Hollywood movie history - Essay Example

Hollywood, in Los Angeles, California, is the land of stars and glitter. The area now known as Hollywood was sparsely populated in the seventeenth century when the Spanish explorers entered there .Santa Monica Mountains towered over the area and in the canyons of these mountains lived the Native Americans. By 1870s the area was a flourishing agricultural area, with crops like hay and grain, bananas and pine apple. Two names come up when one searches for the “origin of Hollywood”. Havey Henderson Wilcox was from Kansas and was a rich real estate businessman. In 1886 he brought 160 acres of land in the country side to the west of the city at the foothills and the Cahuenga pass. It was he who paved the way for the development of this area selling residential palaces he built to those who liked to spend winter in California. His wife Dedia is credited with the naming of the place as Hollywood. H.J. Whitley, often referred as the Father of Hollywood is credited with the development of the necessary infra structure in the area for an industry to thrive. He and his wife came there in 1886 while on their honeymoon. His wife Gigi is also credited with the naming of the place as Hollywood. In 1910, film maker D.W. Griffith working for Biograph Company, came to Downtown Los Angeles, and with his acting troop to shoot films. Thus it was Griffith who shot the first ever movie in Hollywood, then without a studio. The film was called “In Old California”. It was a Biograph melodrama. The movie troop stayed there for several months before going back to New York. The oldest company, still existing in Hollywood is Nester and Centaur Films based in Gower Gulch and founded by William Horsley. This company created the first film laboratory in Hollywood. Nester Company started the first film studio in Hollywood in 1911.The studio functioned from an old tavern on the corner of Sunset and Gower. It was from here the early Hollywood legends like D. W. Griffith, (the director credited with the evolution of the film language, through his classics like “The Birth of a Nation’, “intolerance”), and Cecil B.Demille, known for his biblical epics, regularly started making films. Before the World War 1, movies were made in different cities of the United States. But many factors attracted, film makers to Hollywood. One of the major factors was that, they could evade the fees imposed for film making by Thomas Edison who had the patent for movie making process. “Going west had serious impulses of escapism in it: to get away from the Motion Picture Patent Company and the gangsters who had sought to organize film making in the East.” (The Factory, The Whole Equation, A History of Hollywood, David Thomson, page 164) The mild climate of Hollywood suited film making. There was reliable sunlight through out the year that facilitated outdoor shooting. All around the place, varied scenery also was available. “ …. Sheer utility of 300 days of sunshine a year, plus variety of locations hardly equaled anywhere else in United States. In its happy geophysical innocence, nature provided all the backdrops that can now be conjured up through computer generated images, but bathed in real light.” (Ibid pp 164) It was in 1914, that the first feature film called “The Squaw Man” was produced in Hollywood. All the earlier films produced there were ‘short films’. “The Squaw Man” marked the starting of the modern Hollywood film industry. After this, many milestone films of world cinema were made in Hollywood. They included “Birth of a Nation” (1915) by D.W. Griffith, “ Nanook of the North”, ( 1922 ) the classical documentary on the life of Eskimos, by Robert Flaherty, classical comedies by Charlie Chaplin , Buster Keaton , Harold Lloyd, the cartoon films of Walt Disney , all film genres from Wild west to horror films , romances and mysteries. By the end of the World War 1, (1914 -18) Hollywood became the world capital of film production. NEW PRODUCTION SYSTEM: It was the studio system that came into existence in Hollywood that Brought about many historical changes in production and exhibition practices. The studio system emerged due to the increase in demand for films. The system evolved gradually in the years following the World War1, which ended in 1918. To meet the demand for more movies, it focused more on quantity than on quality. It was Thomas Ince, himself a film director (Civilization,--1916 -- was his best known film) who conceived film production as a factory system, thus paving the way for the emergence of Hollywood studio system. “Film is actually a collaborative art, and Ince learned how to bring the talents of many different people into a system that produced polished films, without the individualizing touches found in those films of Griffith or others who work outside the strict studio system.” (Robert A.Armour, Film: A Reference Guide, introductory page 19).Adolph Zukor, the long time head of Paramount Pictures, was another key personality who played a major role in the development of the powerful studio system in Hollywood. The studio system consisted of companies that owned the studios where films were produced. These companies decided the material to be filmed, they owned and controlled the regularly paid stars who were treated like workers, (“More stars than there are in the heaven” was the motto of Metro –Goldwyn Mayer during it’s hey day), dictated which directors would make which films .Their motto was to produce more movies at lower cost. It was this powerful studio system that ran Hollywood from the late 20s through the 60s. Thus production process was broken down to and organized into various compartments. The producer with a budget was the central figure. Under him there were directors, Script writers, actors, technicians, mechanics, costumers, makeup men and people who took care of the publicity materials. It was an entertainment factory with clear division of labor. The production plan for every year is prepared well in advance; budget decided and the assembly line is kept flowing. THE MAJOR FIVE AND THE MINOR THREE: In the early years of film production, different departments of the film industry were controlled separately. The diverse controls lead to diversification of profits too. As the industry grew and as the studio system stabilized, the companies that owned the studios wanted more profits. So they took up other departments of the industry, to maximize profit by what was called vertical integration. These companies started big theatres in different cities, and monopolized not only the production of films, but also their distribution and exhibition. By 1929, five big production companies monopolized Hollywood. They not only produced 90 percent of feature films in America, but also distributed them nationally as well as internationally. They owned a chain of theatres in United States, for exhibition of their own films. These companies were dubbed as The Big Five. In addition, there were three minor studios too. Each of these studios had an identity as far as their products were concerned. The following were The Big Five: 1) Metro –Goldwyn- Mayer. Three US film production companies, Metro Pictures Corporation, founded in 1916, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation (1917) and Louis B. Mayer Pictures Company (1918) merged together in 1924 to form one of the biggest production companies in United States --- The Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer. The lion roar in the studios opening logo was famous all over the world and gave MGM a different identity. This opening logo was recorded in 1928.MGM was a studio of stars. (“More stars than there are in the heaven”).Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Mickey Rooney, and Norman Shearer were some of the stars who belonged to MGM. Some of their successful films were The Big Parade (1925), Broadway Melody (1929) Grand Hotel (1932) Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 )A Night at the Opera (1935) The Good Earth ( 1937) Gone With the wind (1939) The wizard of Oz (1939 ). The Tarzan films and Tom and Jerry cartoons also were MGM products. 2) Paramount Pictures: Adolph Zukor’s company called ‘Famous players’ and Jesse Lasky’s ‘Feature Play’ merged in 1916 and became The Paramount studios in 1927. It was renamed as Paramount Pictures in 1935 .While MGM was a studio stars, Paramount was a studio of writers and directors, like Cecil. DeMille, Ernst Lubitsch, Leo McCarey, Joseph von Sternberg, Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges. Their silent era super stars were Mary Pick ford and Douglas Fairbanks and golden age stars included Mae West, Bob Hope, and Bing Crosby. The studio was notorious for sexual excesses of von Sternberg and sexual snickering of Lubitsch. 3) Warner Bros. Pictures: A studio incorporated by the Polish brothers, Jack, Sam, Albert, Harry, Warner Brothers merged with another company called First National in 1925, to form Warner Bros.-First National Pictures. Warner Brothers were famous for their gangster films, biographies and musicals, with directors like William Wellman, Mervyn LeRoy, William Dieterle, Busby Berkeley and stars like Paul Muni, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Dick Powell, and James Cagney. 4) Twentieth Century Fox: The Fox Film Corporation was founded by William Fox in 1912.In 1935 the Fox Corporation merged with 20th Century Pictures Company ( formed in 1933) to become Twentieth Century Fox. They were famous for the comedy films of Shirley Temple, and also for the historical and adventure films directed by John Ford, Henry King and Henry Hathaway with Henry Fonda and Tyrone Powell. 5) RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures: This was the smallest of the five majors. They excelled in musicals of Fred Astaire, comedies with Cary Grant and comedies and adventure films directed by Howard Hawks. The three minor studios or production companies were Universal Pictures, United Artists, and Columbia Pictures. They were considered minor companies, because they didn’t own exhibition theatres of their own, which was one of the three conditions of vertical integration. There were other independent studios that existed in the shabby areas of Holly wood often dubbed as “Poverty Row.” The Disney Studio of Walt and Roy Disney was one of them. CRITIQUE OF THE STUDIO SYSTEM: The studio system was slanted more towards commerce than art. Because of this, many critics refused to see Hollywood studio films as art at all. Mass production and assembly lines are alien to art. The studio movies entertained people, with dream like myths far removed from the realities of life. “The stars, the glamour, the glossy perfection of the studio films played upon the audience’s wishes and dreams, transporting them to a far more satisfying kingdom than the dreary reality outside the movie theatre.” (The Studio Years, Gerald Mast, The American Cinema, page 248) Critics like Andrew Sarris, refused to consider Hollywood even as a centre of cinematic art: Somewhere on the western shores of United States, a group of men have gathered to rob cinema of its birth right. If the forest critic (Of course, the forest to which I refer is called Hollywood) be politically oriented, he will describe these coastal conspirators as capitalists. If aesthetically oriented, he will describe them as philistines. Either way, an entity called cinema has been betrayed by another entity called Hollywood. (A Theory of Film History, Andrew Sarris, Movies and Methods, Vol.1, page 239) Hollywood remained marginalized in all serious film studies. Some, like Andrew Sarris, even called it the bane of the art of cinema. At the same time, one must admit that Films like Orson Well’s Citizen Kane, films of Fritz Lang, the great comedies of the silent era, including that of Charlie Chaplin came from Hollywood, when the studio system was very strong and stable. All the interior scenes of Citizen Kane were nothing but the studio props. But Wells created beauty out of this. “Perhaps his most striking originality lay in the vision that Hollywood’s control was a tyrannous beauty that had actually rendered decor, objects, space, and sheer things null and void. Like a wicked magician, he has already to say “rosebud” and have the whole edifice vanish” (The Factory, The whole Equation, A history of Hollywood, David Thomson, PP176-177). In addition, Orson Wells and his camera man Greg Toland contributed to the aesthetics of cinema by using wide angle lens, for dramatic purposes, there by creating what was known later as “deep focus” and the “depth of field”. “…. The descriptive use of depth of field is as old as cinema itself. However, aesthetic dimension became added only when this composition in depth was employed to create specific dramatic signification---which was one of the major signification of Citizen Kane .” (The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema, Jean Mistry, translated by Christopher King, page 191) Fritz Lang was an import to Hollywood. He never saw daylight in his more than twenty years of life in America. He was always confined to the interior of the studios so also were his films. All his films had an optimistic happy ending as dictated by the managers of the “dream factory” called Hollywood. But in spite of all these he was able to make wonderful films like You Only Live Once, The Woman in the Window and Human Desire, in spite of being in Hollywood with all its limitations, regimentations and factory like ambience alien not only to cinema but to any creative endeavors. CHANGES IN THE EXIBITION PRACTICES: “I never thought I’d say it, but going to the movies has become a real chore. Me, who loves all the previews and buttery popcorn. Me, who can’t wait for the movie to come out on DVD and Must.See.It.Right.Now.” (Why Going to the Movies Sucks So Badly, Jennifer Gonzales, Blog Critics Magazine, December 5, 2005.) That has been and still is the thrill of going to the theatre and watching cinema there. The cinema experience was never complete without the theatres. There existed a magazine called Moving Picture World (1908-11), which was a trade magazine not only for film technicians but also for theatre owners. “The material included (in the book) from Moving Picture World, samples how this trade magazine perceived the business of film exhibition. Specifically, how it sought to “swell the box office receipts” by improving a range of practices –projection, programming, design, advertising, and “handling” the patron. (Movie Going in America: Edited by Gregory A. Waller, Page 11) Thus it was the theatres that legitimized the cinema. The theatres standardized the exhibition of cinema, and thus protected the pleasure of watching cinema .Film exhibition is as serious a business as the film production. The need of the infrastructure for exhibition of films, from Thomas Alva Edison’s vita scope theatres to the modern theatres, is as old as the production of films .The first vita scope theatre, open to public was in Buffalo, New York, which opened on 19th October 1896.From here one of the major developments that happened in the world of films was in the realm of film exhibition. Due to increased public demand, the number of exhibition places increased enormously. Small stores and restaurants were converted into small film exhibition halls. They were named Nickelodeons, may be because of the nickel price for admission to the screening. The nickelodeons were more common in working-class and immigrant neighborhoods because the film going started first as a working-class leisure activity. The first permanent Film screening theatre in the state of California was Tally’s Electric theatre that got, completed in 1902, In Los Angeles. By 1920 there were more than 20000 movie houses in United States. Before the emergence of the studio system in Hollywood, films were screened all over United States by independent theatres. The studio system and the so called Vertical Integration lead to the emergence of special theatres, owned by the big five studios of Hollywood. They enjoyed the privilege of the first screening of the film. They were A class theatres. But the demand for films was such that these theatres were not enough to cater to the ever increasing number of film goers. Thus along with these special theatres owned by the five big Hollywood studios, there existed many small theatres too. More over there were smaller studios in Hollywood without their own theatres. These studios depended on the independent theatres for exhibiting their films. BLOCK BOOKING CONTROVERSY: Further impact of the Vertical Integration of the studio system in Hollywood, on independent theatres was what was called the ‘Block Booking’. Adolph Zukor, the chief of Paramount studio and the architect of the concept of Vertical Integration (Paramount was Hollywood’s first vertically integrated studio) was alleged to be the architect of the block booking. The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, the American motion picture studio, founded in 1907 in Uptown, Chicago, Illinois was selling their features along with two reel Charlie Chaplin comedy shorts. This selling trick of Essanay, along with the unprecedented popularity of Mary Pick ford, the contract star of the Paramount, Inspired zukor to start “block booking’ : that is selling Paramount films in blocks. To get each popular Pick ford film, the theatres were forced to buy less attractive Paramount films, as the sale of films was in a block or a package. As they couldn’t afford to lose the enormously popular Mary Pick ford films, theatres succumbed to the pressure of this new sales technique and were forced to buy films they don’t need. At the same time the same package system was not applicable to the theatres owned by Paramount. In no time block booking spread to other major studios of Hollywood. Later the practice became more complicated. The studios started including not only feature films in their blocks but also short subject cartoons and news reels which otherwise they couldn’t sell. Each blocks contained twenty or more films. They were usually blocked before the films were actually produced. So the theatres were forced to buy films blindly. On the other hand they were in competition with the studio owned theatres for which block booking was not applicable. By gentleman’s agreement between big studios, the studio owned theatres could pick up the best films from the other major studios without being forced to buy their second rate films. The situation was frustrating to smaller and independent theatres. They were forced to buy films which they could never exhibit. By early 1930’s public concern was growing in America against ‘objectionable’ scenes in films. There was a demand for screen morality. The theatre owners blamed block booking for the absence of screen morality, because this system forced them to exhibit even ‘objectionable’ films. They hoped that the outcry by the civic leaders would put pressure on the big studios to give more concessions to the theatres. Their demand was to have what they called the “cancellation privilege’, that’s a privilege to cancel a percentage of films in each block. Anyway, the influential civic organization called Catholic Legion of Decency took up the case of screen morality and threatened national boycott and private censorship. As a reaction to this the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) agreed to implement stricter production code for films. So the intervention of the Catholic Legion of Decency didn’t help the theatre owners. Later it was Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers (SIMPP) which fought a war against block booking in 1942. Super stars of Hollywood like Mary Pick ford supported SIMPP in their fight for justice. Many bills were introduced in the American Congress from 1927. But the big studios of Hollywood had powerful political clout so that these bills never got enough support to become legislation. Finally the Supreme Court of the United States had to intervene. In the case called United States v. Paramount Pictures inc., 334 U S 131(1948) ( Also known as the Hollywood Anti Trust Case or Paramount decrees ) the Justice Department of the American Govt. took the position that the five major studios must give up their interests in some fourteen hundred theatres under them. The United States Supreme Court held that Block booking scheme of distribution of films was against the anti trust laws of the United States. According to the Anti trust laws exclusive dealing arrangements were prohibited. Finally consent decrees (Paramount decrees) were approved by the Justice Department, the studios and the court. “The prohibitions in the Paramount decrees against block booking effectively required the defendant distributors to license each film in each theatre individually…..There have been few charges of violation of this section of the decrees…..One reported contempt citation for block booking took place in 1978.” (American Film Industry, Tino Balio, Page 560.).This contempt citation for block booking was against Twentieth Century Fox. This shows that block booking, even after getting blocked to some extend by Supreme Court intervention, continued into late 90’s,. INDEPENDENT EXIBITION INITIATIVES: While all these controversies were on, between big studios and independent theatres, there were some initiatives to exhibit cinema outside the mainstream. The initiative taken by the Workers’ Film and Photo League, a leftist outfit, in this regard is often neglected in the written history of American cinema, though it was one of the first opposition –cinema movements in the United States. The proletariat Assistance group founded by the Communist International in 1921, called Workers International Relief, was parenting The Film and Photo League. The frustration created by Hollywood’s complete control of all areas of film industry including production and distribution was wide spread. This was the base for the initiative taken up by The Film and Photo League. “Out of necessity, it pioneered non theatrical distribution; in particular, it resorted to road showings…Between 1931 and 1936 the league achieved some success with its exhibition tactics, but it never enjoyed the stability nor inspired the popularity that its members sought.” (Film and Photo League Exhibition Strategies, Brad Chisholm, Jump Cut no37, July 1992, pp110-114) The league members were shooting workers strikes and struggles and exhibiting them as worker’s news reels. Remember that film going started as a working-class leisure activity and the first screening spaces called Nickelodeons were mostly in working-class areas. Through the League exhibition, at least a section of the American film goers were able to watch the Soviet film classics too. After the initial enthusiasm, this independent initiative of film screening died out by 1936. TALKIES AND THE THEATRES: An interesting paradox of the silent era of cinema was that the silent films were never silent. The exhibitionists or the theatre owners added sound to them through musicians, orchestra, sound effect specialists and even live actors who delivered dialogues. But these sound effects were all outside the film and were not uniform. With the appearance of the talkies, by late 1920s, the sound track became unique to each film. The technological developments that lead to the emergence of the talkies affected the theatres most, because they had to adapt to the new technology in no time. With the formation of the Vitaphone Company in 1925, Warner Bros. launched the talkies first. The above mentioned company was a subsidiary of Warner Bros. and Western Electric. Vitaphone was a system in which the sound was recorded in a disc or phonograph record .This phonograph record was electronically connected to the projector. Thus along with the projected images synchronized sound also was played. The first feature film with vitaphone sound effects was Warner Bros.’ Don Juan (1926).In this film the vitaphone sound was used only for music and sound effects and not for dialogues. Most of the studios as well as the theatres have to invest tremendous capital to convert the production as well as the exhibition techniques to suit the new sound films. By mid 1920s Warner Bros. went into debt, by investing huge amount of money to remodel their exhibition palaces to suit the vitaphone sound films. Even after investing huge capital, perfect synchronization of sound and image couldn’t be achieved. Hence this system became obsolete by 1931. In 1926, another system called Movietone came into existence. This Sound-on-film process was developed by the General Electric Company with the initiative from Fox Film Corporation. The new process added a sound track onto the film strip. Thus the images and the sound were played together from the film strip, leading to perfect synchronization. The first Fox Movietone feature film was Sunrise (1927), directed by F.W.Murnau. It was Warner Brothers who built the first sound studio in Hollywood, in 1927. Hence the first feature length talkie was Warner Bros.’ The Jazz Singer directed by Alan Crosland. With the emergence of the new technology, theatre owners were forced to invest more capital to technically renovate theatres. This lead to the closure of many small theatres and it is often said that the emergence of sound cinema strengthened the monopoly of the big theatres. The cinema theatres changed face continuously to attract more film goers. With the advent of Television, the theaters were forced to make the film screening space a special attractive and unique one. Hence appeared drive in theaters, Multiplexes, Art Houses and wide screen cinema. Satellite Television and DVD players reduced Cinema viewing into a domestic living room experience, distracted and lazy with lesser engagement. This perhaps kept the thrill of going to the theatre to watch cinema on the big screen, alive. “… Going to the movies has become a real chore. Me, who loves all the previews and buttery popcorn. Me, who can’t wait for the movie to come out on DVD and Must.See.It.Right.Now,” THE DECLINE OF HOLLYWOOD CULTURE: By 1960s there was a strong film movement, almost all over the world, that rebelled against the Hollywood film culture. There was tremendous growth in the number of independent producers and independent production companies. Films also moved to locations in other countries or started using the studios in other countries like Pinewood in England and Cinecitta in Rome. The Strengthening of national cinema in Latin America and Africa also weakened the cultural hegemony of Hollywood. The Hollywood formula became old and unfashionable and the decline of Hollywood started in 1960s. Only a few films like Mary Poppins (1964) My Fair Lady (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965) became money makers in that decade. In France the French New wave, the cinema movement led by Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, broke the rules of the Hollywood cinema’s narrative structure. Godard even made a film, Le Mepris, which was an obit to the dying Hollywood Cinema. “Le Mepris is an exercise in cinematic metaphor- specially Hollywood. Of course all Godard’s films are to one degree or another essays in cinema, but Le Mepris takes the world of commercial film making as its subject matter as well as its subtext.” (Modes of Discourse, The New Wave, James Monaco, and Page134).In Latin America a strong film movement called The Third Cinema emerged to counter both the European and the Hollywood cinema. To compete with Hollywood cinema, the mainstream Latin American cinema mimicked Hollywood. The realities represented by the European art cinema were also alien to the Latin American realities. Hence they needed a Third Cinema (Towards A Third Cinema, Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, After Image, No3, 1971) The African cinema, under the leadership of Ousmane Sembane was also trying to find its own moorings and to liberate itself from the clutches of Hollywood culture. All these lead to the decline of Hollywood in 1960s. But by 1970s a group of film directors emerged in America who, as if justifying the auteur film theory (Auteur theory calls the director, the author of the film, refer: Signs and Meanings in Cinema, Peter Wollen, PP 74-115) started making films that have their individual authorship. Francis Ford Coppola ( Godfather films), Steven Spielberg ( Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind ) George Lucas ( Star Wars) Brian De Palma ( Dressed to Kill, Mission: Impossible) were some of them. Through them there is a partial revival of Hollywood or the emergence of what is now called “New Hollywood”. Hollywood, for sure, has declined; but is not dead yet! =========================================== Sources Cited: 1) Thomson David, The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood, Vintage Books, New York, 2004 2) Armour Robert A., Film : A Reference Guide, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1980 3) Mast Gerald ,The Studio Years, The American Cinema, Edited by Donald E. Staples, Voice of America Forum Series, United States International Communication Agency Washington , D.C. 4) Sarris Andrew, A Theory of Film History , Movies and Methods, Vol.1, Edited by Bill Nichols, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California 5) Mistry Jean ,The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema, translated by Christopher King, Indiana University Press 6) Gonzales Jennifer, Why Going to the Movies Sucks So Badly, Blog Critics Magazine, December 5, 2005 7) Waller Gregory A., Movie Going in America, Blackwell press, 2002 8) Balio Tino, American Film Industry, University of Wisconsin Press 9) Chisholm Brad, Film and Photo League Exhibition Strategies, Jump Cut no37, July 1992. 10) Monaco James, The New Wave, Oxford University Press, New York 11) Solanas Fernando and Getino Octavio,Towards a Third Cinema, After Image, No3, 1971, Journal of media arts and cultural criticism, published by Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York 12) Wollen Peter, Signs and Meanings in Cinema, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1972. 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