History of film Summary

Full-Length Programs:Fights, Passion Plays, and Travel In the post-novelty period, exhibitors played a key creative role in the motion picture field. Their claims to authorship were indeed often merit... Read more

Hearing the Audience We do not create the types of entertainment, we merely present them. People see . . . a reflection of their own average thoughts and attitudes. If the reflection is much lower or ... Read more

Independents, Packaging, and Inflationary Pressure in 1980s Hollywood The seventy-fifth anniversary edition of Variety, dated 14 January 1981, split its financial page between two different stories: ... Read more

Introduction: The Uncertainty of Sound The serious problem of injecting sound into the now silent drama is in the offing. What producers will do in this regard, of course, is an unknown factor MAURIC... Read more

Orders of Magnitude II: Costs, Agents, Stars When you don't get participation, your front money naturally accelerates .... The best participation is if you can get gross from every boxoffice dollar T... Read more

Selling Stars The conversion to sound and the ordeal of the Depression left the star system firmly in the grip of the producers. As Alexander Walker put it, "the star system in the 1930s gradually too... Read more

Technological Innovation and Aesthetic Response I like to compare this revolution [in cinematography] offast lenses plus pushed developmnent to painting.... Impressionism also came out of a technolog... Read more

The Industry at the Damn of the Decade As the 1980s began, the Hollywood industry was poised for five straight years of record box-office returns. Industry grosses climbed steadily, from $2.8 billion ... Read more

The Well-Tempered Sound Track, 1930-1931 In 1930 regular customers began attending movies less frequently and spending less money. The motion picture industry cut back on production budgets, furlough... Read more

Toward a History of Screen Practice Starting points always present problems for the historian, perhaps because they imply a "before" as well as an "after." For the film historian, "the invention of ci... Read more

Brand Names and Stars "Whose make is it?" -Two ladies in front of the Herald Square Theater, quoted in the Moving Picture World, 1 November 1913, p. 486 Before the rise of the star system, films wer... Read more

Cinema Flourishes Within Its Existing Commercial Framework: 1904-1905 During 1904-1905, the number of exhibition venues increased rapidly and soon reached a saturation point as the industry secured re... Read more

1910s: Film and Theater One of many amusements in the 1900s, movies began to compete seriously with books and magazines for people's leisure time in the 1910s. By 1916, twenty-five million Amer... Read more

1930s: Tv and Radio Just as the 1930s produced some of the best American movies, it also produced some of the best radio programs, making the decade the golden age of both cinema and radio. More than ... Read more

1950s: Film and Theater The biggest problem facing the movie industry in the 1950s was the TV. As sales of TV sets increased, more and more Americans stayed at home—and away from cinemas. This ... Read more

1960s: Film and Theater Moviemaking remained in a slump at the start of the 1960s. Moviemakers struggled to come up with successful strategies to combat the rising popularity of television, which kept... Read more

1990s: Film and Theater In the 1990s, special effects continued to dominate the film world. Special effects were used heavily to create the spectacular action that was demanded of every movie studio&#... Read more