HOLLYWOOD AND THE BOX OFFICE, 1895-1986
By the same author READING THE SCREEN SATELLITE, CABLE AND BEYOND (with Alastair Hetherington)
Hollywood and the Box Office, 1895-1986 John lzod Head, Department of Film and Media Studies University of Stirling M MACMILLAN PRESS
Kenneth John lzod 1988 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1988 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data lzod, John Hollywood and the box office, 1895-1986. 1. Moving-picture industry-california -Los Angeles-History 2. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)--Industries- History 3. Los Angeles (Calif.) Industries--History I. Title 384'.8'0979494 PN1993.5. U65 ISBN 978-0-333-46123-5 ISBN 978-1-349-19324-0 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19324-0
For my parents Alan and Olive Izod, honour and love
Contents Acknowledgement viii Introduction ix 1 Inventions and Patents, 1895-99 1 2 Nickelodeons and Narrative, 1900--8 7 3 The Motion Picture Patents Company, 1908-14 16 4 Independents, Innovation and the Beginnings of Hollywood, 1908-15 26 5 Architecture of the Feature Film, 1915-25 38 6 Standardising Production and Consumption, 1915-25 53 7 The Coming of Sound, 1926--29 72 8 Product Differentiation in the 1930s 84 9 Depression and the Mature Oligopoly, the 1930s 95 10 War, Prosperity, Divorce and Loss, 1939--48 111 11 Hollywood in Transition, 1949-55 132 12 The New Order, 1955-68 151 13 Conglomerates and Diversification, 1965-86 171 Notes and References 199 Bibliography 220 Index of Films and Programmes 226 Index of Names and Subjects 229 vii
Acknowledgement An extract from Chapter 12 has been published as 'Walt Disney Innovates the Television Showcase', in The AMES Journal, 2 (1985). The author and publishers are grateful to The AMES Journal for permission to reprint here. viii
Introduction Profits have always, from the earliest days, been the primary objective of the American film industry. However it may appear from outside, Hollywood has always been first and foremost a business; and although occasional exceptions have been made for movies that were thought likely to enhance a studio's corporate image, few films are released in the certain knowledge that they will lose money. This is not to say that all American features do make profit- but almost all are intended to do so. This fact has consequences. Broadly it means that production companies cannot simply make the films their writers, directors and producers want to, without regard for the market into which they will be released. They have to try to produce features that large numbers of people either already want to see, or can be tempted to see. As every hopeful scriptwriter knows, this is a double constraint. Not only are there limits at any given time to the popular desires of the movie-going public, but in their interpretation of what those desires may be, executives in charge of production are likely to err towards caution. In general they prefer, rather than new, untested ideas, to approve for production a movie that resembles others for which the public has already shown a liking. Nonetheless innovation does take place, and sometimes it is led by a single film. For example, a proposed movie may develop a style, an idea or a plot which is at least partly unfamiliar, and which marketing agents believe they can sell to audiences. Paramount's enthusiastic promotion of The Godfather (1971) illustrates such a case. The film broke new narrative ground both by portraying its gangster heroes as sympathetic figures, and by making their history a part of the epic of modern America's founding. But it is worth noting that the movie was also in line with certain developments in the movie business, in that it extended the concept of the blockbuster to new dimensions. It cost a fortune, ran for three hours, and was sold as something more than a feature film: it was an event. It is on this kind of business-led innovation that this book concentrates. Often such innovation comes about not through a single film but through an attempt to reorganise the market. Typically in such a case, one or a number of companies in the industry try to increase their share of business by promoting an idea ix
X Introduction or a technique which their rivals do not use. This can be done by launching a new kind of film (the feature was introduced to the North American market by only one sector of the industry in the 1910s). Alternatively the innovation of new technology may give smaller companies the means to challenge larger ones for a share in control of the market (as happened when two medium-sized companies introduced the sound film). Such innovations not infrequently contribute (on occasion lead directly) to changes in the films which the industry routinely releases. As we shall see, there has been a surprising number of such developments. Hardly a decade has passed since the foundation of the film business in which it has not undergone upheaval. Much of that disturbance has its roots in competition to take greater profits from one or a number of arms of the entertainment industry. This study takes a general approach to the changes brought to American films by commercial circumstances, and it does so for a number of reasons. In the first place, even granted their weighty influence, business considerations comprise only one determinant among many upon the individual film. That influence can often be more clearly identified in a cycle of films than in a single instance. Secondly, the nature of the statistical evidence admitted by the industry makes it unreliable. Because of this the quotation of figures has been limited as far as possible to illustrating changes or trends. To take just one example of unreliability: one source quotes the year's total domestic admissions for 1960 as 1304 million people, declining to 1024 million in 1964. Gross takings are said to have declined from $948 million in 1960 to $874 million in 1962 before returning to their former level at $947 million in 1964. However, a second source gives weekly admissions of 40 million people in 1960, rising to 44 million by 1964. That implies an audience of 2 billion rising to more than 2! billion. But this same source shows takings as having declined from 1960 ($951 million) to 1964 ($913 million). The logic of these figures is that in 1964 people in the audience reported by the first writer paid on average 90 cents for admission, while those described by the second paid no more than 40 cents. Yet this same historian quotes an average ticket price of 92 cents for that year. The point is that a disparity of this kind arises from more than the plain carelessness of the second writer. Many of the reported figures are suspect. In some cases, as with the weekly admissions figures quoted above, although they are said to come from the US Bureau
Introduction Xl of Census, they appear simply to be wrong. Then too, certain practices have allegedly long been widespread in Hollywood. For example, much 'creative accounting' is said to take place. One temptation for members of the industry is that in some circumstances showing business as better than it really is may boost the confidence of shareholders or trading partners. On other occasions, particularly when it comes to dividing profits with those who have a right to share in them, there will be advantage in showing reduced income and enhanced overheads. The final reason for making this a generalised study is that it is a survey history. As such it does not refer directly to the primary evidence - company records, legal documents, publicity material, the records and reports of participants and immediate observers - from which are constructed accounts argued in fine detail concerning particular aspects of the industry (for example, the innovation of a new technique, the operations of a single company, or the impact of specific circumstances in society). The survey history makes use where they exist of these detailed studies as a substantial part of its evidence. It has, however, to sacrifice their attention to minute evidence in order to make space for a long view of the ninety years of business activity within the industry. During the past fifteen years scholars of the American film business have rewritten significant sections of its industrial history, bringing into play both new evidence and more reliable methods than their predecessors used. But these new writings have, with few exceptions, not been absorbed into the wider context of a survey history. The main use of such a history is to introduce an unfamiliar subject. Since the concept that movies are produced by a highly organised and sophisticated industry is still barely more than halfformed both among general readers and students enrolled in formal courses, that is what this book seeks to do. A word of caution about the nature of the survey history may be helpful. Because it covers a wide span of time, such a history can appear to claim both completeness and objectivity. In actuality (although the responsible historian will want to make the work as accurate as possible) modern historiography teaches that it can have neither of these qualities in any simple sense. The survey history is by its nature highly selective. It presents arguments and data in summary form, often chosen because they seem to the writer to indicate large-scale changes. It does this at the necessary expense of omitting or glossing over a great deal of detailed material. In this,
xii Introduction however, it is not radically different from the work of other historians, all of whom must evaluate and interpret the information they obtain. All history is in part subjective, being shaped by the values of both the writer and the anticipated reader. The survey history, which extrapolates its information from the work of other historians rather than from original data, is doubly subjective. JoHN lzon