This document provides an overview of the history and development of the American film industry, with a focus on Hollywood. It discusses how Hollywood became the dominant center of American film production in the early 20th century due to favorable weather and the migration of film studios to the Los Angeles area. It describes the classical Hollywood era from the 1920s-1950s, known as the Golden Age, when the major studios controlled production, distribution, and exhibition. It also outlines the decline of the studio system after World War II due to legal rulings and the rise of television, as well as the transition to the "New Hollywood" era from the 1960s onward.

1. Hollywood Industry Research
The American Film Industry
The film industry is one of global proportions. Production, film
distribution and exhibition reach around the world and continue to
adapt to varying political, economic and technological changes.
Hollywood however continues to be a dominant factor in our film
viewing experiences. Even if we choose not to watch Hollywood
movies, the chances are that we will encounter Hollywood marketing
through accessing other media (trailers on TV, internet, videogame tie-ins), walking through
town (posters), listening to radio (film adverts, ‘exclusive’ interviews/promotions), listening to
music (‘official’ soundtracks), catching the bus (advertising hoardings), eating breakfast cereal
(free toys/promotions inside), going to bed (‘Spiderman’ pyjamas) etc. Considering that
Hollywood remains a suburb of Los Angeles, California, its reach and saturation remains global
and unavoidable.
Hollywood
As early as the 1910’s the US film industry began to shift its base
from the East coast to what was essentially a place in the
Californian Desert on the edge of Los Angeles. Since this time
Hollywood has famously been built around studios: well financed
big name companies in the business of making films and making
money from films.
History
Origins
In the United States, the first exhibitions of films for large
audiences typically followed the intermissions in vaudeville
shows. Entrepreneurs began travelling to exhibit their films,
bringing to the world the first forays into dramatic film-making.
The first huge success of American cinema, as well as the largest
experimental achievement to this point, was The Great Train
Robbery, directed by Edwin S. Porter. In the earliest days of the American film industry, New
York was the epicenter of film-making. The Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, built during the
silent film era, was used by the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields. Chelsea, Manhattan was also
frequently used. Mary Pickford, an Academy Award winning actress, shot some of her early films
in this area.

2. Rise of Hollywood
In early 1910, director D.W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the west coast with
his acting. They started filming on a vacant lot in downtown Los Angeles. This place was called
"Hollywood". Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood. In 1913 many movie-makers
headed west to avoid the fees imposed by Thomas Edison, who owned patents on the
movie-making process. In Los Angeles, California, the studios and Hollywood grew. Before World
War I, movies were made in several U.S. cities, but filmmakers gravitated to southern California
as the industry developed. They were attracted by the mild climate and reliable sunlight, which
made it possible to film movies outdoors year-round, and by the varied scenery that was
available. There are several starting points for American cinema, but it was Griffith's Birth of a
Nation that pioneered the filming vocabulary that still dominates celluloid to this day.
At motion pictures' height of popularity in the mid-1940s, the studios were cranking out a total
of about 400 movies a year, seen by an audience of 90 million Americans per week.
Sound also became widely used in Hollywood in the late 1920s, after The Jazz Singer was
successfully released as a talkie in 1927. In 1922, US politician Will H. Hays left politics and
formed the movie studio boss organization known as the Motion Pictures Distributors
Association of America (MPDAA); the organization became the Motion Picture Association of
America after Hays retired in 1945.
Golden Age of Hollywood
During the so-called ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’,
which lasted from the end of the silent era in
American cinema in the late 1920s to the 1950s,
movies were issued from the Hollywood studios
like the cars rolling off Henry Ford's assembly
lines; the start of the Golden Age was arguably
when The Jazz Singer was released in 1927 and
increased box-office profits for films as sound was
introduced to feature films. Most Hollywood
pictures adhered closely to a formula—Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated cartoon,
biopic (biographical picture) —and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the
same studio. After The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, Warner Bros. gained huge success and
was able to acquire their own string of movie theatres; MGM had also owned a string of
theatres since forming in 1924, know through Loews Theatres, and the Fox film Corporation
owned the Fox Theatre strings as well. RKO also bought its own theatres. Paramount, bought a
number of theatres in the late 1920s as well.
It was possible to guess which studio made which film, largely because of the actors who
appeared in it; MGM, for example, claimed it had contracted "more stars than there are in
heaven." Each studio had its own style and characteristic touches which made it possible to
know this - a trait that does not exist today. Yet each movie was a little different, and, unlike the
craftsmen who made cars, many of the people who made movies were artists.

3. Movie-making was still a business, however, and motion picture companies made money by
operating under the studio system. The major studios kept thousands of people on salary—
actors, producers, directors, writers, stunt men, craftpersons, and technicians. And they owned
hundreds of theatres in cities and towns across the nation, theatres that showed their films and
that were always in need of fresh material. In 1930, MPDDA President Will Hays also founded
the Hays (Production) Code, which followed censorship guidelines and went into effect after
government threats of censorship expanded by 1930. However the code was never enforced
until 1934, after the new Catholic Church organization The Legion of Decency- appalled by Mae
West's very successful sexual appearances in She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel -
threatened a boycott of motion pictures if it didn't go into effect, and those that didn't obtain a
seal of approval from the Production Code Administration had to pay a $25,000.00 fine and
could not profit in the theatres, as the MPDDA owned every theatre in the country through the
Big Five studios. Throughout the 1930s, as well as most of the golden age, MGM dominated the
film screen and had the top stars in Hollywood, and was also credited for creating the
Hollywood star system altogether; stars included "King of Hollywood" Clark Gable, Lionel
Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, and Gene Kelly.
Decline of the studio system
The studio system and the Golden Age of Hollywood succumbed to two forces in the late 1940s:
• a federal action that separated the production of films from their exhibition; and
• Changing leisure patterns and social activity, notably the advent of television and exodus of
families from the cities into the suburbs.
The Supreme Court eventually ruled that the major studios ownership of theatres and film
distribution (vertical integration) was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
"Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any
other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several
States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony.”
Detail from the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890
As a result, the studios began to release actors and technical staff from their contracts with the
studios. This changed the nature of film making by the major Hollywood studios, as each could
have an entirely different cast and creative team. This resulted in the gradual loss of the
characteristics which made MGM, Paramount, Universal, Columbia, RKO, and Fox films
immediately identifiable.
Also, the number of movies being produced annually dropped as the average budget soared,
marking a major change in strategy for the industry. Studios now aimed to produce
entertainment that could not be offered by television: spectacular, larger-than-life productions.
Studios also began to sell portions of their theatrical film libraries to other companies to sell to
television. By 1949, all major film studios had given up ownership of their theatres.
Television and Hollywood
Television was also instrumental in the decline of Hollywood's Golden Age as it broke the movie
industry's position in American entertainment. Despite this, the film industry was also able to
gain some leverage for future films as long time government censorship faded in the 1950s.

4. After the Paramount anti-trust case ended, Hollywood movie studios no longer owned theatres,
and thus made it so foreign films could be released in American theatres without censorship. By
1968, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) had replaced the Hays Code-which was
now greatly violated after the government threat of censorship that justified the origin of the
code had ended- with the film rating system.
The MPAA
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) formed in 1922.
Originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America
(MPPDA) (pre - 1942 and 1946 - 1948), it is a non-profit business
and trade association based in the United States, which was formed
to advance the business interests of movie studios. MPAA members
include the major Hollywood studios:
o The Walt Disney Company;
o Sony Pictures;
o Paramount Pictures (Viacom);
o 20th Century Fox (News Corporation);
o Universal Studios (NBC Universal);
o Warner Bros (Time Warner).
The MPAA administers the voluntary film rating system. As part of its campaign to stop
copyright infringement the MPAA is fighting to stop the sharing of copyrighted works via peer-to-
peer file sharing networks. The MPAA's anti-piracy campaign has gained much publicity and
criticism.
The 'New Hollywood' and Post-classical cinema
'Post-classical cinema' is a term used to describe the changing methods of storytelling in the
New Hollywood. It has been argued that new approaches to drama and characterization played
upon audience expectations acquired in the classical period: chronology may be scrambled,
storylines may feature "twist endings", and lines between the antagonist and protagonist may
be blurred. The roots of post-classical storytelling may be seen in film noir, in Rebel Without a
Cause (1955), and in Hitchcock's storyline-shattering Psycho.
'New Hollywood' is a term used to describe the emergence of a new generation of film school-trained
directors who had absorbed the techniques developed in Europe in the 1960s; The 1967
film Bonnie and Clyde marked the beginning of American cinema rebounding as well, as a new
generation of films would afterwards gain success at the box offices as well. Filmmakers like
Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Brian de Palma, Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin and
Steven Spielberg came to produce fare that paid homage to the history of film, and developed
upon existing genres and techniques. In the early 1970s, their films were often both critically
acclaimed and commercially successful. While the early New Hollywood films like Bonnie and
Clyde and Easy Rider had been relatively low-budget affairs with amoral heroes and increased
sexuality and violence, the enormous success enjoyed by Coppola, Spielberg and Lucas with The

5. Godfather, Jaws, and Star Wars, respectively helped to give rise to the modern "blockbuster",
and induced studios to focus ever more heavily on trying to produce enormous hits.
The increasing indulgence of these young directors didn’t help. Often, they’d go over schedule,
and over budget, thus bankrupting themselves or the studio.
The Studio System
The studio system was a means of film production and distribution
dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early
1950s. The term studio system refers to the practice of large motion
picture studios
• producing movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with
creative personnel under often long-term contract
• Pursuing vertical integration through ownership or effective
control of distributors and movie theatres, guaranteeing additional sales of films through
manipulative booking techniques.
This business model is also known as vertical integration which meant ownership and control of
production, distribution and exhibition.
One of the techniques used to support the studio system was block booking, a system of selling
multiple films to a theatre as a unit. Such a unit—five films was the standard practice for most of
the 1940s—typically included only one particularly attractive film, the rest a mix of A-budget
pictures of dubious quality and B movies
A 1948 Supreme Court ruling against those distribution and exhibition practices hastened the
end of the studio system. In 1954, the last of the operational links between a major production
studio and theatres chain was broken and the era of the studio system was officially over. The
period stretching from the introduction of sound to the court ruling and the beginning of the
studio break-ups, 1930–1950, is commonly known as the Golden Age of Hollywood.
During the Golden Age, eight companies comprised the so-called major studios that
promulgated the Hollywood studio system. Of these eight, five were fully integrated
conglomerates, combining ownership of a production studio, distribution division, and
substantial theatre chain, and contracting with performers and filmmaking personnel.
The Big Five:
• Fox (later 20th Century-Fox),
• Loew’s Incorporated (owner of America's largest theater circuit and parent company to Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer: MGM),
• Paramount Pictures,
• RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum),
• Warner Bros.
Two majors—Universal Pictures and Columbia Pictures—were similarly organized, though they
never owned more than small theatre circuits. The eighth of the Golden Age majors, United
Artists, owned a few theatres and had access to two production facilities owned by members of

6. its controlling partnership group, but it functioned primarily as a backer-distributor, loaning
money to independent producers and releasing their films.
RKO went out of business in 1955: a victim of the rise of TV in America. Warner on the other
hand has gone from strength to strength. In 1989 they merged with Turner Broadcasting and
then with internet giant AOL in 2000. They are now one of the largest entertainment
conglomerates. 20th Century Fox are a similar example and are currently owned by News Corp.,
again one of the world’s largest media companies.
The New Hollywood system
In contemporary Hollywood there is what is known as a ‘package unit’ system at work:
• Studio space is rented and personnel hired for the duration of the one project.
• Individual producers now have to put together a one-off package of finance, personnel,
equipment and studio time for each film being made.
• The studios no longer have to be concerned with keeping busy what was effectively a factory-full
of workers permanently on their payroll; instead arrangements can be made to film each
one-off movie wherever is most convenient around the world, perhaps in places where union
laws might be less stringent and rates of pay considerably lower. The main Hollywood
companies were driven over to this system in an effort to cut expenditure in the 1950’s in order
to survive the decline of cinema-going as a leisure activity.
Actors and directors
• In ‘old Hollywood’ they were under strict contracts with studios
• They worked on one film until it was finished and then ‘assigned’ another.
• In the ‘new Hollywood’ they have agents to cut deals for them.
• Some directors and actors have arguably more power than the studios.
Budgets
‘Old Hollywood’ offered two kinds of movies: A-movies (big budget) and B- movies (low budget).
These would often be shown as a ‘double-bill’ in cinemas, the logic being that the B-movies
offered good percentage profits in terms of box office and as such act as a ‘buffer’ for the more
expensive and therefore more risky A-movie.
Major Film Studio in Hollywood:
20th Century Fox:
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is one of the six
major American film studios as of 2011. It is located in the
Century City area of Los Angeles, just west of Beverly Hills,
the studio is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corporation. The company was founded on May 31, 1935
as the result of the merger of Fox Film Corporation and
Twentieth Century Pictures.
The Fox Film Corporation was formed in 1915 by the theater chain pioneer William Fox, who
formed Fox Film Corporation by merging two companies Greater New York Film Rental, a
distribution firm and Fox Office Attractions Company, a production company. This merging of a

7. distribution company and a production company was an early example of vertical integration.
Twentieth Century Pictures was an independent Hollywood motion picture production company
created in 1933 by Joseph Schenck, Darryl F. Zanuck from Warner Brothers, William Goetz from
Fox Films, and Raymond Griffith. Company product was distributed by United Artists (UA), and
was filmed at various studios. Some of the famous films by 20th Century Fox in recent years
were
• Night At The Museum (2007)
• Monte Carlo (2010)
• The Rise Of The Planet Of Apes (2010)
• Water For Elephants (2011)
• Avatar (2009)
• X-Men First Class (2011)
• RIO (2011)
Paramount Pictures:
Paramount Pictures Corporation is a film and
television production/distribution company
founded in 1912. It is the fourth oldest existing
film studio in the world behind Universal
Studios, Pathé and Gaumont Pictures. Also, it
is the last major film studio still headquartered
in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.
Paramount is consistently ranked as one of the
largest (top-grossing) movie studios. It is a division of American media conglomerate Viacom.
Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Some of
the famous films:
Paranormal Activity 4
• Fun Size
• Flight
• Rise of the Guardians
• The Guilt Trip
• Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
• Jack Reacher
• Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
• Top Gun
• G.I. Joe: Retaliation[11]
• Pain & Gain
• Star Trek Into Darkness
• World War Z
• Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
Warner Bros:
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc also known as Warner
Bros. Pictures is an American producer of film, television,

8. and music entertainment. One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with
its headquarters in Burbank, California and New York. Warner Bros. has several subsidiary
companies, including Warner Bros. Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Interactive
Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Home Video, New
Line Cinema, TheWB.com, and DC Comics. Warner owns half of The CW Television Network.
Warner Bros. is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).Films exmaples:
• The Great Gatsby
• The Hangover Part III
• Man of Steel
• Pacific Rim
• The Conjuring
• Top Cat: The Movie
• We’re the Millers
• Getaway
• Prisoners
• Gravity
Columbia Pictures:
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American
film production and distribution company.
Columbia Pictures now forms part of the
Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned
by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of
the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the
leading film companies in the world, a member
of the so-called Big Six. It was one of the so-called
Little Three among the eight major film studios of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
The studio, founded in 1919 as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn
and Joe Brandt, released its first feature film in August 1922. It adopted the Columbia Pictures
name in 1924 and went public two years later. The name is derived from “Columbia”, a national
personification of the United States, which is used as the company’s logo. movie example :
• Men in Black 3
• That’s My Boy
• The Amazing Spider-Man
• Total Recall
• Hope Spring
• After Earth
• The Smurfs 2
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
• Captain Phillips
Walt Disney:
The Walt Disney Studios, also known as Walt Disney
Studios Motion Pictures Group and formerly known as

9. Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group and Buena Vista Film Group, is an American entertainment
industry company division which develops scripts and oversees theatrical production for The
Walt Disney Company’s production companies and imprints founded in 1995. The studio, known
for its film division, which is one of Hollywood’s major film studios, is based at the Walt Disney
Studios in Burbank, California.Walt Disney Studios’ film division is a member of the Motion
Picture Association of America (MPAA).
• Cars 2
• Winnie the Pooh
• The Muppets
• John Carter
• Arjun: The Warrior Prince
• Brave
• Wreck-It Ralph
• Oz the Great and Powerful
• Wings of Life
• Monsters University
• Frozen
Universal Studios:
Universal Studios, is an American film studio, and one of
the six major movie studios. It is one of the longest-lived
motion picture studios to be located outside of
Hollywood.[3] It is a division of American media
conglomerate NBCUniversal.
Founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle,[4] it is the oldest
movie studio in the United States of America. It is also the
third oldest in the world that is still in continuous
production. On May 11, 2004, the controlling stake in the company was sold by Vivendi
Universal to General Electric, parent of NBC.[5] The resulting media super-conglomerate was
renamed NBC Universal, while Universal Studios Inc. remained the name of the production
subsidiary. It also acquired rights to several prominent filmmakers’ works originally released by
other studios through its subsidiaries over the years. Selected clips and footage shot by
Universal Studios are available for purchase from the NBCUniversal Archives.
Its production studios are at 100 Universal City Plaza Drive in Universal City, California.
Distribution and other corporate offices are in New York City.Universal Studios is a Member of
the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).movie examples :
• Jurassic Park (3-D rerelease)
• Oblivion
• Fast & Furious 6
• The Purge
• Despicable Me 2
• R.I.P.D.

10. Rank Title USA Box Office
1. Avatar (2009) $760,505,847
2. Titanic (1997) $658,672,302
3. The Avengers (2012) $623,279,547
4. The Dark Knight (2008) $533,316,061
5. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace(1999) $474,544,677
6. Star Wars (1977) $460,935,665
7. The Dark Knight Rises (2012) $448,130,642
8. Shrek 2 (2004) $436,471,036
9. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) $434,949,459
10. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) $424,645,577
11. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest(2006) $423,032,628
12. The Lion King (1994) $422,783,777
13. Toy Story 3 (2010) $414,984,497
14. Iron Man 3 (2013) $408,992,272
15. The Hunger Games (2012) $407,999,255
16. Spider-Man (2002) $403,706,375
17. Jurassic Park (1993) $402,348,347
18. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) $402,076,689
19. Frozen (2013/I) $400,736,600
20. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2(2011) $380,955,619
21. Finding Nemo (2003) $380,838,870
22. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith(2005) $380,262,555
23. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King(2003) $377,019,252
24. Spider-Man 2 (2004) $373,377,893
25. The Passion of the Christ (2004) $370,270,943
26. Despicable Me 2 (2013) $368,049,635
27. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) $352,358,779
28. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers(2002) $340,478,898
29. Spider-Man 3 (2007) $336,530,303
30. Alice in Wonderland (2010/I) $334,185,206
31. Forrest Gump (1994) $329,691,196
32. Shrek the Third (2007) $320,706,665
33. Transformers (2007) $318,759,914
34. Iron Man (2008) $318,298,180

11. 35. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) $317,557,891
36. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) $317,011,114
37. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) $313,837,577
38. Iron Man 2 (2010) $312,057,433
39. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones(2002) $310,675,583
40. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End(2007) $309,404,152
41. Star Wars: Episode VI - The Return of the Jedi (1983) $309,125,409
42. Independence Day (1996) $306,124,059
43. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) $305,388,685
44. Skyfall (2012) $304,360,277
45. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) $303,001,229
46. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) $301,956,980
47. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) $300,523,113
48. The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) $296,623,634
References:
http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross
http://www.slideshare.net/MCHSFilmandMedia/hollywood-film-industry
http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/Major_film_studio
http://wikipedia.org