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- Early Film to World War II
- Early Film: Fall of the Studio System
- 1 The Best of Times
- 1.1 prosperous time for country
- 1.2 US took on role of world superpower
- 1.3 assisting other countries in rebuilding after World War II
(Marshall Plan)
- 1.4 highest box office attendance in 1946
- 80 to 90 million a week
- record of $1.5 billion box office
- today, only 25 million a week go with box office at $10
billion
- 2 Hollywood Oligopoly
- 2.1 Production
- produced 75% of all US feature films
- generated 90% of all US box office revenues
- 65% of all films exhibited worldwide
- One-third of studio revenues came from overseas
- 2.2 Distribution
- controlled 95% of all domestic receipts
- blind bidding
- block booking
- run-zone-clearance
- favored A-class studio pictures in first-run market
- 2.3 Exhibition
- 17,500 movie theaters in 1941
- first-run
- 1,360 theaters in 400 largest cities
- generated half of industry’s domestic total revenue
- 16,000 subsequent runs after first run dates
- 2.4 Vertical integration
- Big Five
- MGM
- Paramount
- Warner Brothers
- 20th Century Fox
- RKO
- owned or controlled 2,600 theaters
- 2.5 Independent Theaters
- desperate shape by end of 1930s
- declining attendance
- Great Depression
- smallest houses in less lucrative locations
- Justice Department took action in the 1930s
- block booking
- blind bidding
- arbitrary designation of play dates
- forcing shorts & newsreels & features on exhibitors
- double features of 2 A films
- More action would follow
- 3 The Worst of Times
- 3.1 Box office decline
- 80–90 million a week in 1946
- 47 million in 1957
- 3.2 4,000 theaters closed
- 3.3 RKO ceased operations in 1957
- 4 Hollywood and the Red Scare
- 4.1 Early investigations
- House Committee formed in 1937
- investigating subversive
- Martin Dees, Texas
- Samuel Dickstein, New York
- Led to Senate investigations in 1941 and 1943
- 4.2 Chamber of Commerce
- publishes report on COMMUNIST INFILTRATION IN THE US in 1945
- alleges Communists trying to control entertainment and
information media
- Communists already infiltrated Screen Writers Guild
- Chamber’s president, Eric Johnston, succeeds Will Hays as
head of MPAA
- 4.3 HUAC
- aided by Motion Picture Alliance for Preservation of American
Ideals
- right-wing personal from Hollywood
- testify publicly against their colleagues
- pressured Eric Johnson
- to dismiss all Communists in Hollywood
- but he refused, challenged public to boycott
- wanted Hollywood to set up blacklist
- Witnesses
- 23 friendly testified for a variety of reasons
- Jack Warner saying “he had never seen a Communist and
wouldn’t know if I saw one”
- Louis B. Mayer vowing MGM would never hire a communist
- anger directed against unfriendly witnesses so that
industry could survive
- J. Parnell Thomas
- head of HUAC in September 1947
- subponead 43 witnesses
- trying to prove that WGA was dominated by communists
- Oct 1947 they called 19 unfriendly witnesses
- Ten were asked “are you now or have you ever been a
member of the Communist party?”
- all refused to answer and charged with contempt and sent
to jail
- 2 served prison terms for 6 months
- 8 served for a full year
- upon release, blacklisted, by virtue of Nov 1947 “Waldorf
Peace Pact”
- Effect
- Blacklist would persist until late 1950s
- Crusade destroyed Hollywood’s iconoclastic perspective,
developed as an attempt to attract working-class audiences
- Hollywood abandoned risque, violent, comic and fantastic
films
- Hollywood played it safe
- 5 Anti trust action
- 5.1 US vs. Paramount Pictures
- charged Big 5 plus Little 3 of violating anti-trust laws
- keeping indies out of market
- 5.2 Consent Decree of 1940
- studios had agreed to eliminate blind bidding
- limit block-booking
- curtail new theater acquisition
- 5.3 Supreme Court Decision
- Issued 1948
- declared Top 8 guilty of monopolistic practices in terms of
first-run exhibition
- Big 5 had to get rid of theater chains
- all 8 had to stop block booking
- 5.4 Immediate Effects
- independent theaters had better selections
- studios could now make bigger films since they had greater
exhibition access
- studios now had to concentrate on fewer but more expensive
films
- 6 Changing US demography
- 6.1 people moved away into suburbs
- away from downtown theaters
- families became more selective about entertainment
- initially they listened to radio
- 6.2 profits of film industry plunged 74% from 1947–57
- people more selective about what films they saw
- 47 million in 1957
- 4000 theaters closed
- 7 Rise of television
- 7.1 Introduced at World’s Fair in 1939
- RCA Project
- Used radio waves to transmit pictures and sound over remote
distances
- How does it work? RCA explains
- 7.2 New dominant visual medium
- by 1954 there were 32 million
- 1960 90% of homes had TV
- TV would radically alter many media industries
- movies
- newspapers
- magazines
- radio
- 8 Individual Film and Roadshow
- 8.1 Hollywood scaled down production
- 8.2 with fewer films, Hollywood would market a single film
- 8.3 film would open in a limited number of large cities
- 8.4 designed to lure audiences from television
- 8.5 used for new spectacle films
- 9 Widescreen, color, stereo
- 9.1 Color
- Technicolor
- Dye-Transfer
- 3 Strip System
- 1924–1954
- Eastman Color
- Eastman Color
- Integral “Tri-Pack” Process
- 1 Strip System (lowest cost)
- adopted in 1952
- 9.2 Widescreen
- Academy Ratio
- Cinerama
- Mike Todd, 1952
- Three-Camera Setup
- Curved screens
- Aspect Ratio 2.65:1
- Cinemascope
- 20th Century-Fox, 1953
- Anamorphic Lens
- The Robe
- Aspect Ratio 2.66 : 1
- VistaVision
- Paramount, 1954
- horizontal film
- White Christmas (1954)
- Aspect Ratio 1.66 : 1
- Todd AO
- Mike Todd and American Optical, 1953
- 65–70mm film and variable focal length
- Oklahoma (1955)
- Aspect Ratio 2.20: 1
- 9.3 Peace Between Hollywood and Television
- Movies on Television
- Minor Studios
- British films on US television (late 1940s)
- Monogram and Republic Pictures (1948–1950)
- RKO -> General Tire’s Million Dollar Movie (1953)
- Disney’s Buena Vista (1953)
- Major studios
- M-G-M Parade (ABC)
- The 20th Century-Fox Hour (CBS)
- Warner Brothers Presents (ABC)
- Disneyland
- Deal between ABC and Disney
- Disney refused to sell animated programs to ABC
- Agreed to produce a weekly series, using footage from
Disney films
- Timed to promote theme park under construction in
California, opening 1955
- 10 Challenges to Censorship
- 10.1 Miracle decision
- Released 1948
- story an insane peasant, impregnated by a cunning charlatan,
who believes her mentally disabled child is the son of God
- written by Rosselini and Federico Fellini
- starred Anna Magnani and Fellini
- part of a two-part anthology called “L’Amore”
- banned in New York State
- education law
- censor could forbid the commercial screening of a film
deemed to be “sacrilegious”
- Joseph Burstyn was the distributor
- Commissioner of Education rescinded the movie’s license,
February 18, 1951
- Supreme Court
- heard case April 1952
- Decided in May 1952
- declared that denying/revoking a film license was a
“restraint on free speech” and a violation of 1st
Amendment
- overturned Mutual v. Ohio (1915)
- 10.2 Weakening of Production Code
- lacking a requirement for a film license
- exhibitors could show films without MPPDA seal
- films did not have to originate from studio system
- 10.3 Effects
- rise of independents
- growth of foreign films
- films became more daring throughout the 1950s
- ultimately would lead to end of the production code
- introduction of the ratings system in the 1960s