5. The blacklist and the Cold War

Hollywood’s foray into politics during World War II had major repercussions in the postwar period. It led to standoffs with conservative factions in Congress, it fractured the Hollywood community, and prompted the studios to take extreme actions to win back American moviegoers. ‘The blacklist and the Cold War’ considers the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which rode a wave of anti-communism and renewed the offensive against Hollywood. The Hollywood Ten, a group of unfriendly witnesses who stood up for their First Amendment rights and refused to incriminate others, were blacklisted and lost the opportunity to work in Hollywood. The Cold War films from 1942–1953 about the “red menace” of communism are also discussed.

3. Sound and the Production Code

Despite studio heads’ best efforts to manage risk and build consistency into the studio system, they could never stave off disruptions for very long. There is always a new cultural, aesthetic, or technological change on the horizon. The studios have not always responded to these disruptions in the same way, yet Hollywood has consistently managed to adjust to new circumstances. And in almost every instance, the studio system has emerged stronger than it was before the change. ‘Sound and the Production Code’ outlines the challenges of new technology, such as synchronized sound; the Great Depression; and the introduction of the Production Code, a form of self-regulation and standardization for the industry.

2. The studio system

Carl Laemmle, Adolph Zukor, William Fox, and the other independents overthrew the Trust only to form their own closely linked group of industry power brokers. ‘The studio system’ describes how the independents moved to California and founded the Hollywood studios, including Universal, Paramount, and Fox. They brought in the stars system and created order through genres. Ever since, Hollywood has been dominated by around eight companies, although the ranks of the major studios have been shuffled many times. Much like the Trust, the Hollywood studios set out to standardize the industry through corporate control and risk management strategies. But Hollywood has proven to be more resilient than Edison and his partners.

6. The New Hollywood

After World War II, the Hollywood studio system entered a period of major transformation, and by the late 1960s a New Hollywood emerged. ‘The New Hollywood’ outlines some of the influences that remade Hollywood: Americans’ postwar flight to the suburbs and widespread adoption of television; the rise of the 1960s counterculture; the resolution of the ongoing antitrust case against the studios; the popularity of foreign films in the US; and the passing away of the original studio moguls to usher in a new wave of industry leaders. With pressure from all sides, the factory-like studios of Hollywood’s Golden Age morphed into multimedia conglomerates focused first on making personal films and later auteur-driven blockbusters.

4. Hollywood at war

Once the U.S. entered World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Bureau of Motion Pictures and a number of additional offices and agencies designed to leverage Hollywood as part of the war effort. ‘Hollywood at war’ describes how the film studios signed on to help fight the war. Even beyond direct government work, Hollywood contributed to the larger war effort by making patriotic films, raising money for war bonds, and entertaining troops. It has been estimated that as much as one-third of Hollywood production during the war directly bolstered America’s wartime activities, and, not coincidentally, it was also one of the most profitable stretches in Hollywood’s history.

1. Before Hollywood

‘Before Hollywood’ describes how early film technology and storytelling methods developed out of older media. It begins with Thomas Edison’s Vitascope and the first dedicated movie theaters—nickelodeons—which began to appear around 1903. Around 1908–9, filmmaking and the film industry underwent a number of changes: established film companies started to court a middle-class audience in order to expand the industry’s reach; production companies made films based on novels and Broadway plays; and stories began to be told in new ways. The creation of the trust, Motion Picture Patents Company, in 1908 and the rise of independents saw a restructuring of the American film industry.

7. Home video and Indiewood

‘Home video and Indiewood’ describes how in the 1970s and 1980s home video took Hollywood by surprise. The industry took time adjusting to the changes wrought by the new medium, but in the end, home video opened up new aesthetic possibilities for filmmakers, it gave viewers more options, and it increased Hollywood’s profits. Hollywood has consistently been challenged by independent film movements. By the mid-1990s, the independent film movement had developed into a mirror of the studio system, with its own auteurs, storytelling formulas, and marketing techniques. The lines between Hollywood and the indie world began to blur, creating what some have called Indiewood. Once again, Hollywood successfully absorbed its competition.

Introduction. Five theses on the history of Hollywood

The main focus of this VSI is on the big picture: the adoption of new technologies, responses to competition from independent filmmakers, and the impact of the political and cultural tumult of Hollywood’s first century. The ‘Introduction’ outlines five key observations about how and why Hollywood has developed: Hollywood is not a natural thing—it has been shaped by historical, cultural, economic, and political forces; making movies is a risky business; Hollywood has always been a global business; movies have always been one medium in a chain of “transmedia” storytelling and consumption; and Hollywood is in a state of constant change and perpetual crisis, but has become more powerful.

8. Digital cinema and the internet

The incorporation of digital images into film and television is as much a revolution as sound, color, or widescreen cinema. And as competition from small and international media companies has increased, Hollywood has invested more and more in Computer Generated Images (CGI) blockbusters. ‘Digital cinema and the Internet’ discusses the rise of CGI in movies and how the internet unsettled Hollywood at its foundation. The internet brought another epochal change, undoing the broadcast model’s one-to-many distribution system and returning interactivity, local participation, and a many-to-many model of cultural exchange. Hollywood has reacted to rather than led this change, but the studio system has also adapted triumphantly to the age of media convergence and participation.