Juan Monroy — History of Cinema I: Class 13, Hollywood in the 1920s

1 Roaring Twenties
- 1.1 stock market
  - invested in Hollywood
  - $78 million in 1922
  - $850 million in 1930
- 1.2 Jazz Age
  - Modernization
  - Urbanization
    - Prohibition
    - Flappers
    - Jazz
2 Hollywood Studios
- 2.1 increase in exports after World War I
- 2.2 building and purchasing movie theaters
- 2.3 producers had guaranteed outlets
- 2.4 allowing them to raise budgets
- 2.5 more lavish productions
3 Vertical Integration
- 3.1 Paramount demanded theaters screen 102 features a year
- 3.2 exhibitors formed First National (1917) to make films
- 3.3 Zukor began buying theaters
  - bought Balaban-Katz (1919)
  - paved way for vertical integration
  - became Publix theater chain, with 1200 theaters by 1930
- 3.4 Loews
  - Marcus Loew
    - nickelodeon owner
    - large chain by 1910
  - moved into production
    - bought Metro in 1919
      - run by Louis B. Mayer
    - bought Goldwyn in 1924
    - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- 3.5 block booking
  - compelled exhibitors to book an entire year’s program in advance
- 3.6 mature oligopoly
4 Film Studios
- 4.1 Big Three
  - Paramount
  - MGM-Loews
  - First National
- 4.2 Little Five
  - Producers-Distributors Company
  - Film Booking Office
  - Universal
  - Fox
  - Warner Brothers
5 Censorship
- 5.1 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
- 5.2 Local Censorship Laws
  - Chicago: municipal censorship law in 1907
  - Pennsylvania: state law, 1911
  - Ohio and Kansas: 1913
- 5.3 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
6 Star Scandals
- 6.1 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
- 6.2 Olive Thomas
  - 1920
  - drug overdose
- 6.3 William Desmond Taylor
  - 1922
  - found murdered
  - suspicious circumstances
  - believed to be a homosexual
- 6.4 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
7 MPPDA
- 7.1 Will Hays
  - postmaster general under Harding
  - president of the Republic National Committee
- 7.2 Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America
  - appointed Hays the head
  - established the Studio Relations Committee
  - instituted “morals” clause into actor’s contracts
- 7.3 Counter censorship
  - pressured producers to tone down salacious content
  - banned Arbuckle’s films
  - sent operatives to Massachusetts to fight censorship
  - spoke before religious groups
- 7.4 Don’ts and Be Carefuls
  - instituted production guidelines in 1924
  - drafted new ones in 1927
  - revised in 1930, Production Code
- 7.5 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
8 Silent Film of the 1920s
- 8.1 Life and Death of 9413 (1928)
- 8.2 The Crowd (1928)