Wong 1 Raechel Wong COSF 186 Professor Govil January 23rd, 2011 The History of Hollywood's Studio SystemStarring:

Technology Scholar Tom Schatz writes that from the 20's to the 40's the Hollywood studio system referred both to a factory-based mode of film production and also, crucially, to the vertical integration of production, distribution and exhibition (Schatz 15). The Hollywood studio system was comprised of The Big Five and three minor studios (or the Big Eight) and functioned as an oligopoly; these studios controlled massive proportions of the global film industry revenue, each producing and controlling the fate of their own films, players and theatres by contracts (Schatz 15). With so many changes and factors, is there an aspect of the Hollywood studio system that can be traced from its beginning to its end? While the history of the studio system is intricate and involves many moving pieces, one can follow the timeline with various technologies that provoked the system to grow, to an extent that technology has played a part in the rise, growth and fall of the studio system. The studio system began it's development in the 1910's and saw its decline in 1948 during this period, the technologies that came about perpetuated the forward motion of the studio system as well as its dismissal (Gomery 247). Several factors led to the studio systems rise; Gomery writes that the invention of sound technology in films brought film making into the studio and delivered the world market of cinema to Hollywood's doorstep (Gomery 247). Sklar's wealth of knowledge on the advent of talkies within historical context sheds much insight on Hollywood's domination of the global movie market. Sklar pays homage to the truth of the plot behind Singin' in the Rain but ultimately says that the crucial changes caused by the spoken word had to do not with the players but with the technology of moviemaking (Sklar 154). The simplicity of the silent era was over and the reign of the talkie brought about a hefty obstacle of revolutionising the industry. Massive changes in the production

Wong 2 and exhibition scenes were required; studios overhauled their sets by building soundproof stages and rigged their theatres with sound equipment (Sklar 154). Sound was united with picture at the same time that Soviet silents (such as Eisenstein's Potemkin) began to trump American ones with their aesthetic and political standards (Sklar 156). The advent of sound technology returned the attention of film-lovers to the US by recapturing the centre stage by a technological counterrevolution that reformulated the elements of cinema expression and gave new vitality and validity to the familiar mode of capitalist commercial cinema (Sklar 156). Of course, with the new technology, came new challenges from the government; how to censor films became a difficult task because sound was recorded on a disc that could not be edited (Sklar 154). As a result, a new Production Code was launched in the 30's and internal selfcensorship imposed by Will Hays was made known (Sklar 154). Lastly, but certainly not least, sound technology helped to further solidify another main aspect of the studio system's rise: vertical integration. Sklar writes that sound forced movie moguls into a new realm of industrial and financial enterprise; because sound was not yet part of the film industry, there was room for further mergers (Sklar 156). Radio Corporation of America, who created a sound system for the film industry took over a studio and an exhibition company to create RKO (Sklar 156). The ability of studios to own exhibition ventures solidified their control over the movie marketplace (Gomery 247). Schatz writes that the vertical integration (the combination of production, distribution and exhibition, all controlled by one studio) that took place in the 20's allowed the studio system to form into a mature oligopoly by the 30's (Schatz 15). During the Great Depression and the second World War, the studio system sailed on in its monopolistic form, utilising it's contract system that kept a hand-picked labour force within the family of the studio (Schatz 15). Vertical integration and subcontracting kept funds, profits and talent within the studio. Vertical integration often happened as a result of mergers between companies that were already experienced in their specialities, which is how the 3-step dance of production, distribution and exhibition functioned so well.

Wong 3 How the studio system functioned was also dependent on technology on an international scale; because film was made in a universal format, Hollywood films could cross the globe with few problems. The other basic elements of Hollywood's studio system consisted of a bi-coastal industry, vertical integration, a rationalisation of system and the volatility between the various divisions of labour. Finance and management took place in New York while filming and production took place in Los Angeles (Schatz 15). Within the studio, production, distribution and exhibition was all executed. One of the facets of vertical integration was block-booking, which helped the Big Eight studios (which included MGM, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Paramount, RKO, Universal, Columbia and United Artists) take over the national and global market; in response,foreign countries tried to set up production quotas to boost their own film industry (Sklar 215). These quotas were obstacles to American studios, but they were able to work around the system by sending their own producers to foreign studios to shoot quota quickies (Sklar 220). The rationalisation of the studio system involved the management and creation of line-byline budgets, the division of labour and breakdown schedules that included scripts to work off of. The system's rationalisation allowed for stricter finance control, efficiency, and it allowed management to scrutinise every point of spending and production. In terms of the tension between the various divisions of labour, stars began to negotiate their salaries with studios after it was realised that stars were a hefty benefactor for sales. Before the studio system fully emerged, reformers reared their heads at any point in cinema that felt uncouth or needed censorship, making it essential for stars to maintain a moral lifestyle to project the social health of the cinema (Peiss 162). As a result of this need for stars to play off regulations, audiences began to fall in love with particular players, creating fan bases and demand for these stars (de Cordova 102). The demand reshaped the star as a commodity and studios had to adjust for the creation of this new market by utilising their players as a chief means of product differentiation (de Cordova 112). Despite the continual additions to the studio system's buoyancy, several changes were to come, both technology-oriented and non-technology-oriented, that would that would collapse the entertainment

Wong 4 empire that was built in in the first half of the 20th century. Gomery sums up the fall of the Hollywood studio system into three main points: the rise of television, the Paramount antitrust decrees and suburbanisation of the US and the baby boom (Gomery 247). The innovation and spread of television was triggered by the baby-boom and suburbanisation of the US, which was in turn propelled by sustained economic prosperity and wholesale changes in postwar American lifestyles (Schatz 16). TelevisionAmerica's [new] dominant form of habituated, mass-media narrative entertainmentpulled entertainment into the private sphere and cinema began to suffer (Schatz 16). Technological innovation was a direct response to threats of television technology: new innovations like smell-o-vision, 3D, and cinevision were responses to the rise of television, to draw audiences back to the cinema. Though this was an obstacle for studios, not all studios saw it as such; smaller, independent studios took advantage of television as a new exhibition platform. The larger studios saw the profit made from television and pushed their back catalogue films to television. Another major strike that added to the collapse of the studio system was the Paramount antitrust decree. Independent film companies and the government had kept their lawsuits and eyes on Hollywood's studio system and saw its tremendous power as a national industry and a global player. The Supreme Court decided it was time to put a stop to the studio system's reign. The Paramount decree prevented studios from being able to hold their own exhibition interests and the new industrial regulations forced studios to sell their picture palaces (Gomery 247). The decree also prohibited the collusive trade practices that were crucial to the studios' control of the motion-picture marketplace (Schatz 16). By the 70's, Hollywood backtracked to its old form when production, distribution and exhibition were separate affairs (Sklar 290). In the 70's, the Hollywood corporations turned into media conglomerates, which were involved in more forms of media than just film; they incorporated music, magazines, books, newspapers and the like into their repertoire (Gomery 250). Disneyland, for example, includes all of the above and even has utilised a theme park as part of its conglomeration. Hollywood

Wong 5 blockbusters like Jaws opened up a new opportunity for studios; these films were quickly paced with high budgets and massive nationwide releases (Gomery 249). Thanks to the advent of television, the blockbuster was heavily advertised and raked in audiences and huge profits. The culture of film also remained reliant on stars at the helm as tent-pole productions hit the theatres. Today's system of conglomerate-Hollywood mirrors the studio system closely in that the majority of the revenue from film goes to a few large conglomerates (Schatz 25). Through the history of the studio system, technology always had a role, whether it was the star, the supporting actor or even the player with a just cameo. Though the studio system may be long gone, the oligopoly seems very much alive: the six media conglomerates which dominate contemporary Hollywood now possess a power and cohesion against which the oligopoly of the Hollywood studios during the 1930's and 1940's simply pales in comparison (Gomery 252). Gomery writes that today, Hollywood as an industry has also continued to redefine itself, principally by adding to its technological bag of tricks (Gomery 249). It is arguable that it is the new technological platforms by which we watch films that define the era of contemporary cinema, just as technologies in the past defined the history of the Hollywood studio system (Gomery 250).

Works Cited 1DeCordova, Richard. Picture Personalities: the Emergence of the Star System in America. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1990. Print.

Wong 6 2Gomery, Douglas. "Hollywood as Industry." American Cinema and Hollywood: Critical Approaches. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 245-54. Print. 3Peiss, Kathy Lee. "Cheap Theatre and the Nickel Dumps." Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1986. 13962. Print. 4Schatz, Tom. "The Studio System and Conglomerate Hollywood." The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2008. 13-42. Print. 5Sklar, Robert. Movie-made America: a Social History of American Movies. New York: Random House, 1975. Print.