Golden Age of Hollywood: Difference between revisions

''Success walks hand in hand with failure along Hollywood Boulevard''|'''[[The Kinks]]''', "Celluloid Heroes" }}

Although acting and voice lessons were usually part of the package, the main emphasis was clearly on image and presentability. Stars would have their films chosen for them by the studio, even if the star in question had other ideas of what movies to do. The studio would arrange dates and romances between its male and female stars in order to drum up publicity, especially if [[Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?|one of the stars]] [[The Beard|was secretly gay]]. Contracts often came with [[Contractual Purity|morality clauses]] to keep stars from engaging in such indiscretions as drug use, alcoholism, divorce and adultery, which (it was feared) would ruin their public images and make them unprofitable. Women had to behave like proper ladies off set, and men had to act like gentlemen. Of course, if they did violate these clauses, the usual response would be to use hush money to silence witnesses, or promise exclusive stories to the tabloids so that they wouldn't report on it. (Any similarities to how present-day [[Disney]] manages its [[Teen Idol|teen stars]], or how Japan's [[Animeanime]] industry manages its ''[[Voice Actors|seiyuu]]'', are purely coincidental.)

Directors were also contractually bound to their studios. As a result, the way that movies were made came to be standardized, almost like a production line. Standardization was so powerful that each studio developed its own "style," distinct from the rest, with regards to how their movies looked. [[Executive Meddling]] was the norm, and headstrong directors like [[Alfred Hitchcock]], [[Orson Welles]] and [[John Ford]] often fought against the restrictions put on them by the studio. The concept of the "auteur"—a director who controls most aspects of the production—did not exist in Hollywood until [[New Hollywood|well after the Golden Age]]. This was also the era of the [[Hays Code]], enacted in response to both [[You Can Panic Now|moral panic]] over indecency in early film and a perceived number of immoral people within the industry itself ([[Fatty Arbuckle]] being the most infamousnotable - and he was not guilty of the charges brought against him), as well as the [[Moral Guardians|National Legion of Decency]], a largely Catholic censor group that could effectively destroy a film's profitability by declaring it "morally objectionable" (basically, imagine the Parents Television Council, but Catholic, movie-focused and far more powerful). This placed extremely strong censorship on films in addition to the demands of the executives. The combination of these two factors meant that [[Strictly Formula]], more often than not, ruled the day when it came to filmmaking.

As one could guess, not everyone in Hollywood was pleased with these restrictive arrangements. Indeed, as early as 1919 (a decade before the official start of the Golden Age), Douglas Fairbanks, [[Charlie Chaplin]], [[Mary Pickford]] and D. W. Griffith founded the studio [[United Artists]] in order to subvert the studio system and have greater control over their work and their lives. Later, during the '30s, [[Unions in Hollywood|Hollywood's main unions]] formed to protest the low wages and grueling work schedules experienced by actors, directors and writers. At the time of [[United Artists]]' founding, the head of [[Metro Goldwyn Mayer|Metro Pictures]], Richard A. Rowland, described it as "[[Running the Asylum|the inmates taking over the asylum]]." In time, however, UA's model [[Vindicated by History|would come to be the standard for Hollywood]], especially once [[Fall of the Studio System|the Golden Age studio system began to fall apart]]...

** Kay Francis also appeared on said list after starring in the now classic Lubitsch film ''Trouble in Paradise"'' and several films with William Powell in the earlier part of the decade. While she never developed an iconic status in later years the way the people above did, her work is under a rediscovery of sorts, despite the fact that her biography is titled "I Can't Wait to be Forgotten."