The Golden Era: Factors which shaped the Hollywood System .
With this essay I aim to highlight the factors which shaped the Hollywood system between the years 1930 to 1950. I will discuss various factors as to why the Hollywood System emerged as it did. The key point, howeverthe overriding factorcan be narrowed down to the stranglehold which the five major companies help over film exhibition. The structure upon which these studios controlled the industry was built upon oligopolitic practices, whereby only a handful of concerns held economic sway over the industry as a whole. This was recognised by America's Justice Department and Supreme Courts in their implementation of anti-trust legislation. I intend to show that, while the studios profited from their production and distribution networks, the very thing which propelled their power would ultimately lead to their demise.
The coming of sound in 1927, and the knawing effects of the Great Depression of 1929, threw the American film industry into a slump, which, had it not been for the financial backing of wealthy New York banks, and the intervention of President Roosevelt, may well have sunk, or, at least, seriously set back the industry irretrievably. Studios and theatres needed to be re-furbished to accommodate sound systems; the large cost of these ventures, together with the expansion into theatre acquisition, sapped the resources built up from the silent era. With attendance's falling as a result of the depression, the economic bailing out by Wall Street financiers provided the main studios with a base to build upon.
Tino Balio has stated that Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act, implemented in 1933, was an important attempt to revive industry after the depression. (1). As part of the wide-ranging New Deal, Roosevelt's initiative sought to stimulate the economy by collusion with anti-competitive practices. This state intervention maintained that while business "could ignore anti-trust laws, (they) in return, had to make concessions?(Balio, page 216, 1976).
