Hello everyone and welcome to our video series, "A Timeline of World Cinema"
I'm Bradley Weatherholt and I will be your host on this journey through the history of film.
In this episode, we will discuss the Golden Age of Hollywood and how the major "Big Five"
studios navigated the birth of sound, censorship, and major global events like the Great Depression
and World Wars.
In 1927, Hollywood shook the world with "The Jazz Singer," the first "talkie."
Within the first twenty minutes, Al Jolson said the now immortal line…
"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain't heard nothing yet!"
Within two years after the success of "The Jazz Singer" the majority of American cinemas
were wired for sound and Hollywood had, more or less, abandoned silent film production.
Through sync sound, Hollywood was able to provide a distinct American flavor to their
films through dialoge.
"If you ain't out of town by tomorrow morning, you won't ever leave it except in a pine box."
However, it was not always a smooth transition to "sound cinema."
Dialogue posed a serious problem for America's international dominance.
Before dialogue, American studios could distribute their films with little to no confusion or
language barrier.
But now that narratives depended so much on dialogue, American studios were having trouble
branding their products to foreign markets that didn't speak English.
The problem was resolved with the invention of dubbing, where an additional audio track
was laid over the original film.
[Dubbed Spanish Dialogue]
Now that Hollywood had a product that did well, domestically and internationally, they
experience a talkie boom, where they considered themselves depression proof.
In the wake of Wall Street's collapse in 1929, theater admissions and gross revenues reached
a record level.
However, by 1931 the Depression caught up with the industry.
During this time, the industry was composed of five major studios, termed the "Big Five."
Paramount, Fox, and RKO all experienced financial collapse in the 1930s.
Warner Bros. survived only by selling 1/4 of its assets.
MGM, meanwhile, thrived due to its relatively limited chain of theaters.
The three "major minor" studios survived by different strategies.
Like MGM, most of the "major minors" didn't have their money tied up to theatre chains.
United Artists focused on high quality films, while Columbia and Universal pursued a different strategy.
They produced low cost, low risk features that fell into a new category, the B movie.
Though some of these strategies worked for the industry, the key to Hollywood's survival
came from the intervention of both Wall Street and Washington.
Realizing the political and economic potential of the industry,
Washington lobbied a bailout of the firms.
The studios rose back to power by the late 1930s.
And while the theater holdings of major studios had been a severe financial burden during
the darkest Depression years, they again were keying the Big Five's utter domination of
the movie marketplace.
At the center of this dominance was the big budget, A class picture.
Of these pictures, "The Wizard of Oz" describes this period perfectly.
What better to illustrate the Golden Age of Hollywood than the Yellow Brick Road.
Like "Gone With The Wind," another film produced in 1939, "The Wizard of Oz" was a huge, ambitious
undertaking by the major studio MGM.
The film highlights what the major studio films aimed to do at the time
and with brilliant color.
Starring Judy Garland and base on L. Frank Baum's novel, the film employed two of the
major studio strategies.
The use of a star vehicle, or the Star System, and adaptation from literature.
Adjusting for inflation, "Oz" is the highest grossing film of all time.
However, upon its initial release MGM actually lost money.
Being the most expensive picture of the time, it was huge gamble and one that didn't pay
off until successful rereleases.
Despite the early financial disappointment, the film had immediate critical acclaim.
Nominated for six Academy Awards, the film ultimately won two and cemented MGM's studio personality.
In the Golden Age each studio had a distinct personality.
For example, RKO's musical taste, MGM's mastery of the epic, and Universal's B movie expertise.
"It's alive!"
These personalities were championed by the studio's head producers, who had more power
during this period than any other.
More than anything else, the head producers sought to give audiences the most exciting
pictures possible.
To do this, cultural boundaries were often pushed.
Because of this, Hollywood soon came under government scrutiny and censorship.
One man, Will Hays, led this campaign.
Formerly the campaign manager for President Warren Harding, Will Hays served as Post Master
General before his appointment to what would soon become the Motion Picture Association
of America.
Pressured by the general public, Hays introduced the now infamous Hays Code, a list of "don't
do"s and "be careful"s.
Among the list of "don't do"s was "Pointed Profanity" and "White Slavery."
The Code urged caution, when showing theft or robbery for fear that--and I quote, "A
too detailed description of these may have upon the moron."
Worse, excessive or lustful kissing should be reviewed, especially when one kissing a "heavy."
The Code required Hollywood to be innovative on how it would push the boundaries as studios
found ways to go around the Code legally.
This maneuvering eventually led to the screwball comedy, a genre popular for the time.
By 1940, the Senate had conducted hearings on the major studios for influencing the public
towards an anti isolationist approach in World War II.
That being said, within a year after Pearl Harbor, almost 1/3 of every Hollywood film
involved war material.
Unlike before the war, the government now mandated two genres: the combat film and the
home front melodrama.
On the home front, demographics were changing.
Audiences moved to suburban areas and away from urban areas, where the studios had invested
most of their capital in their theater chains.
To combat this, Hollywood began to purchase drive-in theaters in suburban areas.
This helped the studios maintain their hold over distribution, however audiences were
beginning to change their tastes.
Television started to challenge cinema.
Unlike radio, Hollywood had trouble with this new home entertainment medium, since it provided
a similar visual experience at a much easier convenience.
As a response, Hollywood began to change its pictures.
One of the most lasting impacts of this was the adoption of the widescreen format.
However, not all studios were quick to pick up the format change.
Studio head Samuel Goldwyn even sardonically commented that "a widescreen just makes a
bad film twice as bad."
If the demographic and technological changes weren't enough, Hollywood began to come under
political fire during the early Cold War.
The studios were labeled as "communist" and some communities shied away from cinema.
However, of all of these changes none had more lasting impact than the antitrust measures.
In fear that the studios could operate uncontested and in a monopolistic fashion, the government
soon intervened to split up the major corporations.
In the landmark case "United States v. Paramount," the Supreme Court decided that the movie studios
had violated antitrust laws.
As a result, the major studios were forced to sell their theater holdings and they lost
ultimate control of distribution.
Oversees, the studios were challenged as well.
After the War, Hollywood expected to resume film trade with European markets under free
market lines without protectionism and other economic policies.
Hollywood had stored almost 5 years worth of films, including "Citizen Kane" and
"Gone With The Wind," that they hoped they could release to the European market now that the
War was over.
However, the European market balked at this cinema.
The War had permanently changed the world and international markets began to flock and
crowd to a new, international type of cinema.
We call this period, the Foreign Wave of cinema and we will discuss it later in the future episode.