In the five years after Pearl Harbor (1942-1946), they released 1,395-a decline of 438 pictures, or nearly 25 percent. During the five years before Pearl Harbor, the Big Eight producer-distributors together released 1,833 pictures. Indeed, the wartime reduction in motion picture production and overall releases was most acute, by far, among the Big Five integrated majors.
#Outputting films after separation studio movie#
Simply stated, the first-run movie market was so bullish after Pearl Harbor that the major studios quickly saw the logic of increasing their emphasis on top product while cutting back on their overall output of films. While the lower output of films was related to various wartime factors-the manpower shortage, for example, and restricted supplies of film stock-these cutbacks resulted more than anything else from surging wartime revenues. The most significant developments in the Hollywood studio system during World War II were increased studio revenues (and profits) and decreased output. 2 Income, Output, and the Balance of Studio Power One notable exception was Fox's production chief, Darryl Zanuck, whose 1942-1943 stint as a commander in the Army Signal Corps included considerable action in North Africa. Of the 2,700 workers who left Hollywood for active military duty in 1942, however, few were top studio executives.
Jack Warner, for instance, signed up with the Army Air Corps and thereafter became "Colonel Warner," even in interoffice memos. Several top studio executives took military commissions, began wearing uniforms, and insisted on being addressed by rank. Hollywood swarmed with military personnel, including a number of filmmakers who joined up to do documentary work. Several lesser Hollywood plants-Fox's old B-picture studio on Western Avenue, for example, and both the Disney and Hal Roach studios-were completely retooled for war-film production. Hollywood and Washington quickly adapted a workable wartime rapport, and the studios cooperated with both the government and the military in the production of war films. After Pearl Harbor, as Richard Lingeman has noted, "the movie business was just another war industry eager to cooperate out of fear that it would be considered 'non-essential' and strangled by lack of priorities." 1Īs seen in chapter 5, within two weeks President Roosevelt gave Hollywood the green light to continue commercial filmmaking, but with express instructions regarding the studios' active support of the U.S. On the one hand, there was the possibility of nationalization by the government and the suspension of all commercial operations "for the duration." On the other hand, the studios faced the prospect of playing a marginal role (or less) in Washington's overall war plans. entry into the war actually put the studios in a curious bind. Meanwhile, studio executives worried about the wartime status of Hollywood films and filmmaking. Studio employees fretted about Japanese attacks and the resemblance of the sound stages to aircraft plants. Makeshift air-raid shelters were constructed on movie lots, while dimout and blackout plans were quickly formulated. In the first hours and days of the war, that activity had little to do with filmmaking. The Hollywood movie colony, enjoying its weekly respite from an otherwise nonstop production schedule, was soon bustling with activity. The news itself hit like an explosion, throwing the entire area into panic and confusion.
on 7 December 1941, news of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor disrupted what was, by all accounts, a clear and quiet Sunday morning in Los Angeles. Studio-based Units and In-house IndependentsĪt 11:26 a.m. The Wartime Surge in Independent Production It does not store any personal data.The Hollywood Studio System, 1942–1945 Income, Output, and the Balance of Studio Power The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
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