Fax: (310) 449-3100 In 1940, RKO was just coming out of receivership under its recently appointed president—and the company's fourth chief executive in its brief life span—George Schaefer, who before coming to RKO in 1938 had been the top domestic distribution executive with UA. By 1940, both Universal and Columbia had devised similar strategies regarding A-class production, focusing in-house on a single star-genre formula built around the studio's one bona-fide contract star, while outside talent supplied a few additional first-run features. normal as the Hollywood studio system contracts were in the days of vertical integration in the late 1930s to 1940s (Stahl). In signing a term contract with a The reasons for exhibitor concern were evident enough. In fact, in terms of total admissions, those segments of the audience accounted for 83 percent of ticket sales, although they had much less impact on the total box office since they were more likely to attend lower-cost showings and subsequent-run theaters. They sustained this strategy during the prewar era, releasing a plethora of B s, series pictures, and serials. Paramount The locale also invoked the epic stature and spectacle quality of the pictures, not only in terms of their production values (lavish sets and costumes, location shooting, Technicolor, and so on) but also in terms of the subject matter in that an increasing number of these were distinctly American pictures. Talking pictures were a year and a half away, but how Hollywood had grown! Wallis relied on a staff of associate producers, who would not receive screen credit until 1942 but wielded considerable authority over A-class production at Warners. It stands today as a symbol of the birth of one of the great industries of California and the nation. Its directors worked on a quota system, and a flat, low-key lighting style was decreed by the studio to conceal the cheapness of its sets. The Golden Age of Hollywood: 1930s - 1940s. While research firms provided the industry with a general view of audiences and of moviegoing, and one which reinforced the industry's own preconceptions, the actual situation was more complex and also more variable than the industry discourse at the time conveyed. Studio production operations and marketing strategies relied on B's and double bills, and the blocks-of-five clause in the consent decree allowed them to continue tying second-rate product to their A-class films. Now these companies stood to realize a far greater share of the war-fueled market than MGM and RKO, which had relatively meager chains of only around 150 theaters. This release probably did not mark the beginning of the cult movie, but it has similarities, for the New Ideal did not ask the audience to laugh with the film but to take an ironic stance, appreciating the film's ineptitude.71. The second point is that the Big Five responded to both the consent decree and the surging domestic market with roughly the same strategy: scaling back low-budget production and concentrating on high-end pictures geared for the first-run market. THE WAR BOOM, THE PARAMOUNT DECREE, AND THE EARLY TELEVISION ERA Add your answer and earn points. Among the stars departing Paramount after Balaban's arrival were Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Claudette Colbert, Fredric March, Carole Lombard, and Mae West. Using a newly available Eastman film stock with increased sensitivity to light, plastic-coated wide-angle lenses opened to smaller-than-normal apertures, and high-intensity arc lamps, cinematographer Gregg Toland achieved a photographic depth of field that approximated the perceptual range of the human eye and enabled Welles to place the film’s characters in several different planes of depth within a single scene. He is credited with helping to popularize the Stanislavski system of acting having studied with Stella Adler in the 1940s. 1950's-1960's c. 1960's-1970's d. 1930's-1940's See answer crystalyssaa is waiting for your help. Columbia also built a successful series of comedy shorts around the Three Stooges, as well as the silentera comedy stars Buster Keaton, Charlie Chase, and Harry Langdon. Once at RKO, Schaefer strongly supported Disney's shift into feature production, and in 1940-1941 Disney delivered three more feature-length cartoons: Pinocchio, Fantasia (both 1940), and DUMBO (1941). Hollywood’s greatest drama took place over two decades in a fight that featured movie barons, President Franklin Roosevelt, Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, and the United States Supreme Court. In terms of income, 58 percent of those on relief preferred double features; of lower-income people, 53 percent; middle-income, 37 percent; and upper-income, 25 percent. In 1938, Balaban hired Freeman away from a successful Paramount theater subsidiary in the South, installing him as vice president in charge of the studio. Leaving serials to Republic (and the major-minors), die revived Monogram continued to specialize in series production, generally Westerns and action pictures. Thus, he shuttled continually from coast to coast and tried to supervise all production during his visits to Los Angeles. MGM, the only company to turn a profit in each year of the 1930s, had closed that decade still very much in command of the industry. About half of these top features teamed Jean Arthur, the studio's lone contract star, with an outside male star, and the others featured freelance stars on limited studio contracts. Further research indicated that afternoon audiences, "composed largely of housewives and children, want quantity for their money while the evening crowds want 'something good and not too much of it.'" Budgeted in the $300,000 range (the industry average for all features in 1940), MGM's series pictures carried production values well beyond their B-grade counterparts from the other studios. "44, The impact of Wind's weeklong Atlanta premiere underscored the promotional value of the location premiere, and the trend intensified throughout 1940. First, under the studio system, most became salaried employees, as profit-sharing contracts were not common phenomena before the late 1940s. Finally, Shirley MacLaine’s successful 1959 lawsuit marked the end of the star system … Blog. Like various other competitive practices developed by subsequent-run theaters during the 1930s—notably giveaways connected with games such as "banko, bingo, and other [box-office] bait"—duals and B's were deemed undesirable but difficult to eliminate.62 Who would be the first to pull back? Warners was the only family-run studio among the Big Five. Golden Age of Hollywood Facts - 5: The studio system evolved in Hollywood and was essentially about long-term contracts for movie stars, that prevented them being poached by rival studios. gil, 1948, The Hollingworth Family Letters, 1827–1830, The Hitchhiking Game (Falešný Autostop) by Milan Kundera, 1965, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 2005, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 1981, Production Strategies for the Changing Marketplace, Duals, B's, and the Industry Discourse About Its Audience. Casablanca The Studio System (1930s-1940s) Historian Margaret Thorpe estimates that by the late 1930s, American moviegoers were buying up to 85 million tickets a week. Beginning in 1962, Lew Wasserman of Universal Studios emerged as the key innovator in creating a second studio system. The larger studios were, for the most part, not interested in producing B movies for double bills, because, unlike the main feature, whose earnings were based on box-office receipts, the second feature rented at a flat rate, which meant that the profit it returned, though guaranteed, was fixed at a small amount. Thus, the ownership-management split in the late 1930s was accompanied by a split between the management of the corporation and the management of studio and production operations—a split that would grow even more acute during the 1940s. Thus, in late 1941, Variety's Arthur Ungar noted "the so-called abandonment—for publicity purposes, but not actually—of the 'B' class of product." established in 1924, by merger of Loew's, Inc. theater chain with three production companies (Metro Pictures/Goldwyn Pictures/Louis B. Mayer Productions) This information rarely was gathered by the MPPDA itself but was culled from various federal agencies—for instance, the Commerce and Justice Departments, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Census Bureau. There was a direct correlation, in fact, between a studio's assets and revenues, the number of star-genre formulas in its repertoire, and the size and quality of its star stable—ranging from the talent-laden MGM, with over a dozen top stars on its roster, to lesser companies like RKO, Columbia, and Universal, each of which had only one or two top stars under exclusive contract and produced only a half-dozen or so A-class features per year. Many of these executives had backgrounds in either distribution or exhibition and were reluctant to yield their decision-making authority to research experts or outside firms. The younger brother, Jack Warner, ran the studio-factory; filmmaking operations were supervised by two longtime studio executives: Hal B. Wallis oversaw the production of all A-class pictures, while Bryan Foy handled Warners' B-picture production. That approach proved enormously successful in the late 1930s, with the company averaging $7 million in profits from 1936 through 1939. The most significant of these was an increased reliance on presold movies and story properties; in the B-picture realm, such properties generally were series pictures—films with recurring characters, settings, and plots whose market value was firmly established. The films of the 1920s and 1930s followed a formulaic style, often adopting a specific genre such as animation, Western, romance or mystery. UA changed radically, however, as the studio system took hold and as the founders' careers waned; by 1940, it relied for product almost exclusively on major independents like Goldwyn, David Selznick, Walter Wanger, and the British producer Alexander Korda. Universal City had been Hollywood's preeminent filmmaking facility when Carl Laemmle opened it in 1915, and in 1940—1941 it was still a first-rate movie factory. Studio System. As the majors shifted their emphasis to A-class pictures and eased out of low-budget production in 1940-1941, and as the government railed against the foisting of substandard product on both exhibitors and audiences, the industry discourse was increasingly devoted to the "problem" of B movies and double features. These campaigns also provided nationwide multimedia exploitation, which sales offices were convinced had a much greater impact than national radio or magazine campaigns. Paramount maintained its reputation as the “star studio” throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, featuring legends like the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Marlene Dietrich in its films. Since the 1910s and 1920s, it had been common to program for children and women on the assumption that they had specific tastes in story types to which the theaters could appeal.68 Furthermore, children and women were considered valuable in two special ways: (1) advertising consultants believed that women led purchase decision-making for a household; and (2) the presence of women and children in the theater gave the establishment an aura of propriety. The Hollywood Studio System In The 1930S And 1940S was published in A Short History of Film, Third Edition on page 89. The pioneer of public opinion polling in the United States was George H. Gallup, whose research efforts would have tremendous impact on motion picture audience research throughout the 1940s. At the low-budget feature level, conversely, where the "regulated difference" of products was the prime concern, the studios maintained a mass-production, assembly-line mentality. How would audiences respond? Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. While these enhanced Metro's critical stature and reputation for being the Tiffany's of the industry, the high costs on these pictures often reduced (or precluded) their profitability. His absence gave Zanuck increased responsibility over day-to-day studio operations, although much of it was handled by the studio executive William Goetz, whose role would be upgraded further in 1941 when Zanuck committed both his own time and Fox's resources to producing films for the military. COLUMBIA HOUSE STYLE Goldwyn, in fact, used ARI not only for market research on his own productions but also as a means to publicize his out-spoken condemnation of double billing. While UA was an obvious option for independents and freelance talent, other studios began modifying the "UA model" and were beating the company at its own game. 132-33), In 1940-1941, the research findings by ARI, MPRB, and other social scientists reported in the industry trade papers tended to endorse the practice of double billing not only as more popular (relative to single features) but also as more profitable. Today marks the anniversary of an important Supreme Court case that helped to end the Hollywood studio system and fuel a young television industry in the late 1940s. And generally one of the films, for cost purposes alone, fell into the category of the B picture. "The Hollywood Studio System in 1940-1941 Universal was run until 1936 by Carl Laemmle out of New York, with his son, Carl Laemmle Jr., over-seeing seeing production at the studio. Thus, the studios began planning cutbacks in B-picture production in early 1940—even before the defense buildup began to gather steam, in fact, an indication of the importance of the political pressures involved. The studio system may have been an integrated industrial and economic system, but each company actually manifested the system in a different and distinctive way. The film employs a complicated flashback structure in which Kane’s friends and associates give their accounts of the man after his death, paradoxically revealing not greatness or might but pathetic insecurity and emptiness. Selznick took over the top management role at UA after Goldwyn's formal resignation in 1941, although he retreated from active production following his back-to-back blockbuster hits, Gone with the Wind and Rebecca. Encyclopedia.com. Analyzing these findings, Sam Goldwyn remarked that programming ought to be designed for those who can afford to go, not "by what the children up to seventeen years of age and people on relief like." Thus, Schaefer was ousted by the RKO board in June 1942 as the studio opted for a more conservative strategy during the war era.18. In fact, by 1940 the most obvious remnant of Hollywood's central-producer system was in the B-picture arena: each studio assigned a foreman of sorts—J. But the double-billing policies and frequent program changes in most subsequent-run theaters offered variety of a different sort—variety in terms of the sheer volume of films being booked in the local theater and the different types of films included in the programs. (Columbia's assets in 1940 were $16 million.) Among these assembly-line productions are some of the most important American films ever made, the work of gifted directors who managed to transcend the mechanistic nature of the system to produce work of unique personal vision. And in an interesting parallel to Paramount's Hope-Crosby pictures, Universal parlayed the unexpected success of the comedy duo Abbott and Costello into a succession of low-budget comedy hits. ARI did note that if both pictures were equally good, then the figures would improve for the older and higher-income audiences.63, This statistical data about the preferences for double features could then be compared with other information that Gallup supplied. Before the 1940s, Hollywood and the Studio System, was one that carried the American Film Industry to new heights and brought on different visions from aspiring filmmakers and film companies. And given their established block-booking and blind-bidding policies, the major studios were assured of an outlet for their B-grade products. The key factor in that recovery was Paramount's massive theater chain of 1,250 houses, which gave the company a huge advantage over its competitors as the economy improved. Major independent producers tended to oppose B's and duals, predictably enough, since coupling one of their prestige-level features with a lesser product—especially a B-grade film—diminished both its stature and its income. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. This research was done with increasing precision, parsing the audience demographically in terms of age, gender, income, education, and so on; in the process, a number of long-standing industry assumptions about audiences steadily eroded. Much of this research focused on genre preferences. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Until the late 1930s, virtually all prestige-level pictures were launched with a Broadway premiere. Which further enhanced the market value of its unparalleled sales and exhibition operations and began providing its services to management-by-committee! Pic ever. 10-30 percent compared with the company averaging $ 7 million profits. The great industries the hollywood studio system in the 1930s and 1940s California and the length of time those features played in metropolitan first-run theaters 1940s ( )! The 1920 ’ s 19th-century sexual segregation had fallen away, Katharine Hepburn, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica this... One programmer for the studio ’ s and a lax code of censorship allowed sin to rule movies. 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