Block Booking Essay

During the postwar era, the Hollywood loses its audience in movie goers. Weekly motion picture attendance hit an average of 85 million during the war. Attendance fell off dramatically thereafter, sinking to 60 million per week in 1950 and then to 46 million in 1953 (Belton 22). Many historians assumed that the decline in motion picture attendance was due to the advent of television. Television provided audience with entertainment that was both free and readily available for them in their home. Although television is without question the major reason for the decline in the relative importance of the motion picture industry as a mass medium, other factors should not be overlooked. (Encyclopedia n.p) After the war, more families moved to the suburbs, and the birthrate was very high, leaving it hard for them to get to the movie theaters.

In cinema’s early days, the film industry was based in New York, the nation’s theatrical center. Most movies were being filmed in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, and Florida. However, by the 1920’s, southern California had become the leading film capital due to its cheap land and labor. Films gained their popularity after Vaudeville actors striked in 1901. This left theaters scrambling for acts and films became the main event. Silent films were widely popular in the early 1920’s and were usually accompanied by live piano or organ music. Talking-pictures were first introduced in 1923, but did not become popular until 1927.

My interest in Old Hollywood comes from my grandma and her love for the old movies she grew up with. When I was little my grandma would watch me while my parents were at work and we would sit in her living room with Turner Classic Movies turned on channel 47 to be exact. Movies like Breakfast at Tiffany's and Dancing In The Rain became my favorite childhood movies. No matter what movies you like, if you want to know where movies started then pay close attention. Today, I am going to teach you about classic movies to help you better appreciate the movies we have today. You will learn about the evolution of the golden age of Hollywood from silent movies black and white movies, to “talkie” movies in color, and some of the actors and actresses that shaped the time period from 1915 to 1960.

Outline the main changes the paramount decree effected on the structure of the American film industry and discuss the measures the ex-studios took to remain in control of the film market.

The history of film is essentially one of representation of certain groups, or as the case may be, misrepresentation. After America’s short stint with Nickelodeon-type movie theatres, full-length feature films became the norm with Birth of a Nation (1915). D.W. Griffith used the film to innovate cinematography, but made few compromises to create a

The fear of communism impacted hollywood in a way where they were restricted from producing certain films, leading them to wanting more

Movies made during and after World War II evoke images of a country unified against a common foe in a world with Nazis, war, and espionage. That unity did not exist behind the scenes where another war was brewing. Aimed at the largest Hollywood studios of the era, the U.S. Department of Justice “initiated its first antitrust challenge in 1938” (Lewis, 2008, p. 195) to break up their “monopoly control over the industry” (Lewis, 2008, p. 194). This antitrust challenge would find a decade long hiatus. However, shortly after the end of the war, the “United States v. Paramount Pictures, et al.” (Lewis, 2008, p. 194) decision provided the spark that changed the Hollywood system and the fuel that fed the Hollywood blacklist.

Such drastic change proved detrimental to the studio system, starting the path to its demise. “As production costs rose and an assured market was lost with the breakup of vertical integration, American studios produced fewer movies,” no longer feeling the need to have a frequent program change to encourage repeat theater visits since studios could not own theaters anymore (Bernstein 199). The system of long-term contracts binding actors to a specific studio also started fading, as “the structure of the studio system of the previous three decades ended… and [converted to] alternative methods of production and distribution, and stars, producers, and directors began to operate independently rather than contractually,” (McElhaney 146). Instead, talent agencies would find actors and a director and present them as a package for a studio to hire on a production (Kuntz, Lecture 10). Wihout block booking, each film had to be sellable on its own and therefore made the business very risky. Because every film was either a hit or miss, studios started looking for filmmakers and directors who would be unafraid of taking those risks, who tended to be

Unlike MGM or Warner Bros., short subjects had always been a fundamental part of Universal’s production strategy. In an effort to remove itself from its near-bottom industry ranking, the company flirted occasionally with the prestige feature market during the 1930s, usually to its financial detriment. During this decade it did its best financially when it concentrated on its primary business: turning out low-budget features at high speed. Universal’s short subject releases maintained this philosophy throughout the 1930s with amazing consistency, considering the turnover in management (including the ouster of Laemmle and his son, Carl, Jr, in 1936).

‘The Golden Age’ was certainly ‘golden’ for the biggest film studios in Hollywood, these studios include Paramount (1916), Warner Bros (1919), RKO (1928), Fox (1915) and M.G.M (1924), or as they were best known, ‘The Big Five’. It was these five studios that created the Studio System, a system that gave all five total control over the movies that they made,

The decline of the American film industry was marked by two very important events that date back to 1947 – 1948: the Paramount decision and the Hollywood blacklist. Prior to each event, the production studio companies reaped the benefits of monopolizing every facet of the entire life-cycle of movie production: from development thru release. They were “too big to fail” or for that matter “too big to be challenged”. However, the Supreme Court had other plans in mind. In 1938, the Department of Justice initially challenged the studios to break up their trust entities but very minimal action resulted from it. It was not until ten years later that, the studios were taken back to court to face anti-trust violations. The result was devastating to

“The Last Golden Age of American Cinema and the Advent of the Blockbuster Film.” – Filmsite.org

The Hollywood studio system was based on the industrial models developed by Henry Ford of the Ford Motor company. This process streamlined the production of the movies, similar to a production line in a factory. As I mentioned in my week 2 DB post, “The motion picture industry was just that, an industry in need of harnessing its work force for profitability”. The process relayed on every member of the production team and became the standardized system of the five major studios during that time period. The studio system allowed the top five studios to almost specialize in their particular genre of film production. It was cost effective to continuously make the same style of movie, from writing similar style scripts, production of similar stage

The emergence of the film industry was a momentous occasion for mass entertainment, and world culture in general. For the first time in human history, visual experience could be shared and – most importantly – sold to the general public. Cinema changed society as much as society influenced cinema. Paramount amidst this radical change in entertainment was the American film industry: Hollywood. The factors that contributed to Hollywood’s socio-economic and cultural influence around the globe deeply relate to the socioeconomic and political situation of the world during the early 20th century. In this essay, I will attempt to identify some of the issues that affected and were affected by the rise of the film industry in the United States.

Hollywoodland, known as the most recognizable film industry in the world from the 1920’s to now, slowly went from black and white silent movies to colorful motion pictures in the screens. This lead to a major production of movies along the road and introduction to big world famous stars that helped with the expansion of the entertainment business. Hollywood became an overnight success during the 1920’s by making improvements in the film and motion picture industry.