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
1. runaway production & national producers of national films
2. 5.1 proliferation of foreign/art house movies
3. 5.2 post-WWII boom of US films overseas
4. 5.3 protectionist measures (frozen funds) internationalize US film industry
5. 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)