The Hollywood Studios

Rating:
Summary: who's in the house?
Review: This charmingly study of the Hollywood studios explains that it was the personality and taste of the moguls that determined the house styles of both the kind of films made and the artists who made them. Mordden is particularly good in analysing at length certain films that exemplify each style. Paramount was the industry's first big studio and monopolised the theatre chains which guaranteed exhibition of their product, giving founder Adolph Zukor the confidence to experiment. Paramount valued the individuality of directors Ernst Lubitsch and Mitchell Leisen who made elegant "boudoir snafu", and writer/directors Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder. The actors they served best were clowns, like The Marx Brothers, WC Fields and Mae West. MGM was Louis B Mayer and he reigned with zealotry, blackmail and tyranny. His operation was a factory and anyone who disturbed the running of the assembly line was discarded - director Erich von Stroheim who's Greed ran for 7 hours, tempestuous diva Mae Murray, womaniser John Gilbert), even the self-willed Lillian Gish who demanded artistic control of her films. Mayer favoured factotum - company men who had a talent for treating actors, like Clarence Brown who guided Garbo's transition into talkies in Anna Christie. Whilst Mayer's style of polished glamour was epitomised by Grand Hotel, which featured stars, art direction by Cedric Gibbons, gowns by Adrian, and the high-key lighting of William Daniels, his head of production, Irving Thalberg earned cudos for greenlighting unprofitable prestige titles over Mayer's objections, like King Vidor's The Crowd and Todd Browning's Freaks. However Thalberg's death left Mayer unchecked, and his Andy Hardy "family" values homogenised the studio's mentality - like Dorothy's banal realisation that there's no place like home. Arthur Freed's unit produced innovative musicals, but as the studio wound down Mayer was replaced by bookkeeper Dore Schary, who favoured the reliably mediocrity (Kathryn Grayson) to the unpredictable avatar (Judy Garland). The smaller studios may have existed on low budgets but that doesn't mean their output was always crummy, even if history has forgotten them because the titles have been lost. Hal Wallis' First National featured Colleen Moore who originated the flapper bangs that Louise Brooks gets credit for. Republic was a minor major (or a major minor), starring the singing cowboys Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, skater Vera Hruba Ralston (the wife of mogul Herbert J Yates), and John Wayne, who won the studio the best picture Oscar for The Quiet Man. Columbia rose to greatness via Frank Capra, Rita Hayworth and screwball comedy, but it's real success was due to mogul Harry Cohn, legendary for being mean. His idea of artistic freedom was "just do it. If it makes money, do another one. If it loses money, you're fired". Some independent artists tried to adapt to life at the studios. Buster Keaton's experience with MGM ruined him. Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D W Griffin formed United Artists, but had no studio of their own. Samuel Goldywn retained a studio after the merge with Metro and Mayer. He saw himself as a showman like Ziegfield, his taste ranging from literary titles like Wuthering Heights and The Little Foxes, and vaudevilleans like Eddie Cantor and Danny Kaye. His famous blunder was Nana, an attempt to make Anna Sten the new Garbo/Dietrich and also present Zola to the American public. Amusingly Sten's fractured English was as imitable as Goldwyn's own malaproprisms. David O Selznick shared Goldwyn's taste in literature though his quest for control was without equal. Beginning at RKO then joining MGM when he married Mayer's daughter ("The son-in-law also rises" was the nepotistic quip) before forming Selznick International Pictures, his vision was as epic as the infamous memos to his directors. He had his own Anna Sten in his wife, Jennifer Jones, and though their efforts weren't as disastrous as Goldwyn's, he could never better the albatross success of GWTW. Warner Bros was the major studio run on a quickie's low budget, Jack Warner's motto being "keep it moving". The look is flat realism, the milieu urban. Warners was Edward G Robinson, Cagney, Bogart, Bette Davis and Rin Tin Tin. The Jazz Singer was a stunt that paid off. Warners is also backstage musicals with Busby Berkerley's kaleidoscopic formations, Depression-era socially conscious titles like I Am a fugitive from a chain gang, The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca. Fox is 2 studios - Fox Film with Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, Will Rogers; and Darryl Zanuck's Twentieth Century Fox. Zanuck was bold. His Depression-era saviour was child star Shirley Temple. He liked blonde women and dark men - Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Marilyn, Victor Mature, Tyrone Power, and vaudeville interlopers, like The Ritz Brothers and Carmen Miranda. In response to WW2 his technicolour was garish. His humanist polemics like The Grapes of Wrath and The Ox-bow Incident led the way for Gentleman's Agreement and Pinky at the height of McCarthyism. Zanuck outlasted all the other moguls, and even had a second chance. RKO never had a mogul but was the distributor for independent producers like Pandro S Berman who made the early Katharine Hepburn. Selznick's success with King Kong enabled RKO's Astaire/Rogers series. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane, and Lucille Ball's Desilu saved it from the ghost town Howard Hughes had made. Universal and founding mogul Carl Laemmle had reactionary tendencies - Griffith directed Mary Pickford and the Gish's. Their big ones served their aesthetic - Showboat, Lon Chaney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, All Quiet on the Western Front. However things improved with Fritz Lang's film noir, James Whale's Frankenstein, WC Fields and Abbott and Costello. Later we have camp - Maria Montez, Deanna Durbin, Douglas Sirk's camp weepies, and the Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedies. The divestiture of the theatre chains in 1950 signaled the end of Hollywood's Golden Age, the bulldozing of the MGM backlots in the 1970's a metaphor for a lost era, though Universal turned their lot into a successful theme park.

Rating:
Summary: who's in the house?
Review: This charmingly study of the Hollywood studios explains that it was the personality and taste of the moguls that determined the house styles of both the kind of films made and the artists who made them. Mordden is particularly good in analysing at length certain films that exemplify each style. Paramount was the industry's first big studio and monopolised the theatre chains which guaranteed exhibition of their product, giving founder Adolph Zukor the confidence to experiment. Paramount valued the individuality of directors Ernst Lubitsch and Mitchell Leisen who made elegant "boudoir snafu", and writer/directors Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder. The actors they served best were clowns, like The Marx Brothers, WC Fields and Mae West. MGM was Louis B Mayer and he reigned with zealotry, blackmail and tyranny. His operation was a factory and anyone who disturbed the running of the assembly line was discarded - director Erich von Stroheim who's Greed ran for 7 hours, tempestuous diva Mae Murray, womaniser John Gilbert), even the self-willed Lillian Gish who demanded artistic control of her films. Mayer favoured factotum - company men who had a talent for treating actors, like Clarence Brown who guided Garbo's transition into talkies in Anna Christie. Whilst Mayer's style of polished glamour was epitomised by Grand Hotel, which featured stars, art direction by Cedric Gibbons, gowns by Adrian, and the high-key lighting of William Daniels, his head of production, Irving Thalberg earned cudos for greenlighting unprofitable prestige titles over Mayer's objections, like King Vidor's The Crowd and Todd Browning's Freaks. However Thalberg's death left Mayer unchecked, and his Andy Hardy "family" values homogenised the studio's mentality - like Dorothy's banal realisation that there's no place like home. Arthur Freed's unit produced innovative musicals, but as the studio wound down Mayer was replaced by bookkeeper Dore Schary, who favoured the reliably mediocrity (Kathryn Grayson) to the unpredictable avatar (Judy Garland). The smaller studios may have existed on low budgets but that doesn't mean their output was always crummy, even if history has forgotten them because the titles have been lost. Hal Wallis' First National featured Colleen Moore who originated the flapper bangs that Louise Brooks gets credit for. Republic was a minor major (or a major minor), starring the singing cowboys Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, skater Vera Hruba Ralston (the wife of mogul Herbert J Yates), and John Wayne, who won the studio the best picture Oscar for The Quiet Man. Columbia rose to greatness via Frank Capra, Rita Hayworth and screwball comedy, but it's real success was due to mogul Harry Cohn, legendary for being mean. His idea of artistic freedom was "just do it. If it makes money, do another one. If it loses money, you're fired". Some independent artists tried to adapt to life at the studios. Buster Keaton's experience with MGM ruined him. Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D W Griffin formed United Artists, but had no studio of their own. Samuel Goldywn retained a studio after the merge with Metro and Mayer. He saw himself as a showman like Ziegfield, his taste ranging from literary titles like Wuthering Heights and The Little Foxes, and vaudevilleans like Eddie Cantor and Danny Kaye. His famous blunder was Nana, an attempt to make Anna Sten the new Garbo/Dietrich and also present Zola to the American public. Amusingly Sten's fractured English was as imitable as Goldwyn's own malaproprisms. David O Selznick shared Goldwyn's taste in literature though his quest for control was without equal. Beginning at RKO then joining MGM when he married Mayer's daughter ("The son-in-law also rises" was the nepotistic quip) before forming Selznick International Pictures, his vision was as epic as the infamous memos to his directors. He had his own Anna Sten in his wife, Jennifer Jones, and though their efforts weren't as disastrous as Goldwyn's, he could never better the albatross success of GWTW. Warner Bros was the major studio run on a quickie's low budget, Jack Warner's motto being "keep it moving". The look is flat realism, the milieu urban. Warners was Edward G Robinson, Cagney, Bogart, Bette Davis and Rin Tin Tin. The Jazz Singer was a stunt that paid off. Warners is also backstage musicals with Busby Berkerley's kaleidoscopic formations, Depression-era socially conscious titles like I Am a fugitive from a chain gang, The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca. Fox is 2 studios - Fox Film with Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, Will Rogers; and Darryl Zanuck's Twentieth Century Fox. Zanuck was bold. His Depression-era saviour was child star Shirley Temple. He liked blonde women and dark men - Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Marilyn, Victor Mature, Tyrone Power, and vaudeville interlopers, like The Ritz Brothers and Carmen Miranda. In response to WW2 his technicolour was garish. His humanist polemics like The Grapes of Wrath and The Ox-bow Incident led the way for Gentleman's Agreement and Pinky at the height of McCarthyism. Zanuck outlasted all the other moguls, and even had a second chance. RKO never had a mogul but was the distributor for independent producers like Pandro S Berman who made the early Katharine Hepburn. Selznick's success with King Kong enabled RKO's Astaire/Rogers series. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane, and Lucille Ball's Desilu saved it from the ghost town Howard Hughes had made. Universal and founding mogul Carl Laemmle had reactionary tendencies - Griffith directed Mary Pickford and the Gish's. Their big ones served their aesthetic - Showboat, Lon Chaney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, All Quiet on the Western Front. However things improved with Fritz Lang's film noir, James Whale's Frankenstein, WC Fields and Abbott and Costello. Later we have camp - Maria Montez, Deanna Durbin, Douglas Sirk's camp weepies, and the Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedies. The divestiture of the theatre chains in 1950 signaled the end of Hollywood's Golden Age, the bulldozing of the MGM backlots in the 1970's a metaphor for a lost era, though Universal turned their lot into a successful theme park.