Hollywood Divided

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Brianton
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Film History ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Film ◽  
History And Criticism ◽  
Conservative Group ◽  
Revisionist History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Loyalty Oath ◽  
American Film Industry

The Screen Directors Guild (SDG) meeting of October 22, 1950, was convened to discuss the recall (dismissal) of the director Joseph L. Mankiewicz as Guild president by a conservative group headed by Cecil B. DeMille. The recall was an attempt by this group to stamp out a series of member protests about introducing a mandatory anti-Communist loyalty oath through an open and signed ballot. The loyalty oath was partly designed to introduce a union-sanctioned blacklist at the Guild. These issues divided the allegiances of the Guild and its board and were related to the political tensions extending from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigation into Communism in the American film industry in 1947. The SDG meeting of 1950 is one of the most famous meetings in Hollywood history. It has been written about and referenced in many books on film history and criticism and described as one of the great symbolic events in Hollywood political history. While the coverage has been extensive, it has also been misinterpreted and misunderstood. Indeed, what passes for history is actually a wildly inaccurate account based on partisan sources. This book is a revisionist history of the meeting and the loyalty oath issue.

American Women Screenwriters in the 1920s

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuliana Muscio
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Film History ◽  
World Market ◽  
Narrative Construction ◽  
American Film ◽  
Social Force ◽  
American Women ◽  
Consumer Capitalism ◽  
American Film Industry ◽  
Classical Hollywood

This chapter contextualizes the work of American women scriptwriters within the gendered liberalization of an emerging consumer capitalism during the 1920s. More specifically, it examines the major role played by women writers in the American film industry of the period to the development of “classical Hollywood narrative,” both as a social force and a form of storytelling. It suggests that women screenwriters contributed to the maturation of narrative construction—from its origins to the introduction of sound, when Hollywood completed the conquest of the world market. In addition to significantly contributing to film history, American women screenwriters played a crucial role in modernizing society, not only through the stories they wrote but also through their very presence in Hollywood.

Hollywood

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Wierzbicki
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
American Film ◽  
World War ◽  
Stock Market Crash ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Film Industry ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter explores one of the ironies that color the history of the American film industry—the fact that its most glorious years, in terms of profitability, were those during which the entire nation struggled desperately to pull itself out of the depths of the Great Depression. Hollywood was as hard hit as any other industry by the stock market crash of 1929. But the captains of the film industry took advantage of several of the “New Deal” offers extended in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Owing in part to smart business practices and in large part to an audience desperately in need of inexpensive escapist entertainment, the American film industry after 1933 thrived on a circle of economic dependence on attendance, exhibition, and production; only after World War II did the circle reverse itself and turn vicious.

American Film Industry in World War I Period

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (5) ◽  
pp. 52-68
Author(s):  
Filipp Kovtonyuk
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Film ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Film Market ◽  
American Film Industry

The paper deals with the history of economic development of the film industry in the United States during the First World War. The beginning of XX century seems to be a very special stage of cinema development, in particular from the point of the history of national economy, since exactly at this time took place a formation of the world film market, and cinema for the first time was used not only as a commodity but also as an instrument of mass propaganda. The purpose of article is to trace the development of the American film business and its key aspects in the early XX century and during the war, based on the analysis of the relevant literature. Film industry is considered as a system of production, distribution and exhibition of audiovisual products. This article contains the conclusions concerning the global expansion of the US film industry in a specified period. Also substantiated the fact that the middle 1900s became an extremely important period in the development of the American film industry, during which the basics of the classical Hollywood business model were established.

Blind Trust: Market Control, Legal Environments, and the Dynamics of Competitive Intensity in the Early American Film Industry, 1893–1920

2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Mezias ◽  
Elizabeth Boyle
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
American Film ◽  
Market Control ◽  
Early American ◽  
Short Films ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Trust Law ◽  
American Film Industry ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Mortality Analysis

This study of the emergence of the film industry in the U.S. between 1893 and 1920 contributes to the growing literature linking legal environments and population dynamics. This was an era characterized by a shift to active anti-trust policy, which manifested itself in legal action to disband a trust that had dominated the industry, the Motion Pictures Patents Corporation (MPPC). We use archival data to show that mortality was reduced by trust membership and increased with the market share of the trust members. The effects of litigation are varied, with litigation filed by trust members enhancing mortality and litigation filed against trust members decreasing mortality. Analysis of coded headlines from media reports on the emerging industry shows that a shift in the view of the trust in the normative environment toward a more negative view was also associated with decreased mortality. Results also show that learning and the compensatory fitness enjoyed before anti-trust law was enforced prevented the MPPC members from recognizing changes in the marketplace; as a result, they were less likely to move from making short films to making increasingly popular feature-length films.

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