BSA106-The Golden Age Slideshow Notes

Period of history between the 1920's to the late 1950's.
Also known as the Golden Age of Hollywood, it refers to the style, productions values and distribution of films make under the Hollywood Studio System.

Big 5
Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Paramount Pictures
Warner Bros.
RKO Radio Picture
20th Century Fox

Little 3
Universal
Colombia
United Artists

The Studio Systems was a big part of the success of Classic Hollywood, it enabled the biggest studios to have total control of the movies they made and how they would be distributed. This powerful structure of the studio system is known as vertical integration. Studios controlled the supply chain, production to exhibition. 

MPPDA,vital functions, neturalise the increasing moral panic over the disreputable nature of the movies with a voluntary production code. 

To encourage co-operation between the major studies, restricting international access or new competitors to the huge and profitable US market. 

To work with the US State Department to lobby overseas government who threatened to introduce restrictions on Hollywood imports. 

Block Booking, important practice where studios would sell a years worth of films to theaters. The units were made up of one A movie they really wanted and them a mix on A and B movies. 

The Big 5 had controlling stakes in their own theater chains. 

1948 the verdict in the antitrust case, US vs Paramount Pictures inc, decision outlawed the practice of block booking, forcing studios to sell their theater chains. 


The Hays Code, the MPPDA hired Will Hays to put in place a self-regulatory code of practice. It was a set of subjects the films couldn't depict, alongside topics of films had to treat with extreme caution. Most notable subjects were sex and crimes against the Law.

Studios were infamous for 'owning; their stars through contracts. An image was built for the star the didn't necessarily have anything to with how they were in real life. 

Stars often felt 'owned' by studios and were frustrated that they couldn't choose what they stared in.