Frame By Frame: Movie Moguls

Wheeler Winston Dixon Author

07/26/2012 Added

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UNL Film Studies professor Wheeler Winston Dixon explores the rise and fall of Hollywood's movie moguls of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

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[00:00:13.004]Hi. I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and this is Frame By Frame.
[00:00:19.089]And I'd like to speak today about the great Hollywood moguls during the studio era of the 1940s and 50s.
[00:00:26.059]Harry Cohn, better known as "White Fang," or "King Cohn" at Columbia.
[00:00:31.076]Louis B. Mayer, who ran MGM, although he was a salaried employee for Lowes Inc.
[00:00:37.033]Jack Warner, of course, head of production at Warner Bros., Adolph Zukor at Paramount, Herbert J. Yates at Republic, and there were many more.
[00:00:46.031]The great Hollywood studio bosses of the 30s, 40s and 50s... built up their empires.
[00:00:53.021]In some cases, they just outright created their empires.
[00:00:57.009]David O. Selznik, of course, set up his own studio.
[00:01:00.012]Darryl Zannuck merged 20th Century and Fox in 1935 to create 20th Century Fox.
[00:01:06.063]And these were "up from the bootstraps" kind of filmmakers, who were absolutely ruthless dictators...
[00:01:12.083]who ran their studios like mythical kingdoms, in which their word was absolute law...
[00:01:18.041]but they made some fabulous films along the way.
[00:01:21.044]And although they were utterly brutal in their business dealings on a daily basis...
[00:01:25.068]the films that they created formed the absolute of history of American cinema.
[00:01:31.005]The great studio bosses... more or less their reign came to an end with the beginning of what's known as the "Consent Decree," in 1948...
[00:01:38.043]which basically forced them to give up their theaters.
[00:01:42.040]The Supreme Court ruled that they were in the business of making films, distributing films, and exhibiting films...
[00:01:47.032]and they had to give up one or the other because otherwise they were a monopoly.
[00:01:50.061]So the studios sold off their theaters, and stayed in the film production business.
[00:01:55.028]Also the rise of television didn't help any as people were staying home.
[00:01:59.062]And at the same time, there was also the "De Havilland Decision" in 1944...
[00:02:04.052]in which Olivia De Havilland successfully appealed to the Supreme Court of California...
[00:02:09.012]that 7-year contracts to which the actors had been signed were 7 years...
[00:02:13.093]and you couldn't tack on endless extensions if you didn't want them to do a picture, which is what the studios were doing.
[00:02:19.053]So, from 1933 or so, to about 1960, the studios reigned supreme and unquestioned...
[00:02:27.018]but now the studios are run by corporations and conglomerates, and by executives that only have 2 or 3 year tenures...
[00:02:35.057]and you really can't get much done in that time. You can't get many pictures off the ground.
[00:02:40.029]You need a long time to develop films.
[00:02:42.056]And so by the time now, when a film is "green-lit" and by the time it's released...
[00:02:46.081]often the people who put it into motion have been fired by the studio or have moved on.
[00:02:51.070]You need continuity, and this is something that all of these filmmakers had.
[00:02:55.087]They had personal vision.
[00:02:58.051]Jack Warner's films at Warner Bros. were films about labor and social conditions, like "I Was A Fugitive From A Chain Gang."
[00:03:06.001]PRISONER: "I was just wiping the sweat off my face."
[00:03:08.042]GUARD: "Well, you got it knocked off."
[00:03:09.096]But each of these people had a studio identity, which was really the producer's identity.
[00:03:15.039]And so the great moguls were the people who made these studios.
[00:03:19.036]I have a book, which is just coming out, called "Death of the Moguls," which is about this period of Hollywood in the 1950s.
[00:03:26.017]And interestingly, none of these producers had a succession plan in place...
[00:03:31.044]because they all couldn't imagine a world in which they didn't exist.
[00:03:34.058]And when they died, their studios held into the hands of corporations, where they are today.
[00:03:39.053]And so while the names of Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox and Paramount and MGM and Columbia and the other studios continue on...
[00:03:47.066]the personal vision behind them is now lost because their part of a large corporation.
[00:03:53.043]I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, and this is Frame By Frame.

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