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Rating: 
Summary: The Studio system worked so much better then today's.
Review: This book covers Hollywood's golden era when all the major studios (20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, MGM, and Colombia Pictures) were all run by wealthy movie owners and business men who were in the business of making movies. They approved the screenplays, signed the actors to contracts, gave their approval to what movies got made, and got them to theaters just as fast as they could. They knew that only if the picture was good would people go and see them. So they gave all the resources that the studio had to make every picture as good as they could make it. It was an era of creative film making that ended when the wasteland that was televison took over. Today Hollywood is run by coperations that do not know how to make movies. Where good movies made by creative people that belive in the project and in the material are few and far between. And that's really sad.
Rating: 
Summary: Hollywood's golden age is richly revealed and explained.
Review: An easy to read writer, Thomas Schatz details how the studio system worked from the silent era to its final collapse in the 1960s. He illuminates both the art and the business of films, with keen analysis of how producers, directors and screenwriters created such fine art (and rich profits) -- especially the producers, who are more the authors of Hollywood films than any other group. He convincingly portrays MGM's Irving Thalberg as a genius of art and commerce and MGM's Louis B. Mayer as a clod (except when dealing with difficult stars). Schatz offers telling portraits of many others who did their best work under the constraints of the Hollywood system. He details the major studios' styles and how they evolved over the years. It's clear he has read file cabinets of documents, from endless -- but revealing -- memos to how much the stars made(!). He also puts the film industry in social and cultural context; he even says the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1940s and 1950s were a disguised form of anti-semitism. In the end, Schatz offers a convincing alternative to the auteur theory.
Rating:
Summary: A refreshing take on Hollywood where business men are stars!
Review: Film theorist Andre Bazin once wrote "The American cinema is a classical art, but why not then admire in it what is most admirable, i.e., not only the talent of this or that filmmaker, but the genius of the system." Quite simply author Thomas Schatz had done just that with this groundbreaking and wonderously entertaining history of the Hollywood studio era. Up until its publication in 1988, film history had been defined by the "auteur" school of thinking where the director where the supreme artists who nutured the artform. The studio executives- the money men- were relegated to the background and often depicted as crass capitalist who often hindered the creative process. In Schatz's eyes, men like Carl Laemmle, Darryl F. Zanuck, David O. Selznick, Harry Warner, and Irving Thalberg were intuitive geniuses who understood the art of storytelling and were able to systematically deliver that art to the masses with drive and innovation. From the low rent beginings of the Nickelodeon to steady decline of the studio system amid the dawn of Television, these men set standards that are sadly not met by today's faceless conglomerates. They all created "the movies" as we foldly percieve it and Schatz lets the creation of 20th century popular culture unfold with a finely turned narrative sweep.
Rating:
Summary: A refreshing take on Hollywood where business men are stars!
Review: Film theorist Andre Bazin once wrote "The American cinema is a classical art, but why not then admire in it what is most admirable, i.e., not only the talent of this or that filmmaker, but the genius of the system." Quite simply author Thomas Schatz had done just that with this groundbreaking and wonderously entertaining history of the Hollywood studio era. Up until its publication in 1988, film history had been defined by the "auteur" school of thinking where the director where the supreme artists who nutured the artform. The studio executives- the money men- were relegated to the background and often depicted as crass capitalist who often hindered the creative process. In Schatz's eyes, men like Carl Laemmle, Darryl F. Zanuck, David O. Selznick, Harry Warner, and Irving Thalberg were intuitive geniuses who understood the art of storytelling and were able to systematically deliver that art to the masses with drive and innovation. From the low rent beginings of the Nickelodeon to steady decline of the studio system amid the dawn of Television, these men set standards that are sadly not met by today's faceless conglomerates. They all created "the movies" as we foldly percieve it and Schatz lets the creation of 20th century popular culture unfold with a finely turned narrative sweep.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic resource of film history, and a fun read to boot
Review: It's rare that one can read a book containing so much dry information such as the budgetary concerns of many many films, and still be captivated by the storytelling enough to make it work. This book reads like a well-crafted novel, with the main characters being a handful of studio executives. What results is an utterly readable, insider's look into the business of filmmaking in the studio era. The artistic genius of some of these men is acknowledged, but largely, their business dealings are highlighted. If you're afraid of such business talk, don't be. The author makes budgets and salaries an interesting and integral part of the story. I highly recommend this book to anyone who just loves movies and wants to learn more about how it all started. I also recommend this book to anyone who is in or getting into the producing biz now. What a helpful and inspirational resource. My only regret is that there is just no way that I can remember all of the information that I read in this book. That's why I refer to it as a resource in the title of this review and why I will use it as such for years to come.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic resource of film history, and a fun read to boot
Review: It's rare that one can read a book containing so much dry information such as the budgetary concerns of many many films, and still be captivated by the storytelling enough to make it work. This book reads like a well-crafted novel, with the main characters being a handful of studio executives. What results is an utterly readable, insider's look into the business of filmmaking in the studio era. The artistic genius of some of these men is acknowledged, but largely, their business dealings are highlighted. If you're afraid of such business talk, don't be. The author makes budgets and salaries an interesting and integral part of the story. I highly recommend this book to anyone who just loves movies and wants to learn more about how it all started. I also recommend this book to anyone who is in or getting into the producing biz now. What a helpful and inspirational resource. My only regret is that there is just no way that I can remember all of the information that I read in this book. That's why I refer to it as a resource in the title of this review and why I will use it as such for years to come.
Rating:
Summary: Just an excellent book on the subject
Review: Prof. Schatz does not suffer from the scholar's disease of academic-speak and writes a book that clearly demonstrates his expertise on the studio structure. Most books I have read extended the view of the outsider looking in at the star system and not the economics of the studios. "Genius of the System" chronicles the history of the studio's business, that is to say the economics and the people behind the economics. If you want to read about the business structure of Hollywood during its beginnings, this is the book for you. I cannot recommend it enough.
Rating:
Summary: Just an excellent book on the subject
Review: Prof. Schatz does not suffer from the scholar's disease of academic-speak and writes a book that clearly demonstrates his expertise on the studio structure. Most books I have read extended the view of the outsider looking in at the star system and not the economics of the studios. "Genius of the System" chronicles the history of the studio's business, that is to say the economics and the people behind the economics. If you want to read about the business structure of Hollywood during its beginnings, this is the book for you. I cannot recommend it enough.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, but buyer beware
Review: Schatz's book is well-rounded and nicely structured. It was a good decision on his part to take a round-robin focus on each studio instead of trying to mix them together, as some authors have. All of the studios had different ideas about what they wanted to achieve in their work, so this approach makes sense. Twentieth-Century Fox and Paramount were left out completely, but Schatz was clearly trying to choose one studio of each type of size and characteristic so as to keep control of the scope of the book.
I did find a glaring error--the finale to "Babes in Arms" was not the minstral number, but the song, "God's Country." In a book of this size, or of any size for that matter, errors will creep in, so it isn't the kiss of death. However, if the reader is familiar with MGM musicals, it may be a small turn-off.
Also, I wasn't satisfied with the epilogue. Instead of citing examples of the comeback of the studio system (LucasFilm, for instance), Schatz simply outlines the creative decline of Alfred Hitchcock. Huh.
Slight shortcomings aside, this book is very entertaining. I wish my film studies textbooks had been this interesting.
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