Jazgol: Vertical integration of the Classical Hollywood Genre

As mentioned earlier in previous posts, Vertical integration was another key component to the success of Hollywood Golden age, and was defined by the major studios releasing that they could enhance their profit by having a say in each and every phase of film making:
• The production
• Distribution
• Exhibition

At this point the ‘The Big Five’ Hollywood studios had started to cooperate together to create the vertical integration in 1940’s ,owning big estates to construct sets that later on was known to be the Hollywood sets ,the location of the most of films that were produced during the period. These studios would also control the date of releases and patterns of production. These studios included: Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Centrury Fox, Loew’s ( MGM), and RKO ( Radio-Keith –Orpheum) .other studios such as Columbia pictures and United Artists- also made pictures however they lacked the vertical integration that we just discussed. To put it in nutshell these eight companies together ruled created the oligopoly of Hollywood, essentially controlling the entire market. All of the cinema theaters also were under the control of these eight studios.

The end of Hollywood golden Age

Just like everything else in this universe, all phases will eventually reach an end, and the same process applied to Hollywood, even in its Golden age! In 1948 with the advent of Independent industry, Hollywood had to give up its profit and its dominating power and what happened was that the struggling independent movie producers and exhibitors finally won the battle against the sole power of Hollywood studios, and the studios were ordered to give up their theaters and allow other film makers to distribute their work on their theatres. In other words, allowing them to open their market to other smaller producers. Therefore, the 1930 to 1948 was considered to be the ending chapters of Hollywood golden age‘s book., With their 95 percent of all film rentals and 70 percent of all box-office receipts. Of course the advent of television cannot be neglected and fastened the compromise of Hollywood monopolistic behavior.

lastly to conclude we thought i should embed a video of some of the shots of beautiful moments of Hollywood classics! we hope you like it .
enjoy!