In its 1948 ruling, the court effectively dismantled the Hollywood studio system. In an opinion from Justice William O. Douglas, the court killed the block booking system, and recommended the breakup of the studio-theater monopolies. The justices asked the lower court to decide the issue of selling the theaters.
While they tried earlier, it would not be until 1948, with the United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. case, that the studio system would come to an end. It stated that this studio system was in violation of the nation's antitrust law, and was therefore illegal.
By the 1950s, studios could no longer afford exclusive stables of contract actors. Agents and independent casting directors began replacing the studios as Hollywood's star makers. And once formed, stars were free agents.
The Library's collections allow the researcher to study the whole of this cinematic experience, which reached its apotheosis in the studio era—a period from the 1920s to the 1950s when a handful of Hollywood companies dominated the production, distribution, and exhibition of American films.
The fact that most of the early studios still dominate the industry on a global scale underscores their capacity to adapt and survive, although they no longer control the industry to anywhere near the extent that they did from the 1920s to through the 1940s, during Hollywood's so-called classical era, when the studio ...
The studio system was challenged under the antitrust laws in a 1948 Supreme Court ruling which sought to separate production from the distribution and exhibition and ended such practices, thereby hastening the end of the studio system.
What were 2 factors that led to the decline of the studio system?
The studio system that thrived during Hollywood's Golden Age died in the 1960s. Challenges in the form of pay TV, antitrust legislation, low admissions, and censorship had worn down the studios in the previous decade.
Big Five movie studios (Paramount, Fox, Warner, RKO, and MGM) were supreme rulers of the US movie industry between the late 20s and 50s, dominating the theaters and creating around 700 movies at the height of the short movie popularity in the 1920s.
It then became characteristic of American cinema during the Golden Age of Hollywood, between roughly 1927 (with the advent of sound film) to 1969. It eventually became the most powerful and pervasive style of filmmaking worldwide.
Those who failed to make the transition to sound included Vilma Banky, Mae Murray and Norma Talmadge. Comic legend Charlie Chaplin had yet to talk on film. Roles for Rudolph Valentino's romantic rival John Gilbert dried up, Douglas Fairbanks became disillusioned and audiences avoided director D.W. Griffith's talkies.
Ealing Studios is the oldest continuously working film studio in the world, famous for classic comedies including The Ladykillers, The Lavender Hill Mob and Kind Hearts and Coronets.
Even in comparison to major releases seen today, hundreds of more films were made and released in the 1930s. Genre films were big hits, especially westerns, gangster and crime movies, and musicals. The Golden Age of Hollywood began to falter by 1948 and fully came to an end by the 1960s.
The longest film ever made, according to Guinness World Records, is "The Cure for Insomnia" (1987), directed by John Henry Timmis IV. It lasts 85 hours and is considered an extraordinary achievement in the film industry.
Biskind's book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls argues that the New Hollywood movement marked a significant shift towards independently produced and innovative works by a new wave of directors, but that this shift began to reverse itself when the commercial success of Jaws and Star Wars led to the realization by studios of ...
Origin. The original sign was erected in 1923 and originally read "HOLLYWOODLAND" to promote the name of a new housing development in the hills above the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.
William Clark Gable was an American film actor, nicknamed “The King of Hollywood” in his heyday. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Gable seventh among the greatest male stars of all time.
The Black Maria, Edison's first motion picture studio. A constant flow of new film subjects was needed to keep the new invention popular, so a motion picture production studio was built at West Orange in December 1892. It was dubbed the Black Maria on account of its resemblance to a police patrol wagon.
The 1960s saw the rise of New Hollywood, with the entertainment industry drifting away from the antiquated studio system, as audiences flocked to films from a variety of genres (sci-fi, horror, Spaghetti Westerns, superspy) while still showing up in droves for more traditional entertainment like epics, musicals, comedy ...
“The Hays Code was this self-imposed industry set of guidelines for all the motion pictures that were released between 1934 and 1968,” says O'Brien. “The code prohibited profanity, suggestive nudity, graphic or realistic violence, sexual persuasions and rape.
