America on Film. Sean Griffin

exception, white men held most of the creative and executive positions at the studios, while people of color and women – if they were hired at all – were usually relegated to manual labor or assistant‐type jobs.

      The studio system of motion picture production increasingly forced workers to specialize in certain areas. While early filmmakers did multiple tasks (wrote the scripts, directed the actors, worked the camera, and edited the film), classical Hollywood movie studios divided these jobs into various departments. This kept any individual, other than the (straight, white, male) heads of the studios themselves, from having too much control over the films being made, and it streamlined the filmmaking process. Much like Henry Ford’s assembly‐line production of automobiles, studio employees figuratively stood at certain places on a filmmaking conveyor belt, contributing their own small area of expertise to the product as it rolled smoothly down the line toward completion. During its classical period, the Hollywood industry produced about 500 films a year, or about a film per week per studio. (Today’s Hollywood output is considerably less.)

Some American movies were made independently of these companies during the classical period, but it was difficult to get these films distributed or exhibited without making a deal with one of the major Hollywood studios. Smaller independent filmmaking companies that produced Hollywood‐type films (examples of which would include the Walt Disney Company and the Samuel Goldwyn Company) often distributed their work through one of the Big 5 or Little 3. Other independent filmmakers produced work that the Hollywood majors had little interest in distributing. For example, independently produced films starring African Americans or all‐Yiddish casts were produced during Hollywood’s classical period, but these films never reached wide audiences outside of specific ethnic movie houses. For many years these films were ignored or dismissed by film historians, but in the last 40 years or so, film scholars have begun to study them in more detail. One thing that is immediately apparent about many of these independent films is that they allowed people of color to be in control behind the camera, representing issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability in different ways than did Hollywood.

During Hollywood’s classical era, the studios (such as Metro‐Goldwyn‐Mayer) were huge industrial complexes that filled several city blocks. Unidentified publicity photo, authors’ personal collection.

The studio system was established to minimize costs and reduce possible financial liabilities – and the risk of financial ruin ran high during the Great Depression (1929 until the start of World War II). Hollywood maintained profitability in the first few years after the stock market collapsed through audience interest in the new sound technology. But by 1932, all of the major studios had begun to feel the effects of the country’s economic despair. Ticket sales began to dwindle, and by 1933 every studio (except powerhouse MGM) had run into debt. Some studios even went into receivership or declared bankruptcy. Employee rosters were reduced, and those that remained faced slashed salaries. Most of those let go occupied the lowest rungs on the studio ladder – positions largely held by women and people of color – and most of these studio employees had no unions to bargain for them.

      One of the methods Hollywood used to woo potential customers back into the theaters was to emphasize lurid stories that promised increased violence and sexual titillation, even in the face of local and state censorship campaigns. The studios worked to forestall any federal censorship by asserting that the industry could police itself. In the 1920s, Hollywood moguls appointed former postmaster general Will Hays to head an in‐house association to oversee the content of Hollywood films. In 1930, the studios officially adopted the Hollywood Production Code, written by a Jesuit priest and a Catholic layman, as a list of what could and could not be depicted in Hollywood movies. Not only were overtly political themes and acts of graphic violence to be censored, but issues of sex and sexuality in the movies were strictly monitored. For example, the Code outlawed the depiction or discussion of homosexuality and forbade miscegenation – the romantic or sexual coupling of people from different races. (The Production Code is a good example of how discrimination can become institutionalized, embedded within a corporate or bureaucratic structure.) Yet, as it existed in the first years of the Depression, the Production Code had no way to enforce its rules, and studios willfully disregarded its pronouncements when box office returns slid. Gangster films, horror films, and stories of “fallen women” proliferated, providing not only large doses of sex and violence, but also a cynical, pessimistic view of America and, to some degree, a critique of capitalist ideology.

      In 1933, coinciding with President Roosevelt’s inauguration and a general turn toward optimism in US society, the Catholic Church and other groups renewed their protests against Hollywood films. Facing boycotts and more urgent calls for federal censorship, the Production Code was revised in 1934 to include a Seal of Approval that would be given only to those films deemed acceptable. Hollywood companies agreed only to show films in their theaters that had the Seal of Approval attached (or face a large fine), and thus the industry became self‐censoring. This was also a new way of denying exhibition to other types of films, further consolidating Hollywood’s oligopoly. As a result, Hollywood films became a dependable source of escapist fantasy through the rest of the Depression and into World War II. While some films of the 1930s did acknowledge contemporary issues of poverty and unemployment, more regularly Depression‐era Hollywood films showcased the lifestyles of the rich and beautiful (as in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals). Anything too political (such as race relations, class division, or women’s rights) was not allowed to be discussed in a Hollywood film. Most women were depicted as asexual wives and mothers, people of color were consistently marginalized as stereotypical servants, and homosexuals officially disappeared from the movies altogether.

World War II and Postwar Film

World War II substantially upended the day‐to‐day life of almost every American citizen. Many men entered military service, while women contributed to the war effort by entering the home front workforce. Although unemployment was practically non‐existent, Americans could spend their paychecks on very little due to war rationing. The movies benefited as a result, and Hollywood studios made considerable sums during the war years. Hollywood continued to provide escapism, but also made films supporting the war effort (despite the Production Code’s prohibitions on political themes). The war movie as a genre reached its classical apex during these years, thematically promoting American unity in the face of our enemies’ aggressions. Often these films showed members of different ethnic groups or racial backgrounds overcoming their differences and learning to work together as a unit. On the other hand, Hollywood war films often featured grotesque stereotypes of Japanese enemies.

      When World War II ended, many American citizens continued to fight for social causes. Groups began campaigning more vocally for African American civil rights, and some homosexuals began to organize as well. Hollywood made a number of films in the late 1940s that addressed various social issues, including those faced by veterans disabled during combat. Other social problem films explored topics previously considered taboo or financially risky, such as racism and anti‐Semitism in the United States. In addition to the social problem films, audiences watched stories of frustration and corruption told in a number of dark mysteries and thrillers. Termed film noir by French film critics, these films questioned the ideals of American capitalism that citizens had just been fighting to preserve. Film noir also expressed the social and personal tensions between men and women in the postwar period, tensions that had been created by women’s wartime independence versus the postwar patriarchy’s need to make them once again subservient to men.

      Turning back the calendar on women’s roles after the war exemplified a general reactionary trend in American society as the 1940s ended. Following World War II, America found itself in a Cold War of espionage with the Soviet Union, and began to fight communism abroad in actions both open and covert. The resultant Red Scare, a term that refers to the hysteria about possible communist infiltration