Read The Oxford History of World Cinema Online
Authors: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
THE PRODUCTION SYSTEM
During the late 1910s and early 1920s, the successful companies, led by Adolph Zukor's
Famous Players-Lasky corporation, developed a system by which to manufacture popular
films on a large scale. This system was much admired abroad, and film industries the
world over sent their representatives over to Hollywood to study and, if possible, copy it.
As well as visitors from France, Germany, and Britain, Hollywood was to play host in the
1930s to Luigi Freddi, head of the Italian Fascist film industry, and to Boris Shumyatsky,
Stalin's henchman in charge of the industry in the Soviet Union.
The centrepiece of the product offered by the Hollywood companies was the feature film,
generally about ninety minutes long. Ten-minute newsreels or animated subjects might
provide a complement, but it was the feature that sold the show. The feature film had to
be a story of unusual interest, produced at a cost of about $100,000, sometimes up to
$500,000. Ironically, inspiration for this had come from Europe. Through the 1910s
foreign features repeatedly demonstrated that longer films could draw sizeable audiences.
The then independents imported epics from European film-makers who did not care to
book through the Trust. The success of prestigious Italian productions such as Dante's
Inferno ( 1911) not only proved there existed a market for longer fare, but helped to give
the new medium much-needed respectability in the eyes of the traditional middle class.
In 1911 Dante's Inferno enjoyed successful extended engagements in New York and
Boston. Where the average two-reel Trust film may have played two days, Dante's Inferno
was held over for two weeks. Where the average Trust film was shown in a 200-seat
'odeon' for 10 cents, Dante's Inferno was presented in 1,000-seat rented legitimate theatres
for $1. Indeed, the most influential of early feature films, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a
Nation ( 1915), opened a few years later in a noted New York City legitimate theatre and
ran for a year at an unheard of admission price of $2. In less than two decades the
industry had moved from selling movies as a novelty to developing a finely-honed
publicity machine to promote an entire system and its nationally advertised products.
Hollywood centred its promotional efforts on the star system. Publicists had to acquire the
art of manipulating the new techniques of mass advertising and mass communication to
create something special in the minds of the growing middle-class public. Stars provided
an effective means of differentiating feature films, making each individual title an
unmissable attraction. In 1909, for example, Carl Laemmle lured Florence Lawrence from
Biograph, and named her his 'IMP Girl' -- the letters representing his Independent Motion
Picture Company (later Universal). Laemmle then sent his star on tour and planted story
after story in the newspapers, including one falsely reporting her death.
Others plucked their stars from the legitimate stage. Adolph Zukor's pioneering company
Famous Players (later Paramount), whose slogan was 'Famous Players in Famous Plays',
achieved early successes with The Count of Monte Cristo ( 1912) starring James O'Neill,
The Prisoner of Zenda ( 1913) starring James Hackett, Queen Elizabeth ( 1912) starring
Sarah Bernhardt, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles starring Minnie Maddern Fiske.
Zukor soon saw the need to develop his own stars, not simply buy up already established
names. Mary Pickford saw her salary increase from $100 a week in 1909 to $10,000 per
week in 1917 as Zukor made her the biggest star of her day. Zukor's rivals developed their
own 'Little Marys', and 'inked' them to exclusive, long-run contracts. The Hollywood
companies then fashioned elaborately prepared scenarios as centrepieces for their stars.
But the stars were quick to realize that, if they were so important to the studios, they had
bargaining power of their own. Although many remained tied to exploitative contracts,
some of the most successful broke loose from the system. On 15 January 1919, major
luminaries Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford joined with director
D. W. Griffith to create United Artists, and issued a declaration of independence from
their former studio bosses. United Artists announced it would distribute starproduced
features so their makers could extract the riches their star power had generated.
United Artists achieved great success with, for example: The Mark of Zorro ( 1920,
Fairbanks), Robin Hood ( 1923, Fairbanks), Little Lord Fauntleroy ( 1921, Pickford), and
The Gold Rush ( 1925, Chaplin). Unfortunately, however, the studio did not regularly
release enough star-laden films, Theatre owners called for three Chaplin, Fairbanks, and
Pickford films per year, but the company was able to deliver only one every twenty-four
months. Theatre owners could not afford to go dark to wait for biennial inspirations, and
turned back to the majors. Thus, in the long run, United Artists simply became a haven for
independent producers (some good, some bad) fleeing from the strict confines of the
major Hollywood studios.
United Artists was an anomaly. The standard Hollywood system of feature film-making
sought to guarantee the shipment of attractive films to theatres on a weekly basis, and the
studios developed efficient and cost-effective production methods to produce films that
filled theatres. This factory system would prove the best method by which to provide a
regular supply of films.
In the days before the feature film, there had been two standard methods of production.
For 'reality' subjects, a camera operator would journey to the subject, record the action,
and then edit it together. For films inspired by vaudeville acts or taken from literary
sources, movie companies employed a director to stage 'scenes' and a camera operator to
record them. Gradually during the 1910s, as the demand for narrative films increased,
specialists were trained to assist the director to make movies faster. Writers thought up
story lines, scenic artists painted backgrounds, and designers fashioned appropriate
costumes.
Soon film-makers realized that it was less expensive to shoot the story out of order, rather
than chronologically record it as it might be staged in a theatre. Once all planned scenes
were filmed, an editor could reassemble them, following the dictates of the script. All this
required a carefully thought out, prearranged plan to calculate the minimum cost in
advance. Such a plan became known as the shooting script.
The Hollywood studio had to fashion shooting scripts which would turn out to be popular
at the box-office. Gradually, as feature films became longer, stories became more
complicated, requiring more complex shooting scripts. Paying careful attention to script
preparation meant faster and cheaper feature film-making. One could make a careful
estimate of the necessary footage for each scene, and film-makers developed techniques
to minimize the need for retakes.
William Cameron Menzies's sets for
The Thief of Bagdad
seen from the air in 1924.
The typical script immediately proclaimed its genre (comedy or drama, for example),
listed the cast of characters, and sketched a synopsis of the story, and only then went on to
a scene-by-scene scenario. From this plan, the head of the film company could decide
whether he wanted to make the movie. The producer could, once the project was
approved by the studio boss, redo the shooting script to fashion the actual order of
production.
The Hollywood production system was not invented, but evolved in response to a number
of felt imperatives, of which the most important was the need for regular and consistent
profit. A pioneering role, however, can be ascribed to producer Thomas Ince, working at
Mutual in 1913. The standard studio working procedure, as devised by Ince, involved a
studio boss, the film's director, and a continuity script. Once Ince as head producer had
approved a project, he assigned available buildings for filming, and commissioned writers
and production artists to create the necessary script, sets, and costumes. Back-up systems,
such as an internal police force to keep out crowds, or fire-fighters to assist when wooden
sets burned, meant that by the early 1920s studio lots, covering many acres, operated as
veritable subcities within the urban environs of Los Angeles.
Studio bosses planned a programme of films a year in advance. Sets were efficiently used
over and over again, and adapted for different stories. Art directors designed and
constructed sets; casting directors found the talent; make-up artists perfected the
glamorous movie look; and cinematographers were picked to shoot scripts as written.
Time was of the essence, so actors were shuttled from film to film. Often multiple
cameras were used for complicated shots (for example, a battlefield sequence) to avoid
having to stage them twice. And always present was the continuity clerk, who checked
that, when shooting was completed, the film could be easily reassembled.
DISTRIBUTION AND CONTROL OF THE MARKET
If Inceā„ pioneered this Hollywood studio 'factory' production system, it was Adolph
Zukor who taught Hollywood how fully and properly to exploit it. By 1921 Zukor had
fashioned the largest film company in the world -- his Famous Players. Five years earlier
he had merged twelve producers and the distributor, Paramount, to form the Famous
Players-Lasky Corporation. By 1917 his new company included stars such as Mary
Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, Pauline Frederick, and Blanche Sweet.
Two years later, about the time Pickford and Fairbanks left to form United Artists, a
quarter of the cinemas in the USA were regularly presenting Famous Players films.
Famous Players began to block book its yearly output of 50 to 100 feature films, which
meant that the theatre owner who sought to show the films of Mary Pickford had also to
take pictures featuring less well-known Famous Players stars. In turn, Famous Players
used these guaranteed bookings to test and develop new stars, and to try new story genres.
When major theatre owners began to baulk at the risks involved, Zukor stepped in,
acquired theatres, and set up his own theatre chain.
Such a large real estate venture needed more investment than could be financed with the
cash on hand. Zukor therefore turned to the Wall Street investment banking firm of Kuhn
Loeb for the necessary $10 million. At that time Kuhn Loeb was an outsider on Wall
Street, a small Jewish-run business in a world of WASP-dominated institutions. In time,
however, the company would grow into a financial giant, partly on the basis of deals with
expanding film companies from the west coast like Famous Players. Hollywood may have
been over 2,000 miles from New York City, but to gain crucial financing not available
from conservative west coast bankers, Zukor showed the industry that eastern money was
there to be tapped.
During the 1920s Famous Players became a high-flyer on the New York Stock Exchange.
Others soon followed. Marcus Loew put together Metro-Goldwyn-Maker. William Fox
expanded his film company as did Carl Laemmle with his Universal Studios. Even
stalwart independents United Artists built a theatre chain. Thus a handful of major,
vertically integrated companies came to dominate and define Hollywood.
It was not enough however, that this small handful of companies controlled all the movie
stars and theatres. They sought to expand their markets beyond the US border, to establish
distribution all over the world. The First World War offered a crucial opening. While other
national cinemas were constrained, the leading Hollywood companies moved to make the
world their marketplace. Although the average cost for Hollywood features of the day
rarely ranged beyond $500,000, expanding distribution across the globe meant revenues
regularly topped $1,000,000. Adolph Zukor, ever aggressive, led the way with a series of
spectacular foreign deals, and was able during the years prior to the coming of sound to
effect a stranglehold on the world-wide market-place.
To maintain conditions for maximizing profits abroad, the major Hollywood companies
formed an association, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of