Films Become Mass Entertainment Media

nickelodeon an early movie theater that charged an admission price of 5 cents per person

Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) also known as the Movie Trust, Edison Trust, or the Trust, this coalition, which lasted from 1908 to 1912, was organized by the ten largest movie companies, whose producers and distributors attempted to gain complete control of the motion-picture industry in the United States primarily through control of patents

Vertical integration an organization’s control over a media product from production through distribution to exhibition

studio system the approach used by American film companies to turn out their products from the early 1920s to the 1950s

star system an operation designed to find and cultivate actors under long-term contracts, with the intention of developing those actors into famous “stars” who would enhance the profitability of the studio’s films

A and B movie units an element of the studio system in which films were divided into two categories of production

A films expensively made productions featuring glamorous, high-paid movie stars

B films lower-budget films that were made quickly

The Edison Vitascope, as advertised in 1896, was a modified “Phantascope jointly designed by C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. Armat sold his rights to Edison, who then claimed the modified projector (which he dubbed the Vitascope) as his own invention. In later years, however, Edison acknowledged that the device was the work of Armat.

Until 1903, a film typically was less than a minute long, consisted of a single shot, and was generally shown during breaks between vaudeville acts. Two filmmakers who helped to change that approach were Frenchman George Melies and American Edwin S. Porter. Melies was a magician and graphic artist who made fantasy films with elaborately painted scenery and skillful camera effects; his film A Trip to the Moon is particularly well known for introducing animation and science fiction narrative to the movie business. Porter experimented with more realistic genres (he made The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery, among other films), showing that moviemakers could go beyond simply filming stage plays and create a new art form through the use of imaginative editing and camera work. Along with close-ups and other innovations, The Great Train Robbery has a startling ending: a cowboy points his gun directly at the audience and fires a shot.

With the development of the film narrative came larger and larger audiences. Theaters called nickelodeons (so named because they charged an admission price of a nickel per person) sprouted up throughout the United States. The immigrants who were streaming into the United States from eastern and southern Europe in the early 1900s were especially attracted to nickelodeons—not only because of their low cost, but because the medium was silent. Stories were told through mime, with title cards inserted into the films at special moments to tell viewers exactly what was going on. Because a filmmaker could change the language of the titles fairly simply to suit a particular audience, and because most viewers could usually follow the action even without the titles, the movies were popular with people who had just moved to the United States and didn't speak English.

THE MPPC AND THE FIGHT OVER PATENTS By 1910, the demand for movies had become so great that small movie-production firms, many owned by immigrants, were churning out films. The biggest film companies—Edison, Biograph, and Vitagraph—all based in the New York City area, were alarmed at the competition and at the fact that the small filmmaking firms generally were not paying royalties on the patents for the camera and projection equipment that the big companies owned. In 1908, the ten largest companies banded together to form a trust called the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), also known as the Movie Trust, the Edison Trust, or simply the Trust. From 1908 to 1912, the MPCC attempted to gain complete control of the motion-picture industry in the United States, primarily through control of patents. The MPCC's intention was to sue any company making or projecting movies without first getting permission.

The MPPC entered into a contract with Eastman Kodak Company, the largest manufacturer of raw film stock, under which film would be supplied only to licensed members of the coalition. It even went so far as to dictate the form of the movies produced by its members and licensees. It decreed that movies should not be longer than ten minutes, because audiences would not tolerate longer films. The MPCC also refused to allow the names of actors to be listed on the screen, fearing that if actors became well known they would ask for raises.

Despite its efforts, the MPPC failed to stop its upstart competitors. Many of these new startup filmmakers were eastern European Jewish immigrants who were intent on making their fortunes in a trade that, unlike railroading, auto building, and other entrepreneurial businesses, had few startup costs. They broke the MPPC's filmmaking rules—by making longer films and revealing stars' names—and they succeeded. To escape from the demands of the MPPC, and to operate in a climate that would allow them to film year round, many of them moved their studios from New York to a suburb of Los Angeles, California, called Hollywood. The MPPC, for its part, was investigated by the federal government for antitrust violations and was dissolved by court order in 1917. (See Chapter 3 for a discussion of antitrust laws.) By 1920, the MPPC had disappeared altogether, along with the filmmaking companies that had once belonged to it.

The new immigrant-run studios, on the other hand, prospered; some eventually became the major film studios we know today—Columbia Pictures, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Not only were large audiences in the United States eager to see the movies these studios were making, but also markets in Europe and elsewhere were wide open to them as well. Part of the reason was that the young European film industry had been destroyed during World War I. The American companies saw an opportunity for worldwide distribution of their products. By 1918, U.S. movie firms controlled about 80 percent of the world market.

MEDIA PROFILE HATTIE MCDANIEL

Hattie McDaniel in Song of the South.

Back in the days when Hollywood allotted very few major roles to African-Americans, Hattie McDaniel appeared in more than 300 films. In 1940, she won the best supporting actress award for her role as Mammy in the film Gone with the Wind. This achievement made her the first African-American to win an Academy Award and helped her to earn the reputation as the most successful black movie actress of her time.

Unfortunately, most of McDaniel’s accomplishments were criticized by progressives in the black community. In almost every film she appeared in, McDaniel played the role of a maid or cook, a fact that did not go unnoticed. It was in 1935 that McDaniel first drew criticism for her work in The Little Colonel. Many members of the black community felt that her role as the happy black servant reinforced stereotypes that black people had been content with slavery. Five years later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) criticized McDaniel for her role as Mammy, even though many journalists in the black press viewed her work in Gone with the Wind positively.

In the late 1940s, Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP, began an intense crusade to diversify the roles played by black people in Hollywood movies. He openly attacked any role that “smacked of Uncle Tomism, or Mammyism” and singled out McDaniel in particular. She stood up to her opponents and responded, “Hell, I’d rather play a maid than be one,” a quote that became forever linked to the actress.

McDaniel firmly believed that actors ought to be allowed to choose any role they wanted. Born to a family of entertainers in 1895, she dropped out of high school to become a minstrel performer. Before making her film debut in 1931, the actress also dabbled in radio, worked in a club, and took a variety of menial jobs to support herself during the Depression. Having lived through tough times, McDaniel had no intention of throwing it all away.

Toward the end of her life, Hattie McDaniel won the starring role in The Beulah Show. At the height of its success in 1950, this program attracted a multiracial audience of 20 million Americans each night. Although she was once again playing the role of a maid, McDaniel generally received approval from the NAACP and the Urban League for her comedic work as Beulah. Playing this character allowed McDaniel to prove that black people could perform comedic roles without degradation. McDaniel was so committed to this show that she continued to work on it following a heart attack she suffered in 1951. Sadly, she succumbed to breast cancer one year later, leaving behind a rich legacy in Hollywood.

Sources: [No author], Contemporary Black Biography (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1993); A1 Young, “I’d Rather Play a Maid than Be One,” The New York Times, October 15, 1989, Section 7, p. 13.

Vertical Integration and the Advent of the Studio System

Keeping control of that business was a high priority. The immigrant studio chiefs were quite aware that they had defeated the previous movie regime, and they didn’t want the same thing to happen to them. To protect and extend their companies7 power, they engaged in one or both of two key strategies: vertical integration and the studio system.

VERTICAL INTEGRATION Recall from Chapter 2 that, in the mass media industries, vertical integration is control of all steps in the process from creator to audiences—production, distribution, and exhibition. Vertical integration dictated that a major film company should possess moviemaking facilities (the studio), a division that distributed its films to theaters (its distribution arm), and many theaters in the key areas. If a firm had all these activities under its control, competitors could not stop its movies from being shown to the public.

THE STUDIO SYSTEM From the early 1920s to the 1950s, the studio system was the approach the movie companies used to turn out their products efficiently. One element of this process was the star system. This operation was designed to find and cultivate actors under long-term contracts, with the intention of developing those actors into famous “stars” who would enhance the profitability of the studio's films. Another element was the division of the studio into A and B movie units. A films were expensively made productions featuring glamorous, highly paid stars. B films were made more quickly, with much smaller budgets.

Sometimes the studios produced series pictures—movies that featured the same characters (and actors and sets) across a number of films, thus lowering the costs and increasing profits. The A films were the prestige films; they were designed to get audi­ences excited, and to think highly of the companies that made them. The movie companies also used A films to force independent theaters (those that the film companies didn't own) to carry their films. Distribution executives simply said that if theater owners didn't carry a certain number of B films they would not get the A pictures. They called this practice block booking.

Alone or together, vertical integration and the studio system kept the seven immigrant-built firms—sometimes known as the majors—at the top of the movie industry during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Small companies emerged to create niche pictures (children's films, comedy shorts, documentaries, and the occasional big drama), but the majors ran the industry.

This is not to say that times were always healthy for all of these companies. During the 1920s, and especially during the Great Depression years of the 1930s, many firms had a hard time staying afloat. In fact, it was during the late 1920s that a struggling Warner Brothers decided to gamble on a technique for adding talking and singing to movies. After experimenting with short talkies, or films that featured sound as well as images, the company released The fazz Singer in 1927 starring the vaudeville singing sensation A1 Jolson. The film was a hit, and it sparked a worldwide conversion of movie theaters to handle sound. A new era had begun. By the early 1930s, the majors were only turning out movies with sound.