The Rise and Demise of a Developmental State Studio

This chapter introduces five motion picture studios that stood out in Asia at the beginning of the 1960s, such as Shin Films in South Korea, GMP and CMPC in Taiwan, and Shaw Brothers and MP&GI in Hong Kong and Singapore. It examines how film studios in the region aspired to implement the rationalized and industrialized system of mass-producing motion pictures known as the Hollywood studio system. It also explains that the Hollywood studio system evolved in the United States to handle film production, distribution, and exhibition during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The chapter recounts how the studio system became a highly efficient system that produced feature films, newsreels, animations, and shorts to supply its mass-produced motion pictures to subsidized theaters. It describes Fordism as the famous American system of mass production with particular American circumstances.

Oscar Is a Man: Sexism and the Academy Awards

This study analyzes the implicit bias of the Academy Awards and Oscar’s historic lack of gender equity. While there are awards for Best Actor and Actress, a comparative analysis of these awards and the Best Picture prize reveals that a man is more than twice as likely as a woman to receive an Oscar for leading work in a Best Picture. A man is also nearly twice as likely to be nominated as a leading performer in a Best Picture winner. Supporting women in Best Pictures fare a bit better with actual trophies, but, when considering nominations, a man is still more than oneand-a-half times as likely as a woman to be nominated for a supporting performance in a Best Picture winner. This research considers these factors, identifies potential reasons for them, and draws conclusions regarding the decades of gender bias in the Academy Awards. Further, this study investigates the dissolution of the Hollywood studio system and how, though brought on in part by two of the film industry’s leading ladies, the crumbling of that system ultimately hurt the industry’s women more than its men. Keywords: Oscars, Academy Awards, sexism, gender inequity, Best Picture.

Chapter 6

In December 1931, Archie Leach became Cary Grant when he signed a contract with Paramount Studios in Hollywood. This chapter explores the legends behind his star origins, including his reasons for going to Hollywood, his first screen test, and how his new name was chosen. The chapter discusses the nature of the Hollywood studio system generally and Paramount in particular. It reveals that Grant took acting classes alongside Randolph Scott and George Raft at Paramount’s own drama school, and that this training scarcely prepared him for his earliest film roles in This is the Night (1932), Sinners in the Sun (1932), Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), and Devil and the Deep (1932).

A Graveyard for Lunatics

Chapter 27 describes the development and publication of A Graveyard for Lunatics, Bradbury’s second exercise in sustained autobiographical fiction within a five-year span. If Death Is a Lonely Business had explored the late 1940s moment when he overcame his fear of losing his creativity, A Graveyard for Lunatics focused on the period in the 1950s and early 1960s when he realized that he must not be swallowed up by his love of writing for Hollywood. Bradbury knew that he would lose all the future stories he would ever write if he assumed the secure but anonymous life of a screenwriter, working only with the works of other writers. The resulting fantasy offered an effective satire of the Hollywood studio system.

Falling Star

This chapter dissects the demise of the Hollywood studio system, caused by several factors including the incursion of television. Warner Bros.’ legendary music department became, to quote Steiner, “a ghost town”; Max was among the few composers remaining on staff. Amid constant pressure to economize, Steiner continued to do fine work. He earned Ayn Rand’s praise for his musical depiction of nonconformity in The Fountainhead, created incendiary accompaniment for James Cagney’s valedictory gangster film White Heat; and devised an evocative “glass effect in music” for The Glass Menagerie. “Steiner has written a beautiful score,” Tennessee Williams wrote Jack Warner, “one that blends perfectly with the moods of the play.” Steiner also innovated as musical supervisor of the stereo-surround blockbuster This Is Cinerama, whose panoramic image foreshadowed IMAX. But most of his assignments were cheap, forgettable programmers, and his battles with Louise over Ronald grew increasingly bitter.

Indian Summer

This chapter depicts Steiner at the apex of his powers, just before the collapse of the Hollywood studio system. Between 1947 and 1948 Steiner composed several brilliant scores and at least three of his finest: for John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Jean Negulesco’s Johnny Belinda (which earned Jane Wyman a Best Actress Oscar), and Adventures of Don Juan, starring Errol Flynn in his last big-budget swashbuckler. Don Juan demonstrates the transformative power of film music: during production, the alcoholic Flynn could barely stand. But Steiner’s exuberant, lyrical, and witty score convinced audiences that Flynn remained a larger-than-life hero. In 1947, Steiner married Lee Blair, who would remain a devoted companion to the end of Max’s life. Steiner also lavished son Ronald with expensive gifts—giving the boy everything except what he wanted most: time with his father.

Hollywood Regionalism

In her sixty years on earth, Gene Stratton-Porter was many things: a women's club organizer, nature photographer, naturalist, conservationist, best-selling novelist, and a burgeoning film producer who died just as her film studio began to realize her mission of adapting her novels into movies that could further her education and conservation efforts. By 1960, eight of her books had been turned into twenty-one films—silent and sound, black and white and color, from Poverty Row studios to members of the Big Five. This article examines how Stratton-Porter and others translated her regionalism and conservationism to film across a span of forty-three years that saw major revolutions in Hollywood filmmaking. The Hollywood studio system, I argue, appropriated her successful brand of regionalism and her audience of women's club members, while also augmenting her problematically genteel mode of activism.