The actual, physical studios, called “dream fac-
tories” by anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker,
were complex operations.^15 If you were fortunate
enough to get past a studio’s high walls and through
its guarded gates, you would find yourself in a vast,
industrial complex. MGM, for example, the largest
studio, covered 117 acres, over which 10 miles of
paved streets linked 137 buildings. There were 29
soundstages—huge air-conditioned and sound-
proofed production facilities, the largest of which
had a floor area of nearly 1 acre. The studio was a
self-contained community with its own police and
fire services, hospital, film library, school for child
actors, railway siding, industrial section capable of
manufacturing anything that might be needed for
making a movie, and vast backlot containing sets
representing every possible period and architec-
ture. In the average year, MGM produced fifty full-
length feature pictures and one hundred shorts.
Depending on the level of production, the work-
force consisted of 4,000 to 5,000 people. The other
major studios had smaller but similar operations.
The Decline of the Studio System
Fostered by aggressive competition and free trade,
the studio system grew to maturity in the 1930s,
reached a pinnacle of artistic achievement and
industrial productivity in the 1940s, and then
declined at the beginning of the 1950s. We can see
this trajectory clearly by looking at the actual num-
ber of films produced and released by American
studios during that downward swing. As Table 11.2
indicates, the average number of films annually
produced and released in the United States from
1936 to 1940 was 495; from 1941 to 1945, the war
years, that number fell to 426; in the immediate
postwar period, 1946–1950, it fell even further, to
- In 1951, the total number of U.S. films was 391,
the highest it would be until 1990, when 440 films
were released. In looking at these data, remember
that the total film releases in any one year usually
reflect two kinds of production: those begun in that
year and those begun earlier. In any case, one thing
is clear: total Hollywood production between 1936
and 1951 fell by 25 percent.
By the mid-1930s, in fact, the system had reached
a turning point as a result of three intertwined
factors. First, the studios were victims of their own
success. The two most creative production heads—
Darryl F. Zanuck, who dominated production at
20th Century Fox from 1933 until 1956, and Irving
Thalberg, who supervised production at MGM
from 1923 until his death in 1936—had built such
highly efficient operations that their studios could
function exceptionally well, both stylistically and
financially, without the sort of micromanaging that
characterized David O. Selznick’s style at Selznick500 CHAPTER 11 FILMMAKING TECHNOLOGIES AND PRODUCTION SYSTEMS
(^15) See Hortense Powdermaker, Hollywood, the Dream Factory:
An Anthropologist Looks at the Movie-Makers(Boston: Little,
Brown, 1950).
TABLE 11.2 Feature Films Produced and
Released in the United
States, 1936––1951
Ye a r
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
Number of Feature
Films Released
522
538
455
483
477
492
488
397
401
350
378
369
366
356
383
391
Source: Joel Finler, The Hollywood Story, (New York:
Crown, 1988), p. 280.
Note: These figures do not include foreign films released in
the United States.