Acting

The fourth chapter exposes the experience of screen players and particularly of movie stars. It shows how famous actors such as Clark Gable, Katherine Hepburn, and Joan Crawford were subjected to two seemingly contradictory types of management. On the one hand, together with film extras, character actors, and other creative talent, stars were treated as regimented employees, bound by draconian contracts, which essentially alienated them from their labor. On the other hand, they were safeguarded by the studios, pampered with exorbitant salaries and a network of professionals, who worked day and night in order to make them look and sounds good. The aim of both kinds of treatment was to bind the star to the studio and prevent him or her from ever attempting to cash in on their marketable persona on their own.

Producing

The first chapter concentrates on a small group of men employed as studio head-producers. It argues that they were the Henry Fords of the industry, responsible for turning Hollywood into an effective modern entertainment machine. People like Irving Thalberg, David O. Selznick, and Darryl Zanuck arrived on the scene in the early 1920s and successfully reshaped the studio from an informal workplace to a well-thought-out operation with function-specific divisions and tasks. Their newly fashioned Hollywood lots served as intermediary spaces, accommodating the demands of profit seeking corporate executives as well as artists. The chapter shows how, on a day-to-day basis, head producers translated the demands and visions of each group to the other. It demonstrates how these producers served as brokers, embodying the contradictions of the system while closely supervising the production process of every picture and the studio as a whole.

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the main themes of the book. It explains Working in Hollywood’s main objective: to redraw the glamorous image of Hollywood and demonstrate that the film industry’s golden age (1920-1950) was not only defined by film content and celebrities but also by the people employed in the studio system, their work practices, and interactions on the job. It suggests there is much to learn by shifting our gaze from the pictures to the people who made them. In addition, the chapter offers a short timeline of the studio system, from the formation of Paramount, MGM, Twentieth Century-Fox, and RKO – the five vertically integrated major companies, in the 1920s, to the system’s disintegration in the 1950s.

Bargaining

The sixth chapter recounts the history of Hollywood collective bargaining. On a day-to-day basis, the American motion picture industry relied on its ability to balance a modern, rationalized production operation with a more unstructured creative process. However, in times of crisis, when the harmony was interrupted, the creative element was often surrendered. During the 1930s, the presidency of FDR, his New Deal policies, and the empowerment of organized labor throughout the U.S. had a significant influence on Hollywood. The chapter focuses on the rise of the Screen Writers Guild, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Screen Directors Guild, their struggles, the way they chose to pursue them, and the attitude embraced towards them by studio management. However, as is shown, while they borrowed tactics from industrial unions and appealed to the National Labor Relations Board, Hollywood creative employees aligned with traditional industrial labor causes only as long as it served their immediate goals.

Shooting

The fifth chapter deals with the experience of those who are commonly known as craftsmen or below-the-line workers. It suggests that the division between arts and crafts in the film industry resulted from the history of labor organization and the political struggles between labor unions such as IATSE and the American Society of Cinematographers. In addition, focusing on the experience of cameramen, the chapter demonstrate that workers in the technical branches of filmmaking, were concerned less with control and more with recognition. It shows how directors of photography sought to claim some of the respect and artistic stature accorded to directors and screenwriters. Thus, they struggled to form a tighter bond between the creative status of the film industry and the more traditional craft or technical work they introduced into it.

Disintegrating

The final chapter follows the decline of the studio system. Toward the late 1940s, political and economic factors such as the rise of television and changes in the tax code, pushed film production away from the studio system and towards a system based more and more on “spot production” or separate deals. Furthermore, the Paramount decision handed down by the Supreme Court ended vertical integration and eroded the power of the major film companies. Changes in labor practices followed, as demonstrated by the career of actors like Gino Corrado and producers like Hal Wallis. As the “stock-company” model ended, and the number of long-term contracts declined, new forces, particularly talent agents such as Lew Wasserman became the power brokers of the new Hollywood.

Directing

The third chapter explains how directors came to be associated with film authorship. Filmmakers were indeed accorded a level of autonomy and responsibility that was unique in industry terms. This autonomy, however, was limited to the shooting portion of the production process. In other words, directors, even so-called auteurs like George Cukor or William Wyler, had no say over scriptwriting or the editing of the picture. Furthermore, directorial autonomy, the chapter argues, was the product of economic expediency rather than of respect for artistic freedom. In fact, in order to maintain a studio career, directors had to prove they were worthy of this autonomy. They had to demonstrate their conformity and commitment to the studio’s material concerns.

Writing

Wordsmiths were torn between their desire for the creative control traditionally enjoyed by authors and the available economic security offered by working for the movies and writing scripts. Their story is a story of assimilation. When Hollywood entered the sound era a flock of writers, including Charles Brackett and Samson Raphaelson, emigrated to the city and to the world of motion pictures from other fields of writing such as theater and magazines. They oscillated between creative worlds, between East Coast and West Coast, and their previous experience shaped their response and interaction within the studios. The chapter demonstrates that while contending with an ignoble division of labor, which all but shattered the once respected authorial voice, screenwriters also carried with them some of the cultural capital and legitimacy of the more established worlds they came from.