Monaco P. A History of American Movies: A Film-by-Film Look at the Art, Craft, and Business of Cinema

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A History of

American Movies

A Film-by-Film Look at the

Art, Craft, and Business of Cinema

Paul Monaco

THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

Lanham

•

New York

•

Plymouth, UK

2010

Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

http://www.scarecrowpress.com

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,

without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote

passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Monaco, Paul.

A history of American movies : a film-by-film look at the art, craft, and business of

cinema / Paul Monaco.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8108-7433-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7434-3 (pbk. :

alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7439-8 (ebook)

1. Motion pictures—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century. 2. Motion

picture industry—United States—Los Angeles—History—20th century. 3. Hollywood

(Los Angeles, Calif.)—History—20th century. I. Title.

PN1993.5.U65M55 2010

791.430973—dc22 2009051427



™

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper

for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To my mother, Birdena O’Melia Monaco,

who was born in 1916, and who, like the

Hollywood movies, has grown since then

and continues to flourish.

Preface vii

Part I: Classic Hollywood, 1927–1948

1 Establishing Hollywood 3

2 Early Synchronous Sound 23

3 Classic Hollywood Takes Form 43

4 Banner Years 59

5 Red, White, Blue, and Noir 83

6 Postwar Triumphs and Reversals 97

Part II: Hollywood in Transition, 1949–1974

7 Postwar Unravelings 115

8 Declining Audiences and Initial Responses 141

9 Hollywood on the Ropes 161

10 Indications of Revival 179

11 Conglomerate Control, Movie Brats, and Creativity 195

Part III: New Hollywood, 1975–2009

12 Origins of Hollywood Divided 217

13 Mixed Styles, Mixed Messages 233

14 Hollywood in the 1980s 245

15 New Hollywood Enters the Digital Age 273

16 Hollywood Enters the Twenty-First Century 313

Contents

vi Contents

Conclusion 335

Selected Bibliography 339

Index 341

About the Author 349

vii

This book is for the reader who wants to understand one of the most im-

portant cultural institutions of the twentieth century: the American cinema.

It is a history, but it is also a story. And telling any story requires selectively

choosing what to put in and what to leave out. A History of American Movies

chronicles an institution that had taken on its fundamental characteristics by

the year 1927, when the introduction of synchronous sound in film put an

abrupt end to the silent movies. This story is about a professional community

with its own ways of doing things, as well as a story about the relationships

between the many talented people belonging to that community.

Cinema is simultaneously an art, a craft, and a business. Art is best defined

as a human-produced object, text, or performance with limited practical util-

ity but with added dimensions of meaning and value open to interpretation.

A sunset may be beautiful and engage the viewer’s emotions, but it is not

art. Like a sculpture, a coat rack may be a standing form made of wood and

metal—but it is not a sculpture, and is not considered art. How art is regarded

critically, and valued, is subject to complex development through cultural and

social institutions, education, and the opinions of various experts.

Motion pictures are made by various people who specialize in each of the

crafts that go into moviemaking, but always work collaboratively. Among the

major motion picture crafts are producing, screenwriting, directing, produc-

tion management, cinematography, lighting, acting, production design, sound

recording, sound mixing, and editing. Hollywood professionals typically spe-

cialize in a single craft, although there is sometimes crossover of an individual

from one craft to another. Just how the collaboration of these various ele-

ments functions in the making of any particular movie is elusive. It is widely

recognized that making feature-length movies is collaborative. Just how this

Preface

viii Preface

collaboration works, however, usually is ignored or glossed over in thinking

and writing about what movies are and where they come from.

Finally, movies are a business, produced, distributed, and exhibited with

the intention of covering the costs of the materials and personnel needed to

make any individual movie, and with an eye to profitability. That profitability

is the margin that permits moviemaking and movie watching to continue.

A History of American Movies is a story told in recognition of the com-

plexity of movies as an art, craft, and business. It is written, first of all, for

people who love movies and who would like to make them, especially for

those younger men and women who see themselves as the filmmakers of

the future. At the same time, it is a book written for readers of any age who

want to know what the American cinema is and truly has been, and how

those strands of art, craft, and business were woven together complexly

throughout Hollywood’s history.

The value of any Hollywood history depends on which movies are

written about, with an explanation of how they were selected as being

significant. Mentioning the titles of a great many movies in encyclopedic

fashion has value, but it is not the best way to tell the story of Hollywood.

Instead, this book focuses its attention on a select set of movies. The movies

selected are not choices of the author, however, nor of any other film critic

or film scholar. Instead, this history is based on the premise that the essence

of Hollywood is best revealed through those movies whose titles are found

on three lists that have been created primarily by professionals actually work-

ing in the movie industry.

The cinema of the United States has two “official” organizations. The

first is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, founded in 1927

by the leading motion picture production and distribution companies to

promote film as an art and a science. Very early in its history, the Academy

instituted awards of merit to recognize accomplishment in a wide range of

artistic and technical fields; the recipients of these awards receive statuettes

known as “Oscars.”

Forty years later, in 1967, the other official body, the American Film

Institute (AFI), was founded with the specific goal of training filmmakers and

preserving America’s film heritage. With initial funding from the National

Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Motion Picture Association of America

(MPAA), and the Ford Foundation, AFI’s broad mission is to enrich and nur-

ture the art of film in America. In addition to providing advanced graduate

education in film production, AFI has created various forms of recognition to

honor specific filmmakers and films.

Combined, the Academy and AFI provide us three lists of films recog-

nized as exceptional.

Preface ix

BEST PICTURE ACADEMY AWARDS

The first of these lists consists of the movies selected for the Best Picture award

by the Academy. The Academy is the Hollywood establishment; its member-

ship consists of people working in the motion picture industry above the line

(studio executives, producers, screenwriters, actors) and craftspeople (pro-

duction designers, actors, cinematographers, editors, sound recordists, sound

mixers, art directors, etc.), as well as other creative, performing, and business

personnel. Since its earliest years in the late 1920s, when the Academy’s mem-

bership comprised just over four hundred, it has eventually grown into an

organization with roughly six thousand voting members. The Academy’s Best

Picture Oscar winners for each year, beginning in 1927/28, have been selected

by a cross-section of professionals actually engaged in finding, developing, and

funding movie ideas, bringing them to the screen, and disseminating them to

the public. The Best Picture Academy Awards for each year are contemporary

awards of distinction based exclusively on the evaluation and judgment of

movie industry peers.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has selected a Best

Picture for each year by vote since 1927/28. The awardee normally is selected

from a list of five, or more, nominated films. The winners through 2008 are:

1927/28: Wings

1928/29: The Broadway Melody

1929/30: Cimarron

1931/32: Grand Hotel

1932/33: Cavalcade

1934: It Happened One Night

1935: Mutiny on the Bounty

1936: The Great Ziegfeld

1937: The Life of Emile Zola

1938: You Can’t Take It with You

1939: Gone with the Wind

1940: Rebecca

1941: How Green Was My Valley

1942: Mrs. Miniver

1943: Casablanca

1944: Going My Way

1945: The Lost Weekend

1946: The Best Years of Our Lives

1947: Gentleman’s Agreement

1948: Hamlet

1949: All the King’s Men

1950: All About Eve

1951: An American in Paris

1952: The Greatest Show on Earth

1953: From Here to Eternity

1954: On the Waterfront

1955: Marty

1956: Around the World in Eighty Days

1957: The Bridge on the River Kwai

1958: Gigi

1959: Ben-Hur

1960: The Apartment

1961: West Side Story

1962: Lawrence of Arabia

1963: Tom Jones

1964: My Fair Lady

1965: The Sound of Music

1966: A Man for All Seasons