Influence of the Hollywood Studio system 1930 - 1940 April 3, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Artfully Deranged, The Film Industry, Audience , trackbackThe ‘Studio System’ during the 1930s strangled independent cinema and took such great liberties to turn a profit that creativity was severely compromised. The ‘Studio System’ was run by the producer’s that worked within it, and the films that they produced were under their total control. The creative driving force behind movies that were later seen, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, of the directors and writers, was generally lost to the ‘system’. What directors complained about was an objection to the ‘adaptation of Hollywood to a decentralised management system first introduced to American industry by general motors in the 1920s, and itself evidence of the studios assertion of their existence as industry rather than art form.’ (Maltby, 1995. pg. 85) The producers, once assigned to a project, would hire directors and writers to work under them, but as producers supervised all aspects of production from writing and shooting through to editing, writers and directors argued for change and creative freedom that eliminated ‘the involved, complicated, and expensive system of supervision which separates the director and writer from the responsible executive producers’. (Maltby, 1995. pg 83) The Screen Director’s Guild condemned those producers who ‘have little respect for the medium, less respect for their audiences and excuse their lack of imagination by ridiculing it in others.’ (Maltby, 1995. pg. 83) Producers were involved in more than one film at a time, sometimes three or four, so it would seem a perfectly viable argument that their creative involvement should be much less than those writers and directors involved with individual films primarily. Yet producer’s had control over every creative aspect, more ‘control over the development of the film’s story, its script and editing, than any other individual’. (Maltby, 1995. Pg. 85) Certainly the best way to evaluate this aspect of the ‘studio system’ is to look at the auteur directors during the 1970s, and how their films represented their totalitarian belief in how a story should be told through the medium of cinema. Such examples would be Steven Spielberg with Jaws (1975), Francis Ford Coppola with The Godfather (1972), and Martin Scorsese with Taxi Driver (1976), in that as director’s they had final say on how the scripts were brought to the screen, and all closely edited their own films. During the 1930s, many times directors wouldn’t even see the script, ‘it was quite normal practice for him or her to be given a script only a few days before he or she was due to start shooting’. (Maltby, 1995. pg 85) It seemed the job of directing was seen by the studio heads as rather uncreative, and the idea of telling a story was a collaborative process between the producer and the team of production staff, including the writer and director, below him/her. As Frank Capra once said, ‘there are only half a dozen directors in Hollywood who are allowed to shoot as they please and have any supervision over their editing.’ He went on to say that ’80 per cent of directors today shoot scenes exactly as they are told to without any changes whatsoever, and that 90 per cent of them have no voice in the story or editing.’ (Maltby, 1995. pg. 85)
Cinema during the period was less an art form and more a commodity, and to that end, creative license was subdued. Any ‘vision’ or personal identity a director wanted to put on a film was lost to producers taking control away, and the fact Wall Street investors wanted product that was guaranteed to sell, hence formulaic, tried and trusted films, in genres that were popular at the time. The factory line system of production introduced by Thalberg during his time at MGM, meant fast production to maximise product, so time constraints again meant directors had to complete their projects quickly. Gone With The Wind (1939) had six different directors to make sure it was completed, and to further increase the pace of production, action sequences were usually shot by second-unit teams away from main director’s control, and additional scenes and retakes were commonly filmed by different people. Furthermore, any creative freedom a director was given was governed by the Hays Code that was based on the problematic distinction between ‘good’ entertainment and ‘bad’ entertainment. The major principles, such as evil should never be made to seem desirable or attractive, and that good should never appear unattractive, meant that films were to be made to a set ideological standard that which does not account for the varying needs and ideals of the creative people working within, nor does it allow an audience to experience different or unique pieces of art from the medium. In effect, director’s were handcuffed to a system that produced commercial quantity over creative quality, and that made film as an art form more a commodity than an expression of ideas.
Yet, directors and writers were also stifled in their attempts to produce films independent of the major studios largely due to vertical integration. The five major studios had total control over every aspect of the industry, and made attempts to prevent independent films from being exhibited. As the major studios only owned around 3, 000 of the 23, 000 theatres in the America, the independent theatres could make a profit from showing the studio’s major films as well as independent films, so the major’s devised a way to prevent this via block-booking. This attached ‘B’ movie films that were very cheaply and quickly made, with an ‘A’ film that had the stars, the extravagant budget and the obvious audience attraction. Therefore, because the independent theatres needed the ‘A’ films to make a profit, they had to buy the studios ‘B’ films as well, which meant less opportunity for screening time for independent films. The major studios were therefore tapping into the independent market by indirectly controlling the independent theatres output because the independent theatres still needed major studio productions, and therefore the studios made more profit by tapping into a market they did not necessarily own. This can be viewed in two very distinct ways, in that this, what would later become an illegal monopoly, was a solidifying and stabilising business practice that ‘needed’ to be evident in a market recovering from a depression. The major studios, by controlling the market, and controlling the aspects of it, it didn’t own, meant profit and continued growth away from the ‘dark days’ of the depression. The business practice of block-booking secured an additional market and audience to increase profit, however, since the 3, 000 theatres the major studios did own ‘comprised over 80 per cent of the metropolitan first run theatres – that is, the de-luxe town centre houses in the largest cities with seating in the thousands which ran only top features, operated night and day, and generated the lions share of industry revenues’ (Schatz, 1996. pg 221), the ‘Studio System’ was securing its financial stability. However, block-booking was devastating to the independent theatres who had to compete with the studio owned theatres and ‘many smaller companies could not afford this, so were forced to declaim bankruptcy, conversely the major studios enjoyed increasingly growing profits.’ (Hill, 2002) This therefore was very detrimental to small business who had as much right to turn a profit as the major studios. Furthermore, ‘block booking made it difficult for the independents to get their own movies into theaters when exhibitors had already purchased a block of films that would provide the theater with plenty of movies. But even worse, since the independents released their films through the studio-owned exchanges, the independents found that their films were being used by the Hollywood distributors to pawn off low-budget studio B-pictures.’ The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers (SIMPP) called the practice ‘the root of all evil in the motion picture industry’ (Aberdeen, 2001) and tried to get the block-booking, and also ‘blind-bidding’ process banned. Even though this might have stabilized the industry, the fact it was eventually banned outright in 1948, and all such oligopoly practices like this, is evidence that such a system is inherently unfair. The fact it has remained illegal ever since, goes somewhat to prove SIMPP’s point.
During the 1940s, largely due to America’s involvement in the war and the fact that overseas revenue was dwindling, the studio’s had a demand for top ‘A’ film features and turned to independent production companies and creative talent. ‘By 1941, United Artists strategy for distributing major independent productions had been adopted by four other studios: RKO, Warners, Universal and Columbia. Directors and writers were given more creative control, and whilst they were still governed by the Hays Code and studio executives, some creative license was available. This came about because of the various pressures put on the ‘system’ and whilst the onset of war was a catalyst, the revolt from independent theatres, and writers and directors striving for creative license, Hollywood was changing and it was the ‘end of Hollywood’s lush and profligate period.’ (Schatz, 1996. pg 233) One important aspect that came from this period after 1941, which has continued on throughout the years, was that the Big studios began making less films but produced more ‘A’ pictures as the ‘A class output was increased to accommodate the overheated market.’ The Big Five now concentrated on ‘bigger pictures which played for longer periods and enjoyed steadily increasing revenues.’ (Schatz, 1996. pg. 234) Besides the fact creative license was increasing for both writers, actors and directors, and new genres were being implemented, such as the ‘war film’ and ‘home-front melodrama’, Hollywood was sensing the profitability of single films adapted towards the changing social conditions of the country, and new styles such as ‘combat films’ having a ‘quasi-documentary’ technique, and films with darker, often ‘anti-social’ themes were becoming more apparent and therefore the creative aspect of the art form and medium was finally being expanded. Hollywood was profiting from the war by making films about, or indirectly inspired by the events occurring overseas, and this represents two things. The first is that Hollywood realised it could make profit by tapping into the public’s various concerns and the social status of its people, and secondly, that ‘quality’ ‘A’ pictures geared towards this trend, often with A-list stars and extravagant stories could make more profit than lesser films (the big five cut down on film production from an ‘average of fifty films per year to thirty’ (Schatz, 1996. pg 234)), therefore Hollywood was beginning to make quality over quantity. The importance and significance of this is that it hasn’t changed and since ‘Blockbusters’ became the ‘trend’ after Jaws (1975), modern Hollywood is still relying on ‘common social and political concerns’ to make its ‘A’, big-budget pictures make a profit by tapping into a market willing to accept films that directly and indirectly deal with these concerns. Such obvious examples would be post-9/11 disaster films like The Day After Tomorrow (2004), and American patriotism in Independence Day (1996) – films with obvious appeal, with ‘A’ picture styling (special effects, grandiose plots), that are produced expensively but in less quantity, made to make a lot of profit. The ‘Studio System’ in the 1940s was a changing industry, and its legacy is still evident today.
Bibliography
Aberdeen, J (2001) The Root of all evil in the motion picture industry [online] available from http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/blockbook_intro.htm (accessed 5th April 2005)
Hill, J (2002) Introducing the Classic Hollywood Era [online] available from http://www.un-reel.co.uk/holss.htm (accessed 5th April 2005)
Lee, B (1986) Hollywood University Printing Unit: Brighton
Maltby, R (1995) Hollywood Cinema London: Blackwell
Schatz, T. (1996) The Studio Years, ‘Hollywood: The triumph of the studio system’ – The Oxford History of World Cinema London: Oxford
Comments»
no comments yet - be the first?