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The history of the film industry
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The history of the film industry
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Hollywood is one of the most well-known cities around the world. It is a district located in the heart of Los Angeles, California. It is known as the birth place of the entertainment industry but was that the founders plan? It was once was a small country town, but after decades of development, Hollywood has come to be much more than that. “Hollywood” has grown and developed into not only a thriving city for film but also has been named a metonym for the motion picture industry for the United States.
In 1853 Hollywood was founded and marked by an adobe hut on land just outside of Los Angeles, California. Hollywood became a thriving agricultural community when the growing of crops became so successful in 1870. (History of Hollywood, California,
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“Tinseltown” was filled with hysteria, accusations, and counter accusations. (History of Hollywood, California. n.d.). The city of Hollywood, CA felt as though it was under a witch hunt. Major Hollywood actors and directors were questioned on the assumption that some were communists. When the famous Lucille Ball was questioned, her husband stated: the only thing red about Lucy is her hair and even that’s not legitimate. At age 10, Shirley Temple was also under suspicion. As it seemed as though remaining silent came to be seen as an admission of guilt, Judy Garland said: “They are kicking the living daylights out of the Bill of Rights.”(Lewis, 2009). If you refused to release names, you went on the black list. The black list reaches all time high which effected an abundance of people in Hollywood. Being summoned to appear before the committee was a career death sentence. It was rather hard for those on the blacklist to find other jobs. Blacklisted writers had to present their scripts under pseudonyms and Oscar;s ended up being presented to those who didn’t even deserve them. (History of Hollywood, California. n.d.). In 1957, the father of McCarthyism, Joseph McCarthy died and the blacklist was broken down by Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger. …show more content…
Throughout the years Hollywood has made a great transformation with its movies. With the development of technology and other sources movies are tending to become better and better. When movies were first introduced they were scratchy and some had little to no sound. In today’s society movies show up on screens crystal clear. Some movies are even 3-d which gives the audience a feeling that they are actually there. Amazing advancements in editing can make anything become possible on a movie screen with just a couple of clicks of the mouse. Hollywood and its films have truly come a long way from what they use to
The Hollywood blacklist and the subsequent Paramount decision altered the direction of U.S. moviemaking in a big way. While both events are important in filmmaking history, the opinions on the legality, necessity, and effects of these events vary widely depending on who you ask. While the filmmaking industry management opposed the blacklist and the Paramount decision, some management executives may have taken advantage of the blacklist by negotiating stricter contracts based upon extortion, in that to be blacklisted, one only needed to be rumored to be associated with communist ties (Lewis, 2008). The employees, such as actors, directors, and writers of the large studios were also opposed to the Paramount decision and the blacklist, but the ability actors, directors, and writers to fight for and gain large contracts has improved since the Paramount decision, as it cast the studios as advantageous, money hungry totalitarian fraternities. I would argue that the Paramount decision and the
To get a clear view and understanding of the book, first must review the time period in history. The book was written in the mid 1950's during the cold war. Former General McCarthy, then U.S. Senator started a fire ball of suspicion, suppression, and incarceration. This had a very huge impact on the entrainment industry, which included everyone from playwrights to filmmakers, as well as writers and actors. If anyone in that time period was suspected of being a communist, the government could come and pull them out of their home. At the least a suspected communist would be banned, or put on a black ball list. Printed in the Times, McCarthy's First Slander, "Overnight, his speech sparked a media firestorm that played to the basest fears of Americans swept up in a frightening cold war and triggered loyalty oaths, blacklists and personal betrayals that cost an estimated 10,000 Americans their jobs and some shattered innocents their lives." (Johanna McGeary 28) This happened to a number of actors and film makers during that time period. The black ball list was a list of names of people who were believed to be communist. The people on this list came from the movie industry as well as writers. These people would no longer be able to get work ...
In 1956 Arthur Miller was subpoenaed by HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee) and refused to identify writers that were believed to hold communist sympathies. Due to his refusal he was convicted of contempt of congress. The next year, however, the United States Supreme Court overturned this conviction. Under the leadership of McCarthy the committee had so much power that just knowing someone who was suspected of having ties to the communist party was a danger. The lives and careers of hundreds of Americans were ruined because of being blacklisted. Prison, bankruptcy, passport revocation, unemployment were threats made against people for them to testify and “name names.”
Hollywood is a master of revisionist history, especially when that history is its own. One of the defining moments in the histories of both Hollywood and America was the series of Congressional hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, and led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the late 1940′s and early 1950′s in order to ostensibly eliminate Communism from the United States. Hollywood was intimately involved in the HUAC hearings, and one of those targeted most viciously in the controversy was acclaimed film and theater director Elia Kazan.
As the United States transitioned out of World War II in 1945 and into a period of tension with the Soviet Union instigated by fear of the spread of Communism, the country’s distress moved to a new enemy. This hysteria became known as the Second Red Scare, lasting from 1947 to 1954 and initiated by Senator Joseph McCarthy. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was utilized by McCarthy to accuse the media, government, education institutions and political enemies of communist antics (Gordon). In 1947, he claimed to have lists of citizens that should be persecuted for supporting the Communist party. One of the groups attacked by McCarthyites included the actors, writers and directors of Hollywood. The first Hollywood blacklist was released November twenty-fifth, 19...
Hollywood is not simply a point on a map; it is a representation of the human experience. As with any other location, though, Hollywood’s history can be traced and analyzed up to present day. In 1887, Harvey Henderson Wilcox established a 120-acre ranch in an area northwest of Los Angeles, naming it “Hollywood” (Basinger 15). From then on, Hollywood grew from one man’s family to over 5,000 people in 1910. By then, residents around the ranch incorporated it as a municipality, using the name Hollywood for their village. While they voted to become part of the Los Angeles district, their village was also attracting motion-picture companies drawn in by the diverse geography of the mountains and oceanside (15). The Los Angeles area continues to flourish, now containing over nine million people, an overwhelming statistic compared to Wilcox’s original, family unit (U.S. Census Bureau 1). However, these facts only s...
In the 1930s and 1940s many Hollywood writers, actors, producers, and directors were suspected for communist affiliations. During this time, communism was a popular political movement in the United States, especially among young liberals. There was a growing fear of communism invading American society. By the end of World War Two an event known as the Red Scare resulted in communism become increasingly feared and hated by many in the United States. The Hollywood blacklist caused the Hollywood industry a lot of harm in its business and reputation.
In Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism and American Culture, Thomas Doherty profiles the 1950's Red Scare, also known as McCarthyism, and its vast effect on American culture during that time. Doherty arms his audience with the revealing history behind the rise and fall of Senator Joe McCarthy, as well as the roots of the anti-communist attitude during the Cold War era that led to the rise of McCarthyism. He discusses the effects of McCarthyism on the entertainment world of the 1950's; the blacklisting of actors, actresses, and producers; many important trials, such as the Army-McCarthy Hearings; and, finally, the end of McCarthyism. An interesting section of the book titled I Love Lucy: The Redhead and the Blacklist demonstrates that in a time
A new edition to the course lineup, this week's film classic, Sunset Boulevard. This film will focus on the culture and environment of the Hollywood studio system that produces the kind of motion pictures that the whole world recognizes as "Hollywood movies." There have been many movies from the silent era to the present that either glamorize or vilify the culture of Hollywood, typically focusing on the celebrities (both in front of and behind the camera) who populate the "dream factories" of Hollywood. But we cannot completely understand the culture of Hollywood unless we recognize that motion pictures are big business as well as entertainment, and that Hollywood necessarily includes both creative and commercial
...writers, and other entertainers were blacklisted by McCarthy and some were even brought to trial under suspicion of being Communist.
This was a group that declared their communist beliefs to the American Government and eventually had gained enough recognition to have hundreds of people on the list. The Hollywood Ten, Unfriendly Ten, or Hollywood Blacklist had a brief couple of instances that caused controversy and affected various lives of numerous people that were involved in the Hollywood filmmaking industry (Dickinson). Lastly, these events in history have shown the significant clashes of the political parties in various countries because of the fact that they demonstrate the controversy that was caused through the rises and falls of communism. The Hollywood Ten is a memorable group that contributed to Communism and the era of its
Hollywood’s Blacklist developed out of complex social, political, and economic conditions. Hollywood’s blacklist was a method utilized by the federal government to deny employment to many professionals in the entertainment industry, including but not limited to screenwriters, actors, producers, directors, musicians, and animators. These professionals were “blacklisted” as a result of suspected political affiliation with the Communist party. The manufacturing of the blacklist sprung out of panic and fear of communist reconnaissance as a result of many events that were taking place around the world such as the Soviet Eastern Europe, Berlin blockade, Chinese Civil War, confessions of high-ranking government officials of espionage for the Soviet Union, Korean War and,, Atomic bomb. Hollywood’s blacklist was also a manifesto of extreme paranoia related to the Cold War.
For the next three decades, the movie industry in the United States and the rest of the world operated by according to these principles. Cultural, social and economic changes ensured the demise of this system after the Second World War. A new way to run Hollywood was required. Beginning in 1962, Lew Wasserman of Universal Studios emerged as the key innovator in creating a second studio system. He realized that creating a global media conglomerate was more important than simply being vertically integrated.
The ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ era came about from around the 1960’s when cinema and film making began to change. Big film studios were going out of their comfort zone to produce different, creative and artistic movies. At the time, it was all the public wanted to see. People were astonished at the way these films were put together, the narration, the editing, the shots, and everything in between. No more were the films in similar arrangement and structure. The ‘New Hollywood era’ took the classic Hollywood period and turned it around so that rules were broken and people left stunned.
For the past century, Hollywood has influenced the world through its films and innovations it has brought to the industry. From the golden age classics to the modern blockbusters, every era Hollywood experiences bring revolutionary changes to the global film landscape. The inspiration and competition from Hollywood push the global film industry forward to evolve and advance to a higher level, and bring quality feature films to the worldwide audiences. Many have studied the development of Hollywood not only to understand the cinematic history, but also to find inspirations for other countries as many major film industries other than Hollywood were influenced directly or indirectly by its advancement.