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- American Film Industry
- 1 Best Years of Hollywood’s Life
- 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
- 1.5 Box office decline
- 80–90 million a week in 1946
- 47 million in 1957
- 4000 theaters closed during those years
- RKO ceased operations in 1957
- 2 Hollywood and the Red Scare
- 2.1 Early investigations
- House Committee formed in 1937
- investigating subversive
- Martin Dees, Texas
- Samuel Dickstein, New York
- Led to Senate investigations in 1941 and 1943
- 2.2 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
- 2.3 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”
- Hollywood Ten
- Robert Scott
- Edward Dmytryk
- Samuel Ornitz
- Lester Cole
- Herbert Biberman
- Albert Maltz
- Alvah Bessie
- John Lawson
- Ring Lardner, Jr.
- Dalton Trumbo
- 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
- 3 Anti trust action
- 3.1 US vs. Paramount Pictures
- charged Big 5 plus Little 3 of violating anti-trust laws
- keeping indies out of market
- Trust investigations began under NRA 1933
- Federal government sued Paramount, July 1938
- Vertically integrated charged in violation of Sherman
Anti-Trust Act (1890)
- 3.2 Consent Decree of 1940
- studios had agreed to eliminate blind bidding
- limit block-booking
- curtail new theater acquisition
- 3.3 Supreme Court Decision
- US v. Paramount, Inc.
- May 1948 SCOTUS decision
- Compelled studios to divest of movie theaters
- RKO & Paramount first to comply
- declared Top 8 guilty of monopolistic practices in terms of
first-run exhibition
- block booking
- blind bidding
- price fixing
- unfair runs/clearances
- discriminatory pricing/purchasing agreements
- Big 5 had to get rid of theater chains
- all 8 had to stop block booking
- 3.4 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
- 4 Changing US demography
- 4.1 people moved away into suburbs
- Increased birthrate, nuclear families
- GI Bill (leisure time)
- Suburbanization
- away from downtown theaters
- Houses, automobiles, appliances, commodities (disposable
income)
- families became more selective about entertainment
- initially they listened to radio
- 4.2 profits of film industry plunged 74% from 1947–57
- people more selective about what films they saw
- 47 million in 1957
- 4000 theaters closed
- 5 Rise of Foreign Films
- runaway production & national producers of national films
- 5.1 proliferation of foreign/art house movies
- 5.2 post-WWII boom of US films overseas
- 5.3 protectionist measures (frozen funds) internationalize US film
industry
- 5.4 Miracle decision (1952)
- 6 Rise of television
- 6.1 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
- 6.2 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
- 7 Last Gasp of MGM
- 7.1 War-themed picture
- 7.2 Mogul-Producer Arthur Freed
- 7.3 Director-Coreographer:Gene Kelly-Stanley Donen
- 7.4 Writers:Adolph Green-Betty Comden
- 7.5 Musicals close to 25% of MGM output,1946–1955
- 7.6 On the Town (1949)