2. Hollywood's Golden Age The 1930's and 1940's comprise the
Golden Age of Hollywood:
Big Money 3. Studio System 4. Star System 5. Colour and
Sound
6. Big Money
Movies were an unprecedented mass medium during the 1930's and
1940's.During the war years an estimated 85-90 million people went
out to see a movie a week (that's over half of the U.S. Population
at the time). 7. A-movies and B-movies (Double Bills) 8. Newsreels
, Serials, Singalongs
9. The Studio System
TheStudio Systemallowed Hollywood to become an international
powerhouse, both financially and culturally: 10. The Big
Studios:MGM, Paramount, 20 thCentury Fox, RKO, and Warner Brothers
11. Assembly Line production 12. Vertical Integration:control of
production, distribution, and exhibition
13. The Star System
TheStar Systemcapitalized on the concept of the Hollywood Star
as commodity, and through exclusive contracts, the studios
controlled and manipulated their products in the studios' best
interests. Clark Gable Greta Garbo Cary Grant
14. The Advent of Sound and C o l o u r
The Jazz Singer (1927) Gone with the Wind (1939)
Talkies emerged as a simple novelty initially.They were often
poor quality productions, and the introduction of sounddialogue
hampered the flexibility of what had been an almost exclusively
visual medium. 15. Colourtinting had been used in film almost from
the start, but the marriage of movies and colour was not
consummated until the mid 1930's.
16. Great Directors
Howard Hawks John Ford Frank Capra
Other Greats:King Vidor, Billy Wilder, David Lean, William
Wyler, John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles
17. Big Films
Casablanca The Wizard of Oz Stagecoach
Other great films of the 1930's and 1940's:It's a Wonderful
Life, Scarface, Duck Soup, King Kong