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The Movie Industry in Hollywood

When motion picture technology first developed around the turn of the 20^th century, America lagged behind Germany, France, and Italy.  World War I changed all that, disrupting the European film industry, and offering an opening to Americans.  By the 1920s, ¾ of all the films produced in the world were American, and the center for American filmmaking was Hollywood.

It had not always been so.  Thomas Edison had led the way in developing motion picture technology in America, and the first studios were in New York, New Jersey, and Chicago.  In 1910, however, the groundbreaking director D.W. Griffith began wintering in southern California, and soon he moved there full-time, to be followed by many others.  Filmmakers were attracted by Los Angeles’ weather, which allowed year-round shooting, by the varied geography of the region, which offered many possibilities for location shoots, and by the lack of competition from other performing arts.  Los Angeles, and particularly Hollywood, became a Movie Town.

The Studio System.

By the 1920s, the studio system had developed in Hollywood.  Essentially a monopoly, studios signed actors and directors to long-term contracts, and then assigned them to projects as they saw fit.  The studios then controlled the distribution of those films, and also owned the theaters in which they were shown.  RKO, Loews (later MGM) Warner Bros., Fox, and Paramount were the big studios in ‘20s Hollywood.  Universal, Columbia, and United Artists were also major players, but because they did not own theaters like the big five, they had less influence.

United Artists.

It’s worth talking for a moment about United Artists, since two of the United Artists will be played in the game (Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford).  Feeling constrained by the studio system, and wishing more latitude in choosing their own projects, a group of silent film stars, including Fairbanks, Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin, formed their own production company in the early ‘20s, called United Artists, for the “artists” who had “united” to found the  studio.  The box-office clout of big names like Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Pickford made the move possible, but UA soon began to act like any other studio, signing young talent to long-term deals and dictating the pictures in which they would be involved.  The big-name founders, now producers in their own right, did indeed have more latitude, but for the bit player or career character actor, there was little difference.

Talkies and Censorship

In 1927, the first motion picture with sound was released (The Jazz Singer).  This had several important consequences for the movie industry.  Firstly, many gorgeous but squeaky-voiced actors found themselves in danger of being out of work.  Broadway actors with experience delivering lines were brought in to Hollywood in record numbers.  Playwrights as well were brought in to write dialogue. 

The prospect of words to complement images on the screen gave added energy to those who wished to censor the content of motion pictures.  There had always been local censorship boards, but increasingly Hollywood was feeling the pressure to regulate itself.  Will Hays, in his capacity as head of the movie distributors organization, began to preach that “good morals is good business”.  The Hays commission would eventually establish guidelines for film content, but in 1928, this is still only a dark cloud on the horizon, albeit one the players will certainly wish to heed!