Just Making Movies
Company Directors on the Studio System
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
From the late 1930s to the mid-1950s, five big movie studios--Paramount, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century-Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and RKO-dominated Hollywood's film industry. This "big studio system" operated primarily as a series of assembly-line production factories. Ideally, each churned out fifty-two movies a year, enough to supply showcase theaters across the country with a new lineup each week-with profit being the overriding goal.
Of this era, veteran screenwriter Julius Epstein (Casablanca) said: "It was not called the motion picture industry for nothing. It] was like working at belts in a factory."
Studios assigned the majority of the lower-tier screenplays to directors under long-term contract and expected them to stick to the script and keep productions within the budget. These filmmakers, known as "house directors," often made films quickly, inexpensively, and with limited resources. Just Making Movies: Company Directors on the Studio System collects twelve interviews with house directors from this era, all conducted by the author during the 1980s. These previously unpublished interviews provide a clear picture of how the big studio system operated, as told by those who knew it best.
Despite limitations, house directors sometimes made enduring film classics, such as Charles Walters's Easter Parade, Henry Koster's The Bishop's Wife, George Sidney's The Three Musketeers, and Vincent Sherman's The Hasty Heart. In these interviews, the filmmakers talk candidly about working with such superstars as Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn, Richard Burton, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Esther Williams, and Lana Turner.
About the Author:
Ronald L. Davis is professor emeritus of history at Southern Methodist University. He is author of Words into Images: Screenwriters on the Studio System, Zachary Scott: Hollywood's Sophisticated Cad, and Van Johnson: MGM's Golden Boy, all published by University Press of Mississippi.
> From the same author:
The Glamour Factory (2018)
Inside Hollywood's Big Studio System
> On a related topic:
The Hollywood Studios (1988)
House Style in the Golden Age of the Movies
Poverty Row Studios, 1929–1940 (2005)
An Illustrated History of 55 Independent Film Companies, with a Filmography for Each
Hollywood by Hollywood (2018)
The Backstudio Picture and the Mystique of Making Movies
by Steven Cohan
Hollywood's Lost Backlot (2018)
40 Acres of Glamour and Mystery
Death of the Moguls (2012)
The End of Classical Hollywood
The Story of Hollywood (2011)
An Illustrated History
Back
