profit. Early in 1953, Warner's theater holdings were spun off as Stanley Warner Theaters; Stanley Warner's non-theater holdings were sold to Simon Fabian Enterprises, and its theaters merged with RKO Theatres to become RKO-Stanley Warner Theatres. By 1956, the studio was losing money, declining from 1953's net profit of $2.9 million and the next two years of between $2 and $4 million. On February 13, 1956, Jack Warner sold the rights to all of the studio's pre-1950 films to Associated Artists Productions (which merged with United Artists Television in 1958, and was subsequently acquired by Turner Broadcasting System in early 1986 as part of a failed takeover of MGM/UA by Ted Turner). In May 1956, the brothers announced they were putting Warner Bros. on the market. Jack secretly organized