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The cinema of the United States, consisting mainly of major film studios (also known as Hollywood) along with some
independent film An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies (or, i ...
, has had a large effect on the global film industry since the early 20th century. The dominant style of American cinema is
classical Hollywood cinema Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking which became characteristic of American cinema between the 1910s (rapidly after World War I) and the 1960s. It eventually b ...
, which developed from 1913 to 1969 and is still typical of most films made there to this day. While Frenchmen
Auguste and Louis Lumière The Lumière brothers (, ; ), Auguste Lumière, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière (19 October 1862 – 10 April 1954) and Louis Lumière, Louis Jean Lumière (5 October 1864 – 6 June 1948), were French manufacturers of photography equipment ...
are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the emerging industry. , it produced the third-largest number of films of any
national cinema National cinema is a term sometimes used in film theory and film criticism to describe the films associated with a specific nation-state. Although there is little relatively written on theories of national cinema it has an irrefutably important ro ...
, after India and China, with more than 600 English-language films released on average every year. While the national cinemas of the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
, and
New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...
also produce films in the same language, they are not part of the Hollywood system. That said, Hollywood has also been considered a
transnational cinema Transnational cinema is a developing concept within film studies that encompasses a range of theories relating to the effects of globalization upon the cultural and economic aspects of film. It incorporates the debates and influences of postnationa ...
, and has produced multiple language versions of some titles, often in Spanish or French. Contemporary Hollywood often outsources production to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Hollywood is considered to be the oldest film industry, in the sense of being the place where the earliest film studios and production companies emerged. It is the birthplace of various genres of cinema—among them
comedy Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...
,
drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...
,
action Action may refer to: * Action (narrative), a literary mode * Action fiction, a type of genre fiction * Action game, a genre of video game Film * Action film, a genre of film * ''Action'' (1921 film), a film by John Ford * ''Action'' (1980 fil ...
, the
musical Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwo ...
,
romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...
, horror,
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
, and the war epic—and has set the example for other national film industries. In 1878,
Eadweard Muybridge Eadweard Muybridge (; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first ...
demonstrated the power of
photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...
to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion-picture exhibition was given in New York City, using
Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...
's
kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...
. In the following decades, production of
silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, w ...
greatly expanded, studios formed and migrated to California, and films and the stories they told became much longer. The United States produced the world's first sync-sound
musical film Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as brea ...
, ''
The Jazz Singer ''The Jazz Singer'' is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolate ...
'', in 1927, and was at the forefront of sound-film development in the following decades. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around the
thirty-mile zone The studio zone, also known as the thirty-mile zone (TMZ), is an area defined by a radius of "Hollywood" used by the American entertainment industry to determine employee benefits for filmwork done within it. Its center has traditionally been ...
in
Hollywood, Los Angeles Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Columbia Picture ...
, California. Director D.W. Griffith was central to the development of a
film grammar In film, film grammar is defined as follows: # A frame is a single still image. It is analogous to a letter. # A shot is a single continuous recording made by a camera. It is analogous to a word. # A scene is a series of related shots. It is analo ...
.
Orson Welles George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
's ''
Citizen Kane ''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American drama film produced by, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The picture was Welles' first feature film. ''Citizen Kane'' is frequently cited ...
'' (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful and most ticket selling movies in the world. Many of Hollywood's highest-grossing movies have generated more box-office revenue and ticket sales outside the United States than films made elsewhere. The United States is a leading pioneer in motion picture engineering and technology.


History


Origins and Fort Lee

The first recorded instance of photographs capturing and reproducing motion was a series of photographs of a running horse by
Eadweard Muybridge Eadweard Muybridge (; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first ...
, which he took in
Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...
, using a set of still cameras placed in a row. Muybridge's accomplishment led inventors everywhere to attempt to make similar devices. In the United States,
Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...
was among the first to produce such a device, the ''
kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...
''. The history of cinema in the United States can trace its roots to the East Coast where, at one time,
Fort Lee, New Jersey Fort Lee is a borough at the eastern border of Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated along the Hudson River atop the Palisades. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the borough's population was 40,191. As of the 2010 U.S. census, t ...
, was the motion-picture capital of America. The industry got its start at the end of the 19th century with the construction of Thomas Edison's " Black Maria", the first motion-picture studio in
West Orange, New Jersey West Orange is a suburban township in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 48,843, an increase of 2,636 (+5.7%) from the 46,207 counted in the 2010 Census.
. The cities and towns on the
Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between Ne ...
and
Hudson Palisades The Palisades, also called the New Jersey Palisades or the Hudson River Palisades, are a line of steep cliffs along the west side of the lower Hudson River in Northeastern New Jersey and Southeastern New York in the United States. The cliffs s ...
offered land at costs considerably less than New York City across the river and benefited greatly as a result of the phenomenal growth of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century. The industry began attracting both capital and an innovative workforce. In 1907, when the
Kalem Company The Kalem Company was an early American film studio founded in New York City in 1907 in film, 1907. It was one of the first companies to make films abroad and to set up winter production facilities, first in Florida and then in California. Kalem ...
began using Fort Lee as a location for filming in the area, other filmmakers quickly followed. In 1909, a forerunner of
Universal Studios Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Americ ...
, the
Champion Film Company The Champion Film Company was an independent production company founded in 1909 by Mark M. Dintenfass. The studio was one of the film companies that merged to form Universal Pictures. Champion was the first film production company to establish i ...
, built the first studio. Others quickly followed and either built new studios or leased facilities in Fort Lee. In the 1910s and
1920s File:1920s decade montage.png, From left, clockwise: Third Tipperary Brigade Flying Column No. 2 under Seán Hogan during the Irish War of Independence; Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol in accordance to the 18th amendment, which ...
, film companies such as the
Independent Moving Pictures The Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP) was a motion picture studio and production company founded in 1909 by Carl Laemmle. The company was based in New York City, with production facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In 1912, IMP merged wit ...
Company,
Peerless Studios Peerless Pictures, originally Peerless Features, was an early film studio in the United States. Jules Brulatour was a co-founder. The Peerless studio was built in 1914 on Linwood Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The company was merged along with a ...
,
The Solax Company Solax Studios was an American motion-picture studio founded in 1910 by executives from the Gaumont Film Company of France. Alice Guy-Blaché, her husband Herbert, and a third partner, George A. Magie, established the Solax Company. Guy-Blaché ...
, Éclair Studios,
Goldwyn Picture Corporation Goldwyn Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company that operated from 1916 to 1924 when it was merged with two other production companies to form the major studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was founded on November 19, 1 ...
, American Méliès (Star Films),
World Film Company The World Film Company or World Film Corporation was an American film production and distribution company, organized in 1914 in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Short-lived but significant in American film history, World Film was created by financier and fi ...
,
Biograph Studios Biograph Studios was an early film studio and laboratory complex, built in 1912 by the Biograph Company at 807 East 175th Street, in The Bronx, New York City, New York. History Early years The first studio of the Biograph Company, formerl ...
,
Fox Film Corporation The Fox Film Corporation (also known as Fox Studios) was an American Independent film production studio formed by William Fox (1879–1952) in 1915, by combining his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attractions Film C ...
,
Pathé Frères Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest film equipme ...
,
Metro Pictures Corporation Metro Pictures Corporation was a motion picture production company founded in early 1915 in Jacksonville, Florida. It was a forerunner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company produced its films in New York, Los Angeles, and sometimes at leased fac ...
,
Victor Film Company The Victor Film Company was a motion picture company formed in 1912 by movie star Florence Lawrence and her husband, Harry Solter. The company established Victor Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, when early film studios in America's first motion pi ...
, and Selznick Pictures Corporation were all making pictures in Fort Lee. Such notables as
Mary Pickford Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founde ...
got their start at Biograph Studios.Koszarski, Richard
''Fort Lee: The Film Town''
Indiana University Press Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher founded in 1950 at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes 140 ...
, 2004. . Accessed May 27, 2015.
In New York, the
Kaufman Astoria Studios The Kaufman Astoria Studios is a film studio located in the Astoria section of the New York City borough of Queens. The studio was constructed for Famous Players-Lasky in 1920, since it was close to Manhattan's Broadway theater district. The p ...
in
Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
, which was built during the silent film era, was used by the
Marx Brothers The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act that was successful in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in motion pictures from 1905 to 1949. Five of the Marx Brothers' thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute (AFI) ...
and
W.C. Fields WC or wc may refer to: * Water closet or flush toilet Arts and entertainment * ''W.C.'' (film), an Irish feature film * WC (band), a Polish punk rock band * WC (rapper), a rapper from Los Angeles, California * Westside Connection, former h ...
. The
Edison Studios Edison Studios was an American film production organization, owned by companies controlled by inventor and entrepreneur, Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films, as part of the Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) and then T ...
were located in the Bronx.
Chelsea, Manhattan Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The area's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, the Hudson River and West Street to the west, and Sixth Avenue to the east, with its norther ...
, was also frequently used. Other Eastern cities, most notably
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
and
Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the United States, U.S. U.S. state, state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along ...
, also served as early centers for film production. In the West,
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
was already quickly emerging as a major film production center. In
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the ...
,
Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
was home to the
Art-O-Graf The Art-O-Graf Film Company was an American film production and distribution company founded by Otis B. Thayer that operated between 1919 and 1923 during the silent era. Four time Academy Awards nominee Vernon L. Walker started his career as the ...
film company, and
Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...
's early Laugh-O-Gram
animation Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...
studio was based in
Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more th ...
,
Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...
. Picture City,
Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...
, was a planned site for a movie picture production center in the 1920s, but due to the
1928 Okeechobee hurricane The Okeechobee hurricane of 1928, also known as the San Felipe Segundo hurricane, was one of the deadliest hurricanes in the recorded history of the North Atlantic basin, and the fourth deadliest hurricane in the United States, only behind the ...
, the idea collapsed and Picture City returned to its original name of Hobe Sound. An attempt to establish a film production center in
Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...
also proved unsuccessful. The film patents wars of the early 20th century helped facilitate the spread of film companies to other parts of the US, outside New York. Many filmmakers worked with equipment for which they did not own the rights to use. Therefore, filming in New York could be dangerous as it was close to Edison's company headquarters, and close to the agents who the company set out to seize cameras. By 1912, most major film companies had set up production facilities in
Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban ...
near or in
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
because of the region's favorable year-round weather.


Rise of Hollywood

The 1908
Selig Polyscope Company The Selig Polyscope Company was an American motion picture company that was founded in 1896 by William Selig in Chicago. The company produced hundreds of early, widely distributed commercial moving pictures, including the first films starring T ...
production of ''
The Count of Monte Cristo ''The Count of Monte Cristo'' (french: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel written by French author Alexandre Dumas (''père'') completed in 1844. It is one of the author's more popular works, along with ''The Three Musketeers''. L ...
'' directed by
Francis Boggs Francis Winter Boggs (March 1870 – October 27, 1911) was an American stage actor and pioneer silent film director. He was one of the first to direct a film in Hollywood. Biography He was born in Santa Rosa, California to George W. Boggs and ...
and starring
Hobart Bosworth Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth (August 11, 1867 – December 30, 1943) was an American film actor, director, writer, and producer. Early life Bosworth was born on August 11, 1867, in Marietta, Ohio. His father was a sea captain in the Civil W ...
was claimed as the first to have been filmed in
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
, in 1907, with a plaque being unveiled by the city in 1957 at
Dearden's Dearden's was a chain of furniture stores based in Los Angeles, that operated for 108 years. It was founded in 1909 by Edgar Dearden, an immigrant from England. Dearden's sold furniture, appliances, cookware, other home goods, watches, and perfume ...
flagship store on the corner of Main Street and 7th Street, to mark the filming on the site when it had been a Chinese laundry. Bosworth's widow suggested the city had got the date and location wrong, and that the film was actually shot in nearby
Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400  ...
, which at the time was an independent city. Boggs' ''In the Sultan's Power'' for Selig Polyscope, also starring Bosworth, is considered the first film shot entirely in Los Angeles, with shooting at 7th and Olive Streets in 1909. In early 1910, director
D. W. Griffith David Wark Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) was an American film director. Considered one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture, he pioneered many aspects of film editing and expanded the art of the n ...
was sent by the
Biograph Company The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1916. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, ...
to the west coast with his acting troupe, consisting of actors
Blanche Sweet Sarah Blanche Sweet (June 18, 1896 – September 6, 1986) was an American silent film actress who began her career in the earliest days of the Hollywood motion picture film industry. Early life Born Sarah Blanche Sweet (though her first nam ...
,
Lillian Gish Lillian Diana Gish (October 14, 1893February 27, 1993) was an American actress, director, and screenwriter. Her film-acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912, in silent film shorts, to 1987. Gish was called the "First Lady of American Cinema", ...
,
Mary Pickford Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founde ...
,
Lionel Barrymore Lionel Barrymore (born Lionel Herbert Blythe; April 28, 1878 – November 15, 1954) was an American actor of stage, screen and radio as well as a film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in ''A Free Soul'' (1931 ...
and others. They started filming on a vacant lot near Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles. While there, the company decided to explore new territories, traveling several miles north to Hollywood, a little village that was friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood, '' In Old California'', a Biograph melodrama about California in the 19th century, when it belonged to Mexico. Griffith stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York. Also in 1910, Selig Polyscope of Chicago established the first film studio in the Los Angeles area in Edendale and the first studio in Hollywood opened in 1912. After hearing about Griffith's success in Hollywood, in 1913, many movie-makers headed west to avoid the fees imposed by
Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...
, who owned patents on the movie-making process. Nestor Studios of
Bayonne, New Jersey Bayonne ( ) is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. Located in the Gateway Region, Bayonne is situated on a peninsula located between Newark Bay to the west, the Kill Van Kull to the south, and New York Bay to the east. As ...
, built the first studio in the Hollywood neighborhood in 1911. Nestor Studios, owned by David and William Horsley, later merged with Universal Studios; and William Horsley's other company, Hollywood Film Laboratory, is now the oldest existing company in Hollywood, now called the Hollywood Digital Laboratory.
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
's more hospitable and cost-effective climate led to the eventual shift of virtually all filmmaking to the West Coast by the 1930s. At the time,
Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...
owned almost all the patents relevant to motion picture production and movie producers on the East Coast acting independently of Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by Edison and his agents while movie makers working on the West Coast could work independently of Edison's control. In Los Angeles, the
studios A studio is an artist or worker's workroom. This can be for the purpose of acting, architecture, painting, pottery ( ceramics), sculpture, origami, woodworking, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, industrial design ...
and Hollywood grew. Before
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, films were made in several American cities, but filmmakers tended to gravitate towards
southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban ...
as the industry developed. They were attracted by the warm climate and reliable sunlight, which made it possible to film their films outdoors year-round and by the varied scenery that was available. War damage contributed to the decline of the then-dominant European film industry, in favor of the United States, where infrastructure was still intact. The stronger early public health response to the
1918 flu The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...
epidemic by Los Angeles compared to other American cities reduced the number of cases there and resulted in a faster recovery, contributing to the increasing dominance of Hollywood over New York City. During the pandemic, public health officials temporarily closed movie theaters in some jurisdictions, large studios suspended production for weeks at a time, and some actors came down with the flu. This caused major financial losses and severe difficulties for small studios, but the industry as a whole more than recovered during the
Roaring Twenties The Roaring Twenties, sometimes stylized as Roaring '20s, refers to the 1920s decade in music and fashion, as it happened in Western society and Western culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in th ...
. There are several starting points for cinema (particularly American cinema), but it was Griffith's controversial 1915 epic ''
The Birth of a Nation ''The Birth of a Nation'', originally called ''The Clansman'', is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play ''The Clan ...
'' that pioneered the worldwide filming vocabulary that still dominates celluloid to this day. In the early 20th century, when the medium was new, many Jewish immigrants found employment in the US film industry. They were able to make their mark in a brand-new business: the exhibition of short films in storefront theaters called nickelodeons, after their admission price of a
nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow t ...
(five cents). Within a few years, ambitious men like
Samuel Goldwyn Samuel Goldwyn (born Szmuel Gelbfisz; yi, שמואל געלבפֿיש; August 27, 1882 (claimed) January 31, 1974), also known as Samuel Goldfish, was a Polish-born American film producer. He was best known for being the founding contributor an ...
, William Fox,
Carl Laemmle Carl Laemmle (; born Karl Lämmle; January 17, 1867 – September 24, 1939) was a film producer and the co-founder and, until 1934, owner of Universal Pictures. He produced or worked on over 400 films. Regarded as one of the most important o ...
,
Adolph Zukor Adolph Zukor (; hu, Zukor Adolf; January 7, 1873 – June 10, 1976) was a Hungarian-American film producer best known as one of the three founders of Paramount Pictures.Obituary '' Variety'' (June 16, 1976), p. 76. He produced one of America' ...
,
Louis B. Mayer Louis Burt Mayer (; born Lazar Meir; July 12, 1882 or 1884 or 1885 – October 29, 1957) was a Canadian-American film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM) in 1924. Under Mayer's management, MGM became the film industr ...
, and the
Warner Brothers Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
(Harry, Albert, Samuel, and Jack) had switched to the production side of the business. Soon they were the heads of a new kind of enterprise: the
movie studio A film studio (also known as movie studio or simply studio) is a major entertainment company or motion picture company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to make films, which is handled by the productio ...
. The US had at least two female directors, producers and studio heads in these early years:
Lois Weber Florence Lois Weber (June 13, 1879 – November 13, 1939) was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, producer and director. She is identified in some historical references as among "the most important and prolific film directors in the e ...
and French-born
Alice Guy-Blaché Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché (née Guy; ; 1 July 1873 – 24 March 1968) was a French pioneer filmmaker. She was one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film, as well as the first woman to direct a film. From 1896 to 1906, s ...
. They also set the stage for the industry's internationalism; the industry is often accused of
Amerocentric Americentrism, also known as American-centrism or US-centrism, is a tendency to assume the culture of the United States is more important than those of other countries or to judge foreign cultures based on American cultural standards. It refers t ...
provincialism. Other moviemakers arrived from Europe after World War I: directors like
Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch (; January 29, 1892November 30, 1947) was a German-born American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as ...
,
Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
,
Fritz Lang Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary '' Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. ...
and
Jean Renoir Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. His films '' ...
; and actors like
Rudolph Valentino Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926), known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred ...
,
Marlene Dietrich Marie Magdalene "Marlene" DietrichBorn as Maria Magdalena, not Marie Magdalene, according to Dietrich's biography by her daughter, Maria Riva ; however Dietrich's biography by Charlotte Chandler cites "Marie Magdalene" as her birth name . (, ; ...
,
Ronald Colman Ronald Charles Colman (9 February 1891 – 19 May 1958) was an English-born actor, starting his career in theatre and silent film in his native country, then immigrating to the United States and having a successful Cinema of the United States, ...
, and
Charles Boyer Charles Boyer (; 28 August 1899 – 26 August 1978) was a French-American actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found his success in American fi ...
. They joined a homegrown supply of actors—lured west from the New York City stage after the introduction of sound films—to form one of the 20th century's most remarkable growth industries. At motion pictures' height of popularity in the mid-1940s, the studios were cranking out a total of about 400 movies a year, seen by an audience of 90 million Americans per week. Sound also became widely used in Hollywood in the late 1920s. After ''
The Jazz Singer ''The Jazz Singer'' is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolate ...
'', the first film with synchronized voices was successfully released as a Vitaphone talkie in 1927, Hollywood film companies would respond to Warner Bros. and begin to use Vitaphone sound—which Warner Bros. owned until 1928—in future films. By May 1928, Electrical Research Product Incorporated (ERPI), a subsidiary of the Western Electric company, gained a monopoly over film sound distribution. A side effect of the "talkies" was that many actors who had made their careers in silent films suddenly found themselves out of work, as they often had bad voices or could not remember their lines. Meanwhile, in 1922, US politician
Will H. Hays William Harrison Hays Sr. (; November 5, 1879 – March 7, 1954) was an American Republican politician. As chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1918–1921, Hays managed the successful 1920 presidential campaign of Warren G. H ...
left politics and formed the movie studio boss organization known as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). The organization became the
Motion Picture Association of America The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distrib ...
after Hays retired in 1945. In the early times of
talkie A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
s, American studios found that their sound productions were rejected in foreign-language markets and even among speakers of other dialects of English. The
synchronization Synchronization is the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. For example, the conductor of an orchestra keeps the orchestra synchronized or ''in time''. Systems that operate with all parts in synchrony are said to be synchronou ...
technology was still too primitive for
dubbing Dubbing (re-recording and mixing) is a post-production process used in filmmaking and video production, often in concert with sound design, in which additional or supplementary recordings are lip-synced and "mixed" with original production sou ...
. One of the solutions was creating parallel foreign-language versions of Hollywood films. Around 1930, the American companies opened a studio in
Joinville-le-Pont Joinville-le-Pont () is a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. History The commune was created in 1791 under the name La Branche-du-Pont-de-Saint-Maur (literally "The Branch of Saint-Mau ...
, France, where the same sets and wardrobe and even mass scenes were used for different
time-sharing In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1 Its emergence ...
crews. Also, foreign unemployed actors, playwrights, and winners of photogenia contests were chosen and brought to Hollywood, where they shot parallel versions of the English-language films. These parallel versions had a lower budget, were shot at night and were directed by second-line American directors who did not speak the foreign language. The Spanish-language crews included people like
Luis Buñuel Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and ...
,
Enrique Jardiel Poncela Enrique Jardiel Poncela (15 October 1901 – 18 February 1952) was a Spanish playwright and novelist who wrote mostly humorous works. In 1932-33 and 1934 he was called to Hollywood to help with the Spanish-language versions shot in parallel to ...
,
Xavier Cugat Xavier Cugat (; 1 January 1900 – 27 October 1990) was a Spanish musician and bandleader who spent his formative years in Havana, Cuba. A trained violinist and arranger, he was a leading figure in the spread of Latin music. In New York City ...
, and
Edgar Neville Edgar Neville Romrée, Count of Berlanga de Duero (28 December 1899 – 23 April 1967) was a Spanish playwright and film director, a member of the "other" Generation of '27. Biography Neville was born in Madrid but lived in Hollywood in the 19 ...
. The productions were not very successful in their intended markets, due to the following reasons: * The lower budgets were apparent. * Many theater actors had no previous experience in cinema. * The original movies were often second-rate themselves since studios expected that the top productions would sell by themselves. * The mix of foreign accents (Castilian, Mexican, and Chilean for example in the Spanish case) was odd for the audiences. * Some markets lacked sound-equipped theaters. In spite of this, some productions like the Spanish version of ''Dracula'' compare favorably with the original. By the mid-1930s, synchronization had advanced enough for dubbing to become usual.


Classical Hollywood cinema and the Golden Age of Hollywood (1913–1969)

Classical Hollywood cinema, or the Golden Age of Hollywood, is defined as a technical and narrative style characteristic of American cinema from 1913 to 1969, during which thousands of movies were issued from the Hollywood studios. The Classical style began to emerge in 1913, was accelerated in 1917 after the U.S. entered
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, and finally solidified when the film
The Jazz Singer ''The Jazz Singer'' is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolate ...
was released in 1927, ending the Silent Film era and increasing box-office profits for film industry by introducing sound to feature films. Most Hollywood pictures adhered closely to a formula –
Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...
,
Slapstick Comedy Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such a ...
,
Musical Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwo ...
,
Animated Cartoon Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...
, Biographical Film (biographical picture) – and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For example,
Cedric Gibbons Austin Cedric Gibbons (March 23, 1890 – July 26, 1960) was an Irish-American art director for the film industry. He also made a significant contribution to motion picture theater architecture from the 1930s to 1950s. Gibbons designed the ...
and
Herbert Stothart Herbert Pope Stothart (September 11, 1885February 1, 1949) was an American songwriter, arranger, conductor, and composer. He was also nominated for twelve Academy Awards, winning Best Original Score for '' The Wizard of Oz''. Stothart was widel ...
always worked on
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
films,
Alfred Newman Alfred Newman (March 17, 1900 – February 17, 1970) was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music. From his start as a music prodigy, he came to be regarded as a respected figure in the history of film music. He won nine Acad ...
worked at
20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disn ...
for twenty years,
Cecil B. De Mille Cecil Blount DeMille (; August 12, 1881January 21, 1959) was an American film director, producer and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of the American cinem ...
's films were almost all made at Paramount, and director Henry King's films were mostly made for
20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disn ...
. At the same time, one could usually guess which studio made which film, largely because of the actors who appeared in it;
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
, for example, claimed it had contracted "more stars than there are in heaven." Each studio had its own style and characteristic touches which made it possible to know this – a trait that rarely exist today. For example, ''
To Have and Have Not ''To Have and Have Not'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1937 by Charles Scribner's Sons. The book follows Harry Morgan, a fishing boat captain out of Key West, Florida. ''To Have and Have Not'' was Hemingway's second novel set in th ...
'' (1944) is notable not only for the first pairing of actors
Humphrey Bogart Humphrey DeForest Bogart (; December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), nicknamed Bogie, was an American film and stage actor. His performances in Classical Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film In ...
(1899–1957) and
Lauren Bacall Lauren Bacall (; born Betty Joan Perske; September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014) was an American actress. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute and received an Academy Honorary ...
(1924–2014), but because it was written by two future winners of the
Nobel Prize in Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...
:
Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...
(1899–1961), the author of the novel on which the script was nominally based, and
William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...
(1897–1962), who worked on the screen adaptation. After ''
The Jazz Singer ''The Jazz Singer'' is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolate ...
'' was released in 1927,
Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
gained huge success and were able to acquire their own string of movie theaters, after purchasing Stanley Theaters and First National Productions in 1928. In contrast Loews theaters owned
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
since forming in 1924, while the Fox Film Corporation owned the Fox Theatre.
RKO RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheu ...
(a 1928 merger between Keith-Orpheum Theaters and the
Radio Corporation of America The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Com ...
) also responded to the Western Electric/ERPI monopoly over sound in films, and developed their own method, known as
Photophone The photophone is a telecommunications device that allows transmission of speech on a beam of light. It was invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter on February 19, 1880, at Bell's laboratory at 1325 ...
, to put sound in films. Paramount, which acquired Balaban and Katz in 1926, would answer to the success of Warner Bros. and RKO, and buy a number of theaters in the late 1920s as well, and would hold a monopoly on theaters in
Detroit, Michigan Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
. By the 1930s, almost all of the first-run metropolitan theaters in the United States were owned by the Big Five studios—
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
,
Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...
,
RKO RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheu ...
,
Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
, and
20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disn ...
.


The studio system

Motion picture companies operated under the
studio system A studio system is a method of filmmaking wherein the production and distribution of films is dominated by a small number of large movie studios. It is most often used in reference to Hollywood motion picture studios during the Golden Age of Hol ...
. The major studios kept thousands of people on salary—actors, producers, directors, writers, stunt men, crafts persons, and technicians. They owned or leased
Movie Ranches A movie ranch is a ranch that is at least partially dedicated for use as a set in the creation and production of motion pictures and television shows. These were developed in the United States in southern California, because of the climate. The fir ...
in rural Southern California for
location shooting Location shooting is the shooting of a film or television production in a real-world setting rather than a sound stage or backlot. The location may be interior or exterior. The filming location may be the same in which the story is set (for ex ...
of
westerns The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. It is commonly referred ...
and other large-scale genre films, and the major studios owned hundreds of theaters in cities and towns across the nation in 1920 film theaters that showed their films and that were always in need of fresh material. In 1930, MPPDA President Will Hays created the Hays (Production) Code, which followed censorship guidelines and went into effect after government threats of censorship expanded by 1930. However, the code was never enforced until 1934, after the Catholic watchdog organization The Legion of Decency—appalled by some of the provocative films and lurid advertising of the era later classified
Pre-Code Hollywood Pre-Code Hollywood was the brief era in the American film industry between the widespread adoption of sound in film in 1929LaSalle (2002), p. 1. and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines, popularly known ...
- threatened a boycott of motion pictures if it did not go into effect. The films that did not obtain a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration had to pay a $25,000 fine and could not profit in the theaters, as the MPPDA controlled every theater in the country through the Big Five studios. Throughout the 1930s, as well as most of the golden age,
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
dominated the film screen and had the top stars in Hollywood, and they were also credited for creating the Hollywood star system altogether.
Some
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
stars included "King of Hollywood"
Clark Gable William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901November 16, 1960) was an American film actor, often referred to as "The King of Hollywood". He had roles in more than 60 motion pictures in multiple genres during a career that lasted 37 years, three decades ...
,
Lionel Barrymore Lionel Barrymore (born Lionel Herbert Blythe; April 28, 1878 – November 15, 1954) was an American actor of stage, screen and radio as well as a film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in ''A Free Soul'' (1931 ...
,
Jean Harlow Jean Harlow (born Harlean Harlow Carpenter; March 3, 1911 – June 7, 1937) was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the ...
,
Norma Shearer Edith Norma Shearer (August 11, 1902June 12, 1983) was a Canadian-American actress who was active on film from 1919 through 1942. Shearer often played spunky, sexually liberated ingénues. She appeared in adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O' ...
,
Greta Garbo Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson; 18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American actress. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses, she was known for her melancholic, somber persona, her film portrayals of tragic ch ...
,
Joan Crawford Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion pict ...
,
Jeanette MacDonald Jeanette Anna MacDonald (June 18, 1903 – January 14, 1965) was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier (''The Love Parade'', '' Love Me Tonight'', ''The Merry Widow'' and '' On ...
,
Gene Raymond Gene Raymond (born Raymond Guion; August 13, 1908 – May 3, 1998) was an American film, television, and stage actor of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to acting, Raymond was also a singer, composer, screenwriter, director, producer, and decorat ...
,
Spencer Tracy Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was an American actor. He was known for his natural performing style and versatility. One of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tracy was the first actor to win two cons ...
,
Judy Garland Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922June 22, 1969) was an American actress and singer. While critically acclaimed for many different roles throughout her career, she is widely known for playing the part of Dorothy Gale in '' The ...
, and
Gene Kelly Eugene Curran Kelly (August 23, 1912 – February 2, 1996) was an American actor, dancer, singer, filmmaker, and choreographer. He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style and sought to create a new form of American dance accessibl ...
. But MGM did not stand alone. Another great achievement of US cinema during this era came through Walt Disney's animation company. In 1937, Disney created the most successful film of its time, ''
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is a 19th-century German fairy tale that is today known widely across the Western world. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection '' Grimms' Fairy Tales'' and numbered as ...
''. This distinction was promptly topped in 1939 when Selznick International created what is still, when adjusted for inflation, the most successful film of all time in
Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind most often refers to: * ''Gone with the Wind'' (novel), a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell * ''Gone with the Wind'' (film), the 1939 adaptation of the novel Gone with the Wind may also refer to: Music * ''Gone with the Wind'' ...
. Many film historians have remarked upon the many great works of cinema that emerged from this period of highly regimented filmmaking. One reason this was possible is that, with so many movies being made, not every one had to be a big hit. A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively unknown actors: ''
Citizen Kane ''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American drama film produced by, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The picture was Welles' first feature film. ''Citizen Kane'' is frequently cited ...
'', directed by
Orson Welles George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
(1915–1985) and often regarded as the greatest film of all time, fits this description. In other cases, strong-willed directors like
Howard Hawks Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American director who is not a household name." A ...
(1896–1977),
Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
(1899–1980), and
Frank Capra Frank Russell Capra (born Francesco Rosario Capra; May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was an Italian-born American film director, producer and writer who became the creative force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s ...
(1897–1991) battled the studios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as '' The Wizard of Oz'', ''
Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind most often refers to: * ''Gone with the Wind'' (novel), a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell * ''Gone with the Wind'' (film), the 1939 adaptation of the novel Gone with the Wind may also refer to: Music * ''Gone with the Wind'' ...
'', ''
Stagecoach A stagecoach is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by four horses although some versions are dra ...
'', '' Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'', ''
Wuthering Heights ''Wuthering Heights'' is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent re ...
'', ''
Only Angels Have Wings ''Only Angels Have Wings'' is a 1939 American adventure drama film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, and is based on a story written by Hawks. Its plot follows the manager of an air freight company in a remote South ...
'', ''
Ninotchka ''Ninotchka'' is a 1939 American romantic comedy film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. It was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch, based ...
'' and ''
Midnight Midnight is the transition time from one day to the next – the moment when the date changes, on the local official clock time for any particular jurisdiction. By clock time, midnight is the opposite of noon, differing from it by 12 hours ...
''. Among the other films from the Golden Age period that are now considered to be classics: ''
Casablanca Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...
'', ''
It's a Wonderful Life ''It's a Wonderful Life'' is a 1946 American Christmas fantasy drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story and booklet ''The Greatest Gift'', which Philip Van Doren Stern self-published in 1943 and is in turn loos ...
'', ''
It Happened One Night ''It Happened One Night'' is a 1934 pre-Code American romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed and co-produced by Frank Capra, in collaboration with Harry Cohn, in which a pampered socialite ( Claudette Colbert) tr ...
'', the original ''
King Kong King Kong is a fictional giant monster resembling a gorilla, who has appeared in various media since 1933. He has been dubbed The Eighth Wonder of the World, a phrase commonly used within the franchise. His first appearance was in the novelizat ...
'', ''
Mutiny on the Bounty The mutiny on the Royal Navy vessel occurred in the South Pacific Ocean on 28 April 1789. Disaffected crewmen, led by acting-Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, seized control of the ship from their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and set h ...
'', ''
Top Hat A top hat (also called a high hat, a cylinder hat, or, informally, a topper) is a tall, flat-crowned hat for men traditionally associated with formal wear in Western dress codes, meaning white tie, morning dress, or frock coat. Traditional ...
'', ''
City Lights ''City Lights'' is a 1931 American silent romantic comedy film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin's Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) and ...
'', '' Red River'', ''
The Lady from Shanghai ''The Lady from Shanghai'' is a 1947 American film noir directed by Orson Welles (uncredited) and starring Welles, his estranged wife Rita Hayworth, and Everett Sloane. It is based on the novel ''If I Die Before I Wake'' by Sherwood King. Altho ...
'', ''
Rear Window ''Rear Window'' is a 1954 American mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder". Originally released by Paramount Pictures, the film st ...
'', ''
On the Waterfront ''On the Waterfront'' is a 1954 American crime drama film, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning, and Eva Marie Saint in her film debut. ...
'', ''
Rebel Without a Cause ''Rebel Without a Cause'' is a 1955 American coming-of-age drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Filmed in the then recently introduced CinemaScope format and directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social com ...
'', ''
Some Like It Hot ''Some Like It Hot'' is a 1959 American crime comedy film directed, produced and co-written by Billy Wilder. It stars Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, with George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Joe E. Brown, Joan Shawlee, Grace Lee Whitne ...
'', and '' The Manchurian Candidate''.


Decline of the studio system (late 1940s)

The studio system and the Golden Age of Hollywood succumbed to two forces that developed in the late 1940s: * a federal antitrust action that separated the production of films from their exhibition; and * the advent of
television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
. In 1938, Walt Disney's ''
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is a 19th-century German fairy tale that is today known widely across the Western world. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection '' Grimms' Fairy Tales'' and numbered as ...
'' was released during a run of lackluster films from the major studios, and quickly became the highest grossing film released to that point. Embarrassingly for the studios, it was an independently produced animated film that did not feature any studio-employed stars. This stoked already widespread frustration at the practice of ''
block-booking Block booking is a system of selling multiple films to a theater as a unit. Block booking was the prevailing practice among Hollywood's major studios from the turn of the 1930s until it was outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in ''Unite ...
'', in which studios would only sell an entire year's schedule of films at a time to theaters and use the lock-in to cover for releases of mediocre quality. Assistant Attorney General
Thurman Arnold Thurman Wesley Arnold (June 2, 1891 – November 7, 1969) was an American lawyer best known for his trust-busting campaign as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Department of Justic ...
—a noted " trust buster" of the Roosevelt administration—took this opportunity to initiate proceedings against the eight largest Hollywood studios in July 1938 for violations of the
Sherman Antitrust Act The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 (, ) is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce. It was passed by Congress and is named for Senator John Sherman, its principal author. ...
. The federal suit resulted in five of the eight studios (the "Big Five":
Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
,
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
, Fox,
RKO RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheu ...
and Paramount) reaching a compromise with Arnold in October 1940 and signing a consent decree agreeing to, within three years: * Eliminate the block-booking of short film subjects, in an arrangement known as "one shot", or "full force" block-booking. * Eliminate the block-booking of any more than five features in their theaters. * No longer engage in ''blind buying'' (or the buying of films by theater districts without seeing films beforehand) and instead have ''trade-showing'', in which all 31 theater districts in the US would see films every two weeks before showing movies in theaters. * Set up an administration board in each theater district to enforce these requirements. The "Little Three" (
Universal Studios Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Americ ...
,
United Artists United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the stu ...
, and
Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...
), who did not own any theaters, refused to participate in the consent decree. A number of independent film producers were also unhappy with the compromise and formed a union known as the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers and sued Paramount for the monopoly they still had over the Detroit Theaters—as Paramount was also gaining dominance through actors like Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, Betty Hutton, crooner Bing Crosby, Alan Ladd, and longtime actor for studio
Gary Cooper Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, quiet screen persona and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, a ...
too- by 1942. The Big Five studios did not meet the requirements of the Consent of Decree during WWII, without major consequence, but after the war ended they joined Paramount as defendants in the Hollywood antitrust case, as did the Little Three studios. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that the major studios ownership of theaters and film distribution was a violation of the
Sherman Antitrust Act The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 (, ) is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce. It was passed by Congress and is named for Senator John Sherman, its principal author. ...
. As a result, the studios began to release actors and technical staff from their contracts with the studios. This changed the paradigm of film making by the major Hollywood studios, as each could have an entirely different cast and creative team. The decision resulted in the gradual loss of the characteristics which made Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures, RKO Pictures, and 20th Century Fox films immediately identifiable. Certain movie people, such as
Cecil B. DeMille Cecil Blount DeMille (; August 12, 1881January 21, 1959) was an American film director, producer and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of the American cine ...
, either remained contract artists until the end of their careers or used the same creative teams on their films so that a DeMille film still looked like one whether it was made in 1932 or 1956.


New Hollywood and post-classical cinema (1960s–1990s)

Post-classical cinema is the changing methods of storytelling in the New Hollywood. It has been argued that new approaches to drama and characterization played upon audience expectations acquired in the classical period: chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature " twist endings", and lines between the
antagonist An antagonist is a character in a story who is presented as the chief foe of the protagonist. Etymology The English word antagonist comes from the Greek ἀνταγωνιστής – ''antagonistēs'', "opponent, competitor, villain, enemy, ri ...
and
protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...
may be blurred. The roots of post-classical storytelling may be seen in ''film noir'', in ''
Rebel Without a Cause ''Rebel Without a Cause'' is a 1955 American coming-of-age drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Filmed in the then recently introduced CinemaScope format and directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social com ...
'' (1955), and in Hitchcock's storyline-shattering '' Psycho''. The
New Hollywood The New Hollywood, also known as American New Wave or Hollywood Renaissance, was a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence. They influenced the types o ...
is the emergence of a new generation of film school-trained directors who had absorbed the techniques developed in Europe in the 1960s as a result of the French New Wave after the American Revolution; the 1967 film ''
Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut (Champion) Barrow (March 24, 1909May 23, 1934) were an American criminal couple who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. The c ...
'' marked the beginning of American cinema rebounding as well, as a new generation of films would afterwards gain success at the box offices as well. Filmmakers like
Francis Ford Coppola Francis Ford Coppola (; ; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the major figures of the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Coppola is the recipient of five ...
, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, and William Friedkin came to produce fare that paid homage to the history of film and developed upon existing genres and techniques. Inaugurated by the 1969 release of Andy Warhol ''Blue Movie'', the phenomenon of Erotic art, adult erotic films being publicly discussed by celebrities (like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope), and taken seriously by critics (like Roger Ebert), a development referred to, by Ralph Blumenthal of ''The New York Times'', as "Golden Age of Porn#"Porno chic", porno chic", and later known as the Golden Age of Porn, began, for the first time, in modern American culture. According to award-winning author Toni Bentley, Radley Metzger 1976 film ''The Opening of Misty Beethoven'', based on the play ''Pygmalion (play), Pygmalion'' by George Bernard Shaw (and its derivative, ''My Fair Lady (film), My Fair Lady''), and due to attaining a mainstream level in storyline and sets, is considered the "crown jewel" of this 'Golden Age of Porn, Golden Age'. At the height of his fame in the early 1970s, Charles Bronson was the world's No. 1 box office attraction, commanding $1 million per film. In the 1970s, the films of New Hollywood filmmakers were often both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. While the early New Hollywood films like ''
Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut (Champion) Barrow (March 24, 1909May 23, 1934) were an American criminal couple who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. The c ...
'' and ''Easy Rider'' had been relatively low-budget affairs with amoral heroes and increased sexuality and violence, the enormous success enjoyed by Friedkin with ''The Exorcist (film), The Exorcist'', Spielberg with ''Jaws (film), Jaws'', Coppola with ''The Godfather'' and ''Apocalypse Now'', Scorsese with ''Taxi Driver'', Kubrick with ''2001: A Space Odyssey (film), 2001: A Space Odyssey'', Polanski with ''Chinatown (1974 film), Chinatown'', and Lucas with ''American Graffiti'' and ''Star Wars (film), Star Wars'', respectively helped to give rise to the modern "Blockbuster (entertainment), blockbuster", and induced studios to focus ever more heavily on trying to produce enormous hits. The increasing indulgence of these young directors did not help. Often, they would go overschedule, and overbudget, thus bankrupting themselves or the studio. The three most notable examples of this are Coppola's ''Apocalypse Now'' and ''One From The Heart'' and particularly Michael Cimino's ''Heaven's Gate (film), Heaven's Gate'', which single-handedly bankrupted
United Artists United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the stu ...
. However, ''Apocalypse Now'' eventually made its money back and gained widespread recognition as a masterpiece, winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival, Cannes. Filmmakers in the 1990 had access to technological, political and economic innovations that had not been available in previous decades. ''Dick Tracy (1990 film), Dick Tracy'' (1990) became the first 35 mm movie film, 35 mm feature film with a digital data, digital soundtrack. ''Batman Returns'' (1992) was the first film to make use of the Dolby Digital six-channel stereo sound that has since become the industry standard. Computer-generated imagery was greatly facilitated when it became possible to transfer film images into a computer and manipulate them digitally. The possibilities became apparent in director James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), in images of the shape-changing character T-1000. Computer graphics or CG advanced to a point where ''Jurassic Park'' (1993) was able to use the techniques to create realistic looking animals. Jackpot (2001 film), ''Jackpot'' (2001) became the first film that was shot entirely in digital. In the film ''Titanic (1997 film), Titanic'', Cameron wanted to push the boundary of special effects with his film, and enlisted Digital Domain and Pacific Data Images to continue the developments in digital technology which the director pioneered while working on ''The Abyss'' and ''Terminator 2: Judgment Day''. Many previous films about the RMS ''Titanic'' shot water in slow motion, which did not look wholly convincing.Marsh and Kirkland, pp. 147–154 Cameron encouraged his crew to shoot their Scale model, miniature of the ship as if "we're making a commercial for the White Star Line". Even ''The Blair Witch Project'' (1999), a low-budget indie horror film by Eduardo Sánchez (director), Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, was a huge financial success. Filmed on a budget of just $35,000, without any big stars or special effects, the film grossed $248 million with the use of modern marketing techniques and online promotion. Though not on the scale of George Lucas's $1 billion prequel to the ''Star Wars original trilogy, Star Wars Trilogy'', ''The Blair Witch Project'' earned the distinction of being the most profitable film of all time, in terms of percentage gross. The success of ''Blair Witch'' as an indie project remains among the few exceptions, however, and control of Big Five (movie studios), The Big Five studios over filmmaking continued to increase through the 1990s. The Big Six companies all enjoyed a period of expansion in the 1990s. They each developed different ways to adjust to rising costs in the film industry, especially the rising salaries of movie stars, driven by powerful agents. The biggest stars like Sylvester Stallone, Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts received between $15-$20 million per film and in some cases were even given a share of the film's profits. Screenwriters on the other hand were generally paid less than the top actors or directors, usually under $1 million per film. However, the single largest factor driving rising costs was special effects. By 1999 the average cost of a blockbuster film was $60 million before marketing and promotion, which cost another $80 million.


Early 21st century

Since the early 21st century, the theatrical market place has been dominated by the Superhero film, superhero genre. they are the best-paying productions for actors, because paychecks in other genres have shrunk for even top actors. The decade of the involved many significant developments in the film industries around the world, especially in the technology used. Building on developments in the 1990s, computers were used to create effects that would have previously been more expensive, from the subtle erasing of surrounding islands in ''Cast Away'' (leaving Tom Hanks' character stranded with no other land in sight) to the vast battle scenes such as those in The Matrix (franchise), ''The Matrix'' sequels and ''300 (film), 300''. The 2000s saw the resurgence of several genres. Fantasy film franchises dominated the box office with ''The Lord of the Rings (film series), The Lord of the Rings'', ''Harry Potter (film series), Harry Potter'', ''Pirates of the Caribbean (film series), Pirates of the Caribbean'', the Star Wars prequel trilogy, ''Star Wars'' prequel trilogy (beginning in 1999), ''The Chronicles of Narnia (film series), The Chronicles of Narnia'', etc. Comic book superhero films became a mainstream blockbuster genre following the releases of ''X-Men (film), X-Men'', ''Unbreakable (film), Unbreakable'', and ''Spider-Man (2002 film), Spider-Man''. ''Gladiator (2000 film), Gladiator'' similarly sparked the revival of epic films, while the Bollywood-inspired ''Moulin Rouge!'' did the same for
musical film Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as brea ...
s. Computer animation replaced traditional animation as the dominant medium for animated feature films in American cinema. Although Hollywood still produces some films for the family audience, particularly animations, the vast majority films are principally designed for young adult audiences.


Contemporary cinema

As of 2020, the 2019 fantasy film ''Frozen II'' was originally planned to be released on Disney+ on June 26, 2020, before it was moved up to March 15. Disney CEO Bob Chapek explained that this was because of the film's "powerful themes of perseverance and the importance of family, messages that are incredibly relevant". On March 16, 2020, Universal announced that ''The Invisible Man (2020 film), The Invisible Man'', ''The Hunt (2020 film), The Hunt'', and ''Emma (2020 film), Emma''—all films in theaters at the time—would be available through Video on demand, Premium video on demand as early as March 20 at a suggested price of each. After suffering poor box office since its release at the start of March, ''Onward (film), Onward'' was made available to purchase digitally on March 21, and was added to Disney+ on April 3. Paramount announced on March 20, ''Sonic the Hedgehog (film), Sonic the Hedgehog'' is also planning to have an early release to video on demand, on March 31. On March 16, Warner Bros. announced that ''Birds of Prey (2020 film), Birds of Prey'' would be released early to video on demand on March 24. On April 3, Disney announced that ''Artemis Fowl (film), Artemis Fowl'', a film adaptation of the 2001 Artemis Fowl, book of the same name, would move straight to Disney+ on June 12, skipping a theatrical release entirely. As the virus continued to keep theaters closed, studios that have produced various films such as ''Black Widow (2021 film), Black Widow'', ''F9 (film), F9'', Death on the Nile (2021 film), ''Death on the Nile'' and West Side Story (2021 film), ''West Side Story'' were forced to postponed or delayed their releases to after 2020. Various studios have responded to the crisis with controversial decisions to Film distribution#Shrinking of the theatrical window, forgo the theatrical window and give their films Simultaneous release, day-and-date releases. NBCUniversal released ''Trolls World Tour'' directly to Video on demand, video-on-demand rental on April 10, while simultaneously receiving limited domestic theatrical screenings via drive-in cinemas; CEO Jeff Shell claims that the film had reached nearly $100 million in revenue within the first three weeks. The decision was opposed by AMC Theatres, which then announced that its screenings of Universal Pictures films would cease immediately, though the two companies would eventually agree to a 2-week theatrical window. By December 2020, Warner Bros. Pictures announced their decision to simultaneously release its slate of 2021 films in both theaters and its streaming site HBO Max for a period of one month in order to maximize viewership. The move was vehemently criticized by various industry figures, many of whom were reportedly uninformed of the decision before the announcement and felt deceived by the studio. Industry commentators have noted the increasing treatment of films as "Content (media), content" by corporations that correlate with the rise of streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, and Apple TV+. This involves the blurring of boundaries between films, television and other forms of media as more people consume them together in a variety of ways, with individual films defined more by their brand identity and commercial potential rather than their medium, stories and artistry. Critic Matt Zoller Seitz has described the release of ''Avengers: Endgame'' in 2019 as "represent[ing] the decisive defeat of 'cinema' by 'content'" due to its grand success as a "piece of entertainment" defined by the Marvel brand that culminates a series of blockbuster films that has traits of serial television. The films ''Space Jam: A New Legacy'' and ''Red Notice (film), Red Notice'' have been cited as examples of this treatment, with the former being described by many critics as "a lengthy infomercial for HBO Max", featuring scenes and characters recalling various Warner Bros. properties such as ''
Casablanca Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...
'', ''The Matrix'' and ''Austin Powers'', while the latter is a $200 million heist film from Netflix that critics described "a movie that feels more processed by a machine [...] instead of anything approaching artistic intent or even an honest desire to entertain." Some have expressed that ''Space Jam'' demonstrates the industry's increasingly cynical treatment of films as mere intellectual property (IP) to be exploited, an approach which critic Scott Mendelson called "IP for the sake of IP."


Hollywood and politics

In the 1930s, the Democrats and the Republicans saw money in Hollywood. President Franklin Roosevelt saw a huge partnership with Hollywood. He used the first real potential of Hollywood's stars in a national campaign. Melvyn Douglas toured Washington in 1939 and met the key New Dealers.


Political endorsements

Endorsements letters from leading actors were signed, radio appearances and printed advertising were made. Movie stars were used to draw a large audience into the political view of the party. By the 1960s, John F. Kennedy was a new, young face for Washington, and his strong friendship with Frank Sinatra exemplified this new era of glamour. The last moguls of Hollywood were gone and younger, newer executives and producers began pushing more Modern liberalism in the United States, liberal ideas. Celebrities and money attracted politicians into the high-class, glittering Hollywood lifestyle. As Ron Brownstein wrote in his book ''The Power and the Glitter'', television in the 1970s and 1980s was an enormously important new media in politics and Hollywood helped in that media with actors making speeches on their political beliefs, like Jane Fonda against the Vietnam War.Ron Brownstein, Brownstein, Ronald (1990). ''The Power and the Glitter: The Hollywood-Washington Connection''. Pantheon Books. Despite most celebrities and producers being left-leaning and tending to support the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, this era produced some Republican Party (United States), Republican actors and producers. Former actor Ronald Reagan became governor of California and subsequently became the 40th president of the United States. It continued with Arnold Schwarzenegger as California's governor in 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, 2003.


Political donations

Today, donations from Hollywood help to fund federal politics. On February 20, 2007, for example, Democratic then-presidential candidate Barack Obama had a $2,300-a-plate Hollywood gala, being hosted by DreamWorks Pictures, DreamWorks founders David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Steven Spielberg at the Beverly Hilton.


Censorship

Hollywood producers generally seek to comply with the Chinese government's censorship requirements in a bid to access the country's restricted and lucrative cinema market, with the second-largest box office in the world as of 2016. This includes prioritizing sympathetic portrayals of Chinese characters in movies, such as changing the villains in ''Red Dawn (2012 film), Red Dawn'' from Chinese to North Koreans. Due to many topics forbidden in China, such as Dalai Lama and Winnie-the-Pooh#Censorship in China, Winnie-the-Pooh being involved in the South Park's episode "Band in China", South Park was entirely banned in China after the episode's broadcast. The 2018 film ''Christopher Robin (film), Christopher Robin'', the new Winnie-the-Pooh movie, was denied a Chinese release. Although Tibet was previously a cause célèbre in Hollywood, featuring in films including ''Kundun'' and ''Seven Years in Tibet'', in the 21st century this is no longer the case. In 2016, Marvel Entertainment attracted criticism for its decision to cast Tilda Swinton as "The Ancient One" in the film adaptation ''Doctor Strange (2016 film), Doctor Strange'', using a white woman to play a traditionally Tibetan character. Actor and high-profile Tibet supporter Richard Gere stated that he was no longer welcome to participate in mainstream Hollywood films after criticizing the Chinese government and calling for a boycott of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.


Global Hollywood

Political economy of communication researchers have long focused on the international or global presence, power, profitability and popularity of Hollywood films. Books on global Hollywood by Toby Miller and Richard Maxwell, Janet Wasko and Mary Erickson, Kerry Segrave, John Trumpbour and Tanner Mirrlees examine the international political economy of Hollywood's power. According to Tanner Mirrlees, Hollywood relies on four capitalist strategies "to attract and integrate non-US film producers, exhibitors and audiences into its ambit: ownership, cross-border productions with subordinate service providers, content licensing deals with exhibitors, and blockbusters designed to travel the globe." In 1912, American film companies were largely immersed in the competition for the domestic market. It was difficult to satisfy the huge demand for films created by the Nickelodeon (movie theater), nickelodeon boom. Motion Picture Patents Company members such as
Edison Studios Edison Studios was an American film production organization, owned by companies controlled by inventor and entrepreneur, Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films, as part of the Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) and then T ...
, also sought to limit competition from French, Italian, and other imported films. Exporting films, then, became lucrative to these companies. Vitagraph Studios was the first American company to open its own distribution offices in Europe, establishing a branch in London in 1906, and a second branch in Paris shortly after. Other American companies were moving into foreign markets as well, and American distribution abroad continued to expand until the mid-1920s. Originally, a majority of companies sold their films indirectly. However, since they were inexperienced in overseas trading, they simply sold the foreign rights to their films to foreign distribution firms or export agents. Gradually, London became a center for the international circulation of US films. Many British companies made a profit by acting as the agents for this business, and by doing so, they weakened British production by turning over a large share of the UK market to American films. By 1911, approximately 60 to 70 percent of films imported into Great Britain were American. The United States was also doing well in Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. More recently, as globalization has started to intensify, and the United States government has been actively promoting free trade agendas and trade on cultural products, Hollywood has become a worldwide cultural source. The success on Hollywood export markets can be known not only from the boom of American multinational media corporations across the globe but also from the unique ability to make big-budget films that appeal powerfully to popular tastes in many different cultures. Hollywood has moved more deeply into Chinese markets, although influenced by China's censorship. Films made in China are censored, strictly avoiding themes like "ghosts, violence, murder, horror, and demons." Such plot elements risk being cut. Hollywood has had to make "approved" films, corresponding to official Chinese standards, but with aesthetic standards sacrificed to box office profits. Even Chinese audiences found it boring to wait for the release of great American movies dubbed in their native language.


Role of women

Women's representation in film has been considered an issue almost as long as film has been an industry. Women's portrayals have been criticized as dependent on other characters, motherly and domestic figures who stay at home, overemotional, and confined to low-status jobs when compared to enterprising and ambitious male characters. With this, women are underrepresented and continually cast and stuck in gender stereotypes. Women are statistically underrepresented in creative positions in the center of the US film industry, Hollywood. This underrepresentation has been called the "celluloid ceiling", a variant on the employment discrimination term "glass ceiling". In 2013, the "top-paid actors ... made times as much money as the top-paid actresses." "[O]lder [male] actors make more than their female equals" in age, with "female movie stars mak[ing] the most money on average per film at age 34 while male stars earn the most at 51." The 2013 Celluloid Ceiling Report conducted by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University collected a list of statistics gathered from "2,813 individuals employed by the 250 top domestic grossing films of 2012." Women represented only 36 percent of major characters in film in 2018—a one percent decline from the 37 percent recorded in 2017. In 2019, that percentage increased to 40 percent. Women account for 51 percent of moviegoers. However, when it comes to key jobs like director and cinematographer, men continue to dominate. For the Academy Award nominations, only five women have ever been nominated for Best Director, but none have ever won in that category in the past 92 years. While female representation has improved, there is work yet to be done with regards to the diversity among those females. The percentage of black female characters went from 16 percent in 2017 to 21 percent in 2018. The representation of Latina actresses, however, decreased to four percent over the past year, three percentage points lower than the seven percent achieved in 2017. Women accounted for: * "18% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors. This reflected no change from 2011 and only a 1% increase from 1998." * "9% of all directors." * "15% of writers." * "25% of all producers." * "20% of all editors." * "2% of all cinematographers." * "38% of films employed 0 or 1 woman in the roles considered, 23% employed 2 women, 28% employed 3 to 5 women, and 10% employed 6 to 9 women." A ''New York Times'' article stated that only 15% of the top films in 2013 had women for a lead acting role. The author of the study noted that "The percentage of female speaking roles has not increased much since the 1940s when they hovered around 25 percent to 28 percent." "Since 1998, women's representation in behind-the-scenes roles other than directing has gone up just 1 percent." Women "directed the same percent of the 250 top-grossing films in 2012 (9 percent) as they did in 1998."


Race and ethnicity

On May 10, 2021, NBC announced that it would not televise the 79th Golden Globe Awards in 2022, in support of a boycott of the HFPA by multiple media companies over inadequate efforts to address Hollywood Foreign Press Association, lack of diversity representation within the membership of the association with person of color, but that it would be open to televise the ceremony in 2023 if the HFPA were successful in its efforts to reform. Since the late days of the film industry, celluloid representations of Irish Americans have been plentiful. Films with Irish-American themes include social dramas such as ''Little Nellie Kelly'' and ''The Cardinal'', labor epics like ''
On the Waterfront ''On the Waterfront'' is a 1954 American crime drama film, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning, and Eva Marie Saint in her film debut. ...
'', and gangster movies such as ''Angels with Dirty Faces'', ''The Friends of Eddie Coyle'', and ''The Departed''. Though the classic era of American Cinema is dominated predominantly by Caucasian race, Caucasian people in front of and behind the camera, minorities and people of color have managed to carve their own pathways to getting their films on the screen. American cinema has often reflected and propagated Stereotype, negative stereotypes towards foreign nationals and ethnic minorities. For example, Russians and Russian Americans are usually portrayed as brutal mobsters, ruthless agents and villains. According to Russian American professor Nina L. Khrushcheva, "You can't even turn the TV on and go to the movies without reference to Russians as horrible." Italians and Italian Americans are usually associated with organized crime and Italian-American Mafia, the Mafia. Hispanic and Latino Americans are largely depicted as sexualized figures such as the Latino Machismo, macho or the Latina Sex kitten, vixen, gang members, (illegal) immigrants, or entertainers. However representation in Hollywood has enhanced in latter times of which it gained noticeable momentum in the 1990s and does not emphasize oppression, exploitation, or resistance as central themes. According to Ramírez Berg, third wave films "do not accentuate Chicano oppression or resistance; ethnicity in these films exists as one fact of several that shape characters' lives and stamps their personalities." Filmmakers like Edward James Olmos and Robert Rodriguez were able to represent the Hispanic and Latino Americans experience like none had on screen before, and actors like Hilary Swank, Jordana Brewster, Jessica Alba, Camilla Belle, Al Madrigal, Alexis Bledel, Alexa PenaVega, Ana de Armas and Rachel Zegler have become successful. In the last decade, minority filmmakers like Chris Weitz, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and Patricia Riggen have been given applier narratives. Early portrayal in films of them include La Bamba (film), ''La Bamba'' (1987), Selena (film), ''Selena'' (1997), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Goal II: Living the Dream, ''Goal II'' (2007), Overboard (2018 film), Overboard (2018), Father of the Bride (2022 film), Father of the Bride (2022) and Josefina López's ''Real Women Have Curves'', originally Real Women Have Curves (play), a play which premiered in 1990 and was later released as a film in 2002. African-American representation in Hollywood improved drastically towards the end of the 20th century after the fall of the studio system, as filmmakers like Spike Lee and John Singleton were able to represent the African American experience like none had on screen before, whilst actors like Halle Berry and Will Smith became massively successful box office draws. In the last few decades, minority filmmakers like Ryan Coogler, Ava DuVernay and F Gary Gray have been given the creative reigns to major tentpole productions. In old Hollywood, when racial prejudices were socially acceptable, it was not uncommon for List of entertainers who performed in blackface, white actors to wear black face. In Moonlight (2016 film), Moonlight, masculinity is portrayed as rigid and aggressive, amongst the behavior of young black males in Chiron's teenage peer group. The expression of hyper-masculinity among black men has been associated with peer acceptance and community. Being a homosexual within the black community, on the other hand, has been associated with social alienation and homophobic judgement by peers because black gay men are seen as weak or effeminate. In the film, Chiron is placed in this divide as a black gay man and alters his presentation of masculinity as a strategy to avoid ridicule because homosexuality is viewed as incompatible with black masculine expectations. As young kids, Kevin hides his sexuality in order to avoid being singled out like Chiron is. As Chiron grows older, he recognizes the need to conform to a heteronormative ideal of black masculinity in order to avoid abuse and homophobia. As an adult, Chiron chooses to embrace the stereotypical black male gender performance by becoming muscular and a drug-dealer. According to Korean-American actor Daniel Dae Kim, Asian and Asian Americans, Asian American men "have been portrayed as inscrutable villains and asexualized kind of eunuchs." Seen as exceedingly polite and sumbissive. The Media Action Network for Asian Americans accused the director and studio of Whitewashing in film, whitewashing the cast of the film Aloha (2015 film), Aloha, and Crowe apologized about Emma Stone being miscast as a character who is meant to be of one quarter Chinese and one quarter Hawaiian descent. Throughout the 20th century, acting roles film were relatively few, and many available roles were narrow characters. More recently, young Asian American comedians and film-makers have found an outlet on YouTube allowing them to gain a strong and loyal fanbase among their fellow Asian Americans. Although more recently the film Crazy Rich Asians (film), Crazy Rich Asians film has been lauded in the United States for featuring a predominantly Asian cast, it was criticized elsewhere for casting Multiracial Americans, biracial and non-Chinese actors as ethnically Chinese characters. Another film Always Be My Maybe (2019 film), Always Be My Maybe who has been lauded recently takes familiar rom-com beats and cleverly layers in smart social commentary to find its own sweet groove." according to Rotten Tomatoes Before 9/11, Arabs and Arab Americans were often portrayed as terrorism, terrorists. The decision to hire Naomi Scott, in the Aladdin (2019 film), Aladdin film, the daughter of an English people, English father and a Gujarati people, Gujarati Indians in Uganda, Ugandan-Indian mother, to play the lead of Princess Jasmine, also drew criticism, as well as accusations of colorism, as some commentators expected the role to go to an actress of Arab or Middle Eastern origin. In January 2018, it was reported that white extras were being applied brown make-up during filming in order to "blend in", which caused an outcry and condemnation among fans and critics, branding the practice as "an insult to the whole industry" while accusing the producers of not recruiting people with Middle-Eastern or North African heritage. Disney responded to the controversy saying, "Diversity of our cast and background performers was a requirement and only in a handful of instances when it was a matter of specialty skills, safety and control (special effects rigs, stunt performers and handling of animals) were crew made up to blend in." The field of American comedy includes many Jews. The legacy also includes songwriters and authors, for example the author of the song "Viva Las Vegas" Doc Pomus, or Billy the Kid composer Aaron Copland. Many Jews have been at the forefront of women's issues. In the 20th century, early portrayals of Native Americans in movies and television roles were first performed by European Americans dressed in mock traditional attire. Examples included ''The Last of the Mohicans'' (1920), ''Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans'' (1957), and ''F Troop'' (1965–67). In later decades, Native American actors such as Jay Silverheels in ''The Lone Ranger#Television series, The Lone Ranger'' television series (1949–57) came to prominence. The roles of Native Americans were limited and not reflective of Native American culture. By the 1970s some Native American film roles began to show more complexity, such as those in ''Little Big Man (film), Little Big Man'' (1970), ''Billy Jack'' (1971), and ''The Outlaw Josey Wales'' (1976), which depicted Native Americans in minor supporting roles.


Working conditions

Hollywood's work flow is unique in that much of its work force doesn't report to the same factory each day, nor follow the same routine from day to day, but films at distant locations around the world, with a schedule dictated by the scenes being filmed rather than what makes the most sense for productivity. For instance, an urban film shot entirely on location at night would require the bulk of its crews to work a graveyard shift, while a situational comedy series that shoots primarily on stage with only one or two days a week on location would follow a more traditional work schedule. Westerns are often shot in desert locations far from the homes of the crew in areas with limited hotels that necessitate long drives before and after a shooting day, which take advantage of as many hours of sunlight available, ultimately requiring workers to put in 16 or 17 hours a day from the time they leave their home to the time they return. While the role of labor in America has waned in many parts of the country, the Trade union, unions have maintained a firm grip in Hollywood since their start during Great Depression when workers would line up outside the thriving movie studios looking for the only job in town. Terrible conditions awaited those workers as the studios exploited the eager workforce with meager pay and the ever present threat of the hundreds of others waiting just outside the gates to take their place if they voiced any complaints. Due to the Contingent work, casual nature of employment in Hollywood, it's only through collective bargaining can individual workers express their rights to minimum wage guarantees and access to pension & health plans that carry over from film to film or tv series to tv series, and offer the studios access to a trained workforce able to step onto a set on day one with the knowledge and experience to handle the highly technical equipment they are asked to operate. The majority of the workers in Hollywood are represented by several unions and guilds. The 150,000 member strong International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) represents most of the crafts, such as the grips, electricians, and camera people, as well as editors, sound engineers, and hair & make-up artists. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is the next largest group representing some 130,000 actors and performers, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) represents the directors and production managers, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) representing writers, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) represents the drivers. The unions and guilds serve as the collective bargaining unit for their membership, negotiating on regular intervals (most currently on 3 year contracts) with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), a trade alliance representing the film studios and television networks that hire the crews to create their content. While the relationship between labor and management has generally been amicable over the years, working together with the state to develop safe protocols to continue working during COVID-19, Covid-19 and lobbying together in favor of tax incentives, contract negotiations have been known to get contentious over changes in the industry and as a response to rising Income inequality in the United States, income inequality. The relationship even turned Hollywood Black Friday, bloody in 1945 as a six month strike by set decorators turned into a bloody melee on a sweltering October day between strikers, scabs, strikebreakers, and studio security.


See also

* :Documentary films about Hollywood, Los Angeles * :Documentary films about the cinema of the United States * :Films about Hollywood, Los Angeles * African American women in the silent film era * Lists of American films * American comedy films * American Film Institute * History of animation#History of United States animation, History of animation in the United States * History of film * List of films featuring colonialism * List of films in the public domain in the United States * Motion Picture Association of America film rating system * National Film Registry ;General * List of cinema of the world * Photography in the United States of America ** Cinema of North America


References


Notes

* * George McDonald Fraser, Fraser, George McDonald (1988). ''The Hollywood History of the World, from One Million Years B.C. to 'Apocalypse Now''. London: M. Joseph; "First US ed.", New York: Beech Tree Books. Both eds. collate thus: xix, 268 p., amply ill. (b&w photos). (U.K. ed.), 0-688-07520-7 (US ed.). * *


Further reading

* Hallett, Hilary A. ''Go West, Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013. * Ragan, David. ''Who's Who in Hollywood, 1900–1976''. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1976.i was thinking to


External links

{{Worldcinema Cinema of the United States, Industry in the United States Culture of Hollywood, Los Angeles History of the United States by topic