The 1950s Blacklist Made Hollywood Out of Touch by Kneecapping Working-Class Cinema. Hollywood is often portrayed as a haven of elitist liberalism. To the extent that's true, it's partly because the Hollywood blacklist made it so difficult to produce working-class movies like the 1954 classic Salt of the Earth .
Hollywood in the 1950s was an industry in decline, even while it produced some of the strongest films of its history. With the rise of independent productions, the competition of TV, and major shifts in the social fabric, American cinema was dramatically changed during this decade.
But television was, by all accounts, the key factor in the steady decline of American film audiences in the 1950s. By 1 January 1950 there were 98 commercial VHF television stations in the United States, by 1954 there were 233, by 1960 there were 440.
What was the greatest challenge to the movie industry in the 1950s?
By far the greatest challenge to Hollywood, however, came from the relatively new medium of television. Although the technology had been developed in the late 1920s, through much of the 1940s only a fairly small, wealthy audience had access to it. As a result, programming had been limited.
Which problems was the movie industry facing in the 1950s?
It was hard for them to change, but the new conditions of the period made change imperative4. The biggest problem facing the movie industry in the 1950s was television. As sales of TV sets increased, more and more Americans stayed at home—and away from cinemas.
The first was the birth of the Cold War, and the great fears that it created. The second was the dramatic growth of affluence, which transformed the lives of many, but not all, Americans. The third was a growing anxiety among many Americans who felt that their lives were too constricted by the staid culture of the era.
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.
What has a significant impact on Hollywood in the 1950s?
The importance of television for the film industry during the 1950s cannot be overstated. It has been argued that television was the primary factor affecting the dramatic plunge in ticket sales, box-office receipts, and company profits in Hollywood between 1947 and 1957 (see Chapter 1).
Television had become big competition and in the 1950's movie studios wanted to get people back into theaters. They made big movies with high production values, such as The Ten Commandments in 1956 and Ben Hur in 1959.
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.
During the decade, small businesses started and grew, while major corporations were merging, thus becoming larger, more profitable, and more powerful. Companies big and small needed workers, both skilled and unskilled, to manage their assets, work their assembly lines, or sell their products to the public.
Why were film makers in the 1950s blacklisted in Hollywood?
During this period, blacklists became particularly prominent in the industries investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for possible links to the Communist Party of the United States, most notably Hollywood film making. HUAC was seeking to purge the country of any communist influences.
The New Wave (in French, La Nouvelle Vague) is a film movement that rose to popularity in the late 1950s in Paris, France. The movement aimed to give directors full creative control over their work, allowing them to eschew overwrought narrative in favor of improvisational, existential storytelling.
As a result of the introduction of television, the studios and companies sought to put audiences back in theaters. They used more techniques in presenting their films through widescreen and big-approach methods, such as Cinemascope, VistaVision, and Cinerama, as well as gimmicks like 3-D film.
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.
What were some of the characteristics of film in the 1950s?
Not coincidentally, the 1950s were the first decade of drive-in movie theaters, stereo sound, wide-screen formats, epics shot in glossy color, and a full gamut of movie ballyhoo such as 3-D film technology.
Samson and Delilah, released December 1949, Kim (1950) Ten Tall Men (1951), David and Bathsheba (1951), Salome (1953), Son of Sinbad (1955) and Solomon and Sheba (1959) starred musclebound men and beautiful women in skimpy outfits that ingeniously passed the censors.
But the real “savior” of the industry was the introduction of 3-D, wide screens, and stereophonic sound technologies. Cinerama Corp. showed distribution executives its innovative curved-screen technology for the first time on May 6, 1950, after 13 years of development.
What challenges did Hollywood face in the 1950s select two answers?
What challenges did Hollywood face in the 1950's? Antitrust lawsuits deprived studios of their theaters, and the careers of many actors, directors, and screenwriters were destroyed by Senator McCarthy's blacklist of suspected Communists.
The Golden Age of Hollywood was a time period in the American film industry like no other. Starting just before the Great Depression in roughly 1927 and lasting through the entirety of the '60s, the Golden Age was a period of technical advancement and superb storytelling in Hollywood.
Hollywood had become the centre of the American film industry by 1915 as more independent filmmakers relocated there from the East Coast. For more than three decades, from early silent films through the advent of “talkies,” figures such as D.W. Griffith, Goldwyn, Adolph Zukor, William Fox, Louis B.
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.
Daeida Wilcox gave Hollywood its name. She was the wife of Harvey Wilcox, who owned the area and in 1887 submitted a subdivision map to the Los Angeles county recorder's office that used the name.
There are two theories on how it got its name. One theory points to the lush holly trees widespread in the area. Another suggests it was originally Holy Wood after St Kevin passed through in the 6th century on his way to found the monastic city in nearby Glendalough.
