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ü Why was Hollywood chosen as a place for the movie industry?
ü How did the advent of talking pictures change the film industry?
ü Why is the world of Hollywood known as an "industry"?
ü When was the McCarthy era in the US?
ü What were drive-in movies and why were they popular?
ü How did televisions in American homes have an impact on the film industry?
ü How did the filmmakers called the "movie brats" get their name?
ü Why were codes established to guide movie viewers in their film selections?
ü What are the different codes and their meanings?
ü What are some of the technologies associated with home entertainment?
ü Have these technologies helped or hurt the film industry? Why or why not?
Movies have had an impact on the lives of Americans since film was invented, close to one hundred years ago. Hollywood and its films have influenced the social, cultural and political life of Americans and helped shape their attitudes and beliefs. They have also influenced the images that they hold of themselves.
Hollywood is a community near the city of Los Angeles, in Southern California. It sits on the slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains. Many films are shot on location in many cities and countries in the world, but Hollywood was -when the first film was made there around 1911 - and continues to be the symbolic center of the United States motion-picture industry. Large numbers of tourists visit Hollywood. It has many popular sites such as Hollywood Blvd., Sunset Strip, Mann's Chinese Theatre, and the Kodak Theatre, the site of the Academy Awards.
In the hills surrounding the city of Hollywood one can find the Hollywood Bowl, Griffith Park and the homes of film celebrities. The famous Hollywood sign overlooking the city was erected in 1923 and at the time was an advertisement for the "Hollywoodland" real estate firm. Its last four letters were removed in 1949 and the large white letters spelling "Hollywood" have been a hallmark of Hollywood and the film world ever since.
American Film: the Early Years
The first American studios were located in the New York City area. Around 1910 several East Coast filmmakers began to spend winters in California. During the early 1920s motion picture producers moved most of their operations from the East Coast to Los Angeles to take advantage of the year-round fair weather. Besides nice weather, the locale offered diverse filming locations: ocean beaches, nearby mountains and deserts. It also provided a large quantity of inexpensive land for building studio lots. Hollywood, on the western edge of Los Angeles, and Culver City, further south and closer to the ocean, became the centers for movie production. A skilled workforce was available and worked for lower wages than their counterparts on the East Coast. In contrast to the New York and European film centers such as Paris, Berlin, and Rome, Hollywood created a kind of lifestyle that emphasized leisure, sports, and other outdoor activities.
In the early years of film actors generally were not known by name, but in 1910, the "star system" came into being. "Fan magazines" quickly followed which provided much free publicity for the film studios. Some of the more prominent directors at that time included D. W. Griffith, J. Stuart Blackton, and Mack Sennett. There were many big names in film in the first generation of Hollywood stars. Among them were Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Clara Bow, Lillian Gish, and Greta Garbo. Around this same time, the United States entered World War I and the film industry quickly became a vehicle of both education and propaganda.
After World War I, producers Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer and Cecil B. De Mille were leaders in the film industry. (Readers might be familiar with the name Louis Mayer because he was born Ezemiel Mayer, in what is now Minsk, Belarus.) In its heyday (1930-49) five major studios-Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, RKO, 20th Century-Fox, Warner Brothers, and Paramount — dominated the motion picture industry. The directors of these studios employed thousands of actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, camera operators, editors, and set and costume designers. In 1926 experiments were made in sound effects and music and in 1927 spoken dialogue was successfully introduced in the movie The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson. A year later the first all-talking picture, Lights of New York, was released. With the advent of "talkies" (film with sound) new directors achieved prominence. Among them were King Vidor, Frank Capra, and John Ford. The "talkies" greatly advanced the careers of some silent actors but destroyed those whose voices were not suited to recording. Another type of film — animation — also became popular at this time. Walt Disney made the first animated cartoon with synchronized sound, Steamboat Willie (1928). This was the third film to feature the popular Mickey Mouse character. Among the most celebrated stars of the new era were Clark Gable, Jean, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, W. C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers.
In 1927 the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences was formed and began an annual awards ceremony. The prize was a figurine of a man grasping a star which was later called the Oscar. The Academy Awards became a yearly event. It gathered many stars together and attracted a lot of attention from their fans. This attention to Hollywood stars brought many actors trained in the theatres of Hollywood and the world of film. Thousands of people flocked to Los Angeles in this "golden era" of Hollywood. They went seeking fame and fortune in a new and exciting American industry. By the 1930s, Hollywood was producing 400 films a year that were seen by approximately 100 million moviegoers per week. The film industry had now become the heart of the entertainment industry in America.
From the 1930s until the early 1950s, the studios sponsored many talented actors. The list is too lengthy to include here. But readers may be familiar with some of the following names from that era: Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, and Gene Kelly. At the same time, Davjd O. Selznick, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Billy Wilder made significant contributions to film as producers and directors.
Since the beginning the world of film in Hollywood has always been known as an industry, and with good reason. In 1938 more than 80 million people paid admission to a film each week. This number was equivalent to roughly 65 per cent of the American population. In the same year, 1938, more than 500 films were produced to meet this very high demand. The range of film themes included the criminal underworld, behind-the-scenes newspaper dramas, westerns, musicals, romances, prison stories, mysteries, comedies, and Broadway shows. Because of its popularity the motion-picture industry's gross income for 1946 — its best year — was nearly $2 billion.
Shortly after World War II, committees in the Congress of the United States began investigating alleged "infiltration" of the motion-picture industry by members of the American Communist Party. Those accused were believed to have been disloyal to the United States and heavily influenced by the Soviet Union. Movie companies fired or refused to hire writers, directors, actors, and others who had been accused of complicity with the American Communist Part, or who were simply sympathetic to communist views. A few were communists. Most were not. But such was the atmosphere of anti-communist feeling at that time. This atmosphere of political repression that has come to be known as McCarthyism dominated national politics. This period was named for US senator Joseph R. McCarthy who repeatedly accused many government officials of taking part in Communist activities. This era of so-called blacklisting brought great change to the film industry and even destroyed or severely damaged some careers in Hollywood.
With the advent of films former theatres were converted into movie houses. Later, during Hollywood's "golden age," thousands of elegant movie palaces were erected in the United States and many still stand as testament to Hollywood's influence on America. Another uniquely American phenomenon was the drive-in movie theatre where movie goers drove their cars into a large parking area, hooked a speaker to their car window and watched the film on a gigantic screen. Drive-ins steadily gained popularity because families could see a movie and did not have to hire a baby-sitter.
Another advantage of the drive-in movie was that parents did not have to worry if the children made too much noise, often a problem in a traditional movie theatre. It was also convenient for the entire family to attend drive-ins because when the children got tired they could curl up in the back seat of the automobile and go to sleep. Drive-in theatres were also favoured by teenagers who found it an ideal place for a date. Following the end of the Second World War, the number of drive-ins increased rapidly and finally hit a peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This was especially true in rural America where movie houses were fewer in number.
Some Americans viewed drive-ins as corrupting the morals of American youth because they afforded a place to go on a date in the privacy of a car. At one point the American media even labelled drive-ins as "passion pits." To add fuel to the fire, during the 1970s, there were also instances of some drive-ins showing pornographic movies thus allowing availability of censored materials to a wide audience. This allowed for some underage audience to view unsuitable material. The popularity of the drive-in did taper off eventually. First, property for the large areas that were needed for drive-in movies became increasingly expensive for drive-ins to operate successfully. Second, the adoption of daylight saving time subtracted an hour from outdoor evening viewing time. Third, with the advent of colour televisions, VCRs and video rentals there was a sharp decline in the popularity of drive-ins. Although many Americans look back with nostaglia to the days of the drive-in movies (today only a handful exist).
American Film: the Later Years
The rapid spread of television in American homes in the 1950s was accompanied by a steady decline in movie-going, not only at the drive-in theatres but also in regular movie theatres. By the 1960s movie attendance was only one-fourth of what it had been in 1946. And by 1968 only 20 million people per week were going to a movie. This was approximately 10 per cent of the population. In order to combat television's appeal the owners of major film studios strongly urged technological innovation like wide-screen and three-dimensional processes. These technological developments briefly helped but they did not alter the long-term changes that were to come in the entertainment industry.
Besides a continuing decline in motion-picture attendance, older producers and filmmakers who had worked in movies since the days of silent film were getting ready to retire. Moreover, a rapid transformation of American cultural values in the era of rock-and-roll music, civil rights struggles, and conflict over the Vietnam War (1959-1975) left many studios unsure of the right approach for attracting the young generation who were now the majority of moviegoers. At the same time horror and science fiction and rock 'n' roll story films aimed at the younger crowd became especially popular.
In contrast to the earlier days when Hollywood was preoccupied with glamour and glitz, in the 1950s and 60s Hollywood films became more realistic in nature. The emphasis on romanticism and sentimentality in film waned. Depictions of a harsher reality and a more explicit sexuality became the vogue in films. Key figures of the 1960s generation included prominent directors Stanley Kubrick, Arthur Penn and Robert Altman and Hollywood stars Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Paul Newman. One notable film of Kubrick's film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) greatly changed the science fiction genre.
Arthur Penn directed the award winning, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which dramatized the activities Audrey Hepburn of 1930s outlaws and spoke to a 1960s sense of social alienation. Altman, in his famous film titled M*A*S*H (1970), about an emergency medical unit in the Korean War (1950-1953), introduced more of a satirical approach to the more traditional Hollywood war film.
This trend away from the glamorous celebrity image gained momentum in the 1970s. Some of the more well-known actors associated with these years were Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman, Steve McQueen, and Woody Allen. The last of these, the extremely popular New York-based Woody Allen, made and acted in a large number of wry comedies about urban life.
Among the more serious films that became favorites of many Americans were Michael Cimino's Academy Award winning The Deer Hunter (1978), a critically acclaimed examination of the Vietnam War and director David Lynch's highly acclaimed film entitled Blue Velvet (1986).
In the early years of the 1970s emerged a younger generation of filmmakers called "movie brats" The "movie brats" got this name because of their youth and because they had received their education in university level film schools. Among the brats were Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg. The first of these, Coppola, directed the highly acclaimed, The Godfather (1972), a film about the Italian-American mafia. It also launched the popular idea of the film sequel that continues to this day.
Steven Spielberg, the youngest of this group, directed the thriller Jaws (1975). Based on a best-selling novel Jaws lacked big-name stars, but made up for this with its special-effects mechanical monster shark. A box-office smash, Jaws especially appealed to young adults and children. Younger viewers had become the most important segment of the movie audience and studios targeted them in ever increasingly sophisticated marketing strategies. Jaws ended up grossing more than $100 million and led the way for a new kind of film called the blockbuster. After the release of Jaws a series of films such as Star Wars (1977) and E.T. (1982) focused on special effects. This type of film, closely associated with the names of directors Spielberg and George Lucas, drew audiences in large numbers back to the theatres, but the growing popularity of such blockbusters was viewed negatively by critics. Critics argued that in these films human values were being overshadowed by the sensationalism of their special effects.
Among the more recent major films that have continued to raise the level of special effects are-Twister (1996), Titanic (1997), and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, (2001). Although American blockbuster films -especially those emphasizing action and special effects- continued to dominate Hollywood at the start of the 21st century, foreign films of artistic and cultural interest from all corners of the globe have steadily become more accessible for viewing in both US theatres and in different formats suitable for viewing at home.
Guidelines for Viewing
In order to better understand how the American viewing public selects movies it is important to know something about codes for viewing. In the film industry's early years (and to this day) some Americans perceived Hollywood as an industry that promoted an immoral life style. Many feared that this immoral behavior might be transferred from the film screen. As a result, in 1922, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America established a code to review a film's content and to rate it accordingly. A very restricted set of guidelines for movie content was promoted in 1934 and all Hollywood producers complied with these guidelines. Between 1934 and the early 1960s the American public's use of language and views on sexual mores changed. These changes made the earlier codes seem outdated, and, from a practical viewpoint, detrimental to making films that contemporary audiences wanted to see.
In the late 1960s, the determination of what constituted pornography was turned over to individual states. At the same time, filmmakers were attempting to break away from the Production Code's bans on sexuality and violence. In 1966, this code was abandoned completely and during the mid-1960s years no codes existed. In place of the previous guidelines eventually the Motion Picture Code and Rating Programme was adopted. This newer programme was created in order to avoid a state-controlled system. It essentially acts as guidance for parents, not filmmakers. It initially assigned each film with one of four ratings: G (general audiences, without restrictions), M (mature audiences, parental guidance advised), R (restricted audiences, no one younger than 18 admitted without a parent or guardian), and X (no one younger than 18 admitted). M was eventually supplanted by PG (parental guidance suggested), PG-13, was introduced for films that might contain material inappropriate for pre-teenagers, and NC-17 replaced X, which had become associated with pornographic films. In practice, the newer code has attempted to regulate the representation of sexual activity in motion pictures; however, it has given less attention to how violence is depicted.
Recent Developments
In the years after 1975, blockbuster films still highly influenced the economics of the American film industry. But perhaps it was the creation and popularity of home entertainment delivery systems that have had the biggest impact on the movie culture in America. The first new technological system was the videocassette recorder (VCR); The VCR enabled viewers to prerecord videotapes or record programmes from television for playback at a more convenient time. Second, cable television systems multiplied the number of channels available to the home viewers. Cable networks sometimes functioned as film producers themselves which over recent years has led to a significant increase in independent feature-film production. It is not uncommon for TV cable viewers to have access to 60-70 channels.
Then the computer arrived on the scene. Computers have offered unprecedented possibilities for home viewing, with a/the digital video disc (DVD) now becoming one of the major techniques for viewing movies on computers. Its use is also quite rapidly replacing videocassettes as the most popular format for home viewing. Despite the fears of the film industry that these new technologies would contribute to a decline in movie theatre attendance, and weaken the market for movies, they have added to the accessibility, frequency and viewing of films by the American public. Probably most important to the industry is that the rental and sales of film has earned new revenue for its companies.
Summary
Choose one of the actors named in the unit (printed in bold letters) and provide the following information about him/her.
ü Biographical information.
ü Time period in which he/she was famous.
ü Films in which he/she starred.
How the films in which this actor starred fit into the cultural, social, political life of America at the time of their release.
Foregrounding the Most Important Issues
Make a chronological chart or poster of Hollywood's history. Be creative in how you design your chart but make sure all the most important aspects of the chapter are included.
Thinking Critically
1. Synthesizing: Imagine that one of your classmates has been sick. He/she hasn't been able to attend class or read this unit. He/she asks you to write a summary of the unit but it must be brief and accurate. Write approximately 250 words summarizing this unit for your friend, highlighting what you think are the most significant ideas.
2. Analyzing: Choose one term in bold letters in the unit and research it. First, provide essential information about the term and then explain how the term fits into the larger understanding of Hollywood and the World of American Movies.
3. Evaluating: Has Hollywood - and its films - had an impact on other countries and
У their populations? If so, why and how? If not, why not? Do you think this has been
a positive or negative thing? Why or why not? Provide support for your opinions by analyzing the reading for this unit and other outside sources.
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