The Domination of the Studio System THE 1930’S CONTINUED

MAJOR STUDIOS (5) The American film industry was dominated by five major corporate-style studios in the 1930s (and into the 40s). Some of them had originally rebelled against the MPPA (Motion Picture Patents Company) The Hollywood studios with their escapist "dream factories" and their "Front Office" studio head, production chief, producers, and other assistants, were totally in control and at full strength.

MAJOR STUDIOS (5) 20th Century Fox (1935) MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) [1924] Paramount (1912) Warner Bros. (1923) RKO Radio (1928)

THREE OTHER MINOR STUDIOS Columbia (1924) – Still around today Universal (1912) – Still around today United Artists (1919) – Still around today

THE DECLINE The beginning of the decline of the major studio system in the late 30s was signaled by various aggressive producers who split off and became independent. For example, David Selznick resigned from MGM in 1935 and established his own independent company - Selznick International Pictures. As an independent producer, David O. Selznick served as a "one-man" film industry with tremendous authority and power over the selection of stars and decisions of directors.

MGM DOMINATED THE 30’S The 'star system' flourished with each studio having its own valuable 'properties', and Irving Thalberg was responsible for promoting MGM's stars like no other. The 30s was the age of lavish glamour and sex appeal, and MGM became the biggest, most predominant and most star-studded studio of all, making it "The Home of the Stars." It promised "more stars than there are in heaven," and brought Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy films to the screen. And the studio also had high quality productions due to its great craftsmen, including King Vidor, Victor Fleming, and George Cukor. One of its greatest early hits was the star-driven, profitable Best Film-winning Grand Hotel (1932), set in an opulent hotel in Berlin with extravagant art direction by Cedric Gibbon. Also produced Wizard of Oz, and Gone with the Wind.

OTHER STUDIO NOTES 20th Century Fox was known for its musicals (especially in the 40s with Betty Grable), and prestige biographies (such as Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)). Fox Studios also capitalized on its association with Shirley Temple after the mid-30s - singlehandedly, she made over $20 million for Fox in the late 30s. RKO was the locale for the first films of Orson Welles (Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)), the sophisticated dance films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, comedies, and its seminal monster film King Kong (1933). Universal prospered with noted director Tod Browning, westerns, W.C. Fields and Abbott and Costello comedies, the Flash Gordon serials, and its archetypal, low budget horror films such as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and The Wolf Man (1941). Columbia's best director was Frank Capra, known for his folksy, fairy-tale "Capra-corn" pictures. He directed many of this era's best populist and homespun tales with grass-roots heroes, that did surprisingly well once they were screen in small-town theatres. His romantic comedies made at the height of the Depression included the unprecedented hit It Happened One Night (1934) about a struggling hack reporter and a rich heroine thrown together, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), about a millionaire

THE EARLY GANGSTER FILMS ◦ Warner Bros. developed its own style by producing gritty narratives, social problem pictures and tough, realistic gangster movies in the sound (and Depression) era ◦ A reflection of the era's shaken confidence in authority and the country's social traditions.

LITTLE CAESAR / PUBLIC ENEMY W. B.’s launched the gangster genre with Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar (1930) - a star-making role for Edward G. Robinson as snarling, fast-talking mobster Caesar Enrico Bandello who met his inevitable fate with the words, "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" William Wellman's The Public Enemy (1931) starred a swaggering, cocky urban gangster portrayed by James Cagney, a film most-remembered for the scene in which the hoodlum abusively stuffed a grapefruit half into Mae Clarke's face, and the scene of Cagney's death at his mother's door.

UNITED ARTISTS / SCAR FACE United Artists' hard-hitting gangster film Scarface (1932) was delayed for two years due to censorship, and was required to add the qualifying sub-title "The Shame of the Nation" to its main title. It starred Paul Muni as a psychopathic Chicagoan crime boss (based upon Al Capone). The film included a record number of killings - 28, and inventively used a visual "X" motif throughout to signal that a murder was imminent.

OTHER GANSGTER FILMS The genre branched out to "serious" social drama films, including Best Picture-nominated I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) that dealt with such subjects as chain gangs and prison reform and promoted social reform of a corrupt court system. William Wellman's social problem film Wild Boys of the Road (1933) told the story of two disillusioned teens forced to travel cross-country rails to find work during the height of the Depression. James Cagney starred as a gangster who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, in Michael Curtiz' Angels With Dirty Faces (1938). At the end of the decade, Cagney was gunned down in the finale of The Roaring Twenties (1939) in another gangster role.

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