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- Outline: Week 7, Hollywood in the 1920s
- Roaring Twenties
- stock market
- invested in Hollywood
- $78 million in 1922
- $850 million in 1930
- Jazz Age
- Modernization
- Urbanization
- Prohibition
- Flappers
- Jazz
- Hollywood Studios
- increase in exports after World War I
- building and purchasing movie theaters
- producers had guaranteed outlets
- allowing them to raise budgets
- more lavish productions
- Vertical Integration
- Paramount demanded theaters screen 102 features a year
- exhibitors formed First National (1917) to make films
- Zukor began buying theaters
- bought Balaban-Katz (1919)
- paved way for vertical integration
- became Publix theater chain, with 1200 theaters by 1930
- Loews
- Marcus Loew
- nickelodeon owner
- large chain by 1910
- moved into production
- bought Metro in 1919
- bought Goldwyn in 1924
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- block booking
- compelled exhibitors to book an entire year’s program in
advance
- mature oligopoly
- Film Studios
- Big Three
- Paramount
- MGM-Loews
- First National
- Little Five
- Producers-Distributors Company
- Film Booking Office
- Universal
- Fox
- Warner Brothers
- Censorship
- Progressives sought to reform lower class social system
- tension between classes
- protect lower classes from harm
- inspect films
- like inspecting meat
- some anti-Semitism over industry controlled by Jewish
immigrants
- Local Censorship Laws
- Chicago: municipal censorship law in 1907
- Pennsylvania: state law, 1911
- Ohio and Kansas: 1913
- Mutual v. Ohio
- Mutual films challenged Ohio’s censorship law
- Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 1915
- prior restraint
- movies not protected by 1st Amendment
- “business pure and simple”
- organized and conducted for profit
- with a special capacity for evil
- Star Scandals
- Pickford and Fairbanks
- biggest stars of Hollywood
- were both married
- divorced their spouses in 1920
- married the same year
- drew criticism from public
- they divorced each other 1936
- Olive Thomas
- William Desmond Taylor
- 1922
- found murdered
- suspicious circumstances
- believed to be a homosexual
- Fatty Arbuckle
- Labor Day Weekend
- September 5, 1921 (Labor Day weekend)
- St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco
- party at the hotel, during Prohibition
- Virgina Rappe
- aspiring actress
- found sick in one of the rooms
- Died September 9
- ruptured bladder
- alleged to have been raped by Arbuckle
- Arbuckle’s heavy weight would have crushed her bladder
- Trials
- “Trail of the Century”
- Three manslaughter trails
- acquitted each time
- MPPDA
- Will Hays
- postmaster general under Harding
- president of the Republic National Committee
- Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America
- appointed Hays the head
- established the Studio Relations Committee
- instituted “morals” clause into actor’s contracts
- Counter censorship
- pressured producers to tone down salacious content
- banned Arbuckle’s films
- sent operatives to Massachusetts to fight censorship
- spoke before religious groups
- Don’ts and Be Carefuls
- instituted production guidelines in 1924
- drafted new ones in 1927
- revised in 1930, Production Code
- Payne Fund Studies
- correlated sexual nature of movies for young and condemned
them
- four year study at seven universities
- published 13 different reports, between 1929–33
- believed films unduly influenced children
- responded more emotionally to movies than adults
- retained more from movies
- had less healthy sleep
- supported cultural elite belief that movies were harmful to
children
- Silent Film of the 1920s
- Hollywood envy of the world
- expanded exports
- abundant investment capital
- Sexually provocative films
- Male and Female (1919)
- Blind Husbands (1919)
- Foolish Wives (1922)
- Epics
- Ten Commandments (1923)
- Greed (1924)
- Comedies
- Charlie Chaplin
- Harold Lloyd
- Buster Keaton
- Early sound experiments
- Edison and Dickson
- problems
- synchronization
- phonographic record
- projected film
- amplification
- acoustic amplification
- pipe organ in theater
- solutions
- audion
- Lee DeForest
- based on incandescent library
- vacuum triode
- Western Electric
- DeForest worked for Western Electric
- subsidiary of of AT&T
- developed a sound-on-disk system
- better
- problems
- synchronization
- transportation
- editing
- developed public address system
- condenser microphone
- amplification system
- used at 1920 Republican Convention in Chicago
- Vitaphone
- Warner Brothers
- acquired First National studios
- aided by Wadill Chaddings
- founded radio station KFWB in Los Angeles
- acquired Western Electric, sound-film patent, 1925
- acquired Vitagraph Brooklyn studios
- used sound on disk system
- began producing shorts with vaudeville performers
- Don Juan
- John Barrymore
- Mary Astor
- first feature with synchronized soundtrack
- score performed by New York Philharmonic
- sound effects, especially of swordplay
- preceded by a series of shorts
- Will B. Hays Introduction to Vitaphone
- New York Philharmonic - Overture to Tannhauser
- Mischa Elman – Humoresque and Gavotte
- Roy Smeck in His Pastimes
- Marion Talley – Caro Nome
- Efrem Zimbalist and Harold Bauer – Theme and Variations
from The Kreutzer Sonata
- Giovanni Martinelli – Vesti La Giubba
- Anna Case – La Fiesta
- largely considered a success
- audience enjoyed the talent (NY Phil)
- producers like the idea of transporting talent in canned
form
- Jazz Singer
- capitalized on success of shorts from Don Juan program
- Al Jolson
- chosen over Eddie Cantor
- biggest star of the vaudeville stage
- used for early Vitaphone films, such as A Plantation Act
- Samuel Rafelson
- A Day of Atonement,
- short story
- Jakie Rabinowitz
- January 1922
- The Jazz Singer
- Broadway play
- September 1925
- sold rights to Warner Brothers in 1926
- Thallofide vacuum tube
- Theodore Case
- partnered with Lee DeForest, 1921–24
- Earl Sponable
- “light” recording for sound
- variable density film stock
- Phonofilm
- sound on film system
- solved synchronization problem
- printed soundtrack parallel to image
- Movietone
- Fox acquired Case-Sponable patents for Phonofilm
- acquired German Tri-Ergon optical film system
- rebranded the process Movietone
- Sunrise
- RKO
- merger
- RCA
- Film Booking Office
- Keith-Orpheum theater chains
- instant vertically integrated
- Photophone
- acquired Western Electric’s patents
- sound on film
- variable area soundtrack
- became standard for sound film until Dolby Stereo (1950s)
- Reorganization
- Big Five
- Paramount
- 20th Century Fox
- Warner Brothers
- MGM
- RKO
- Little Three
- Columbia
- Universal
- United Artists