Blog Post: Ol' Hollywood's Studio System

In the "Golden Age" of Hollywood from the 20's through the forties and really until the 50's, Hollywood practiced the "studio system" in which one studio would controlled all aspects of the production and every person involved. With this system it was easy to pump out seven movies a year with one major star since the studio owned what they would do, and usually it was the same type of movie every time. Maybe the biggest factor in his system, and what I found most interesting, was their use of movie stars and how they limited them to a certain type of film.

As Colin Tate said in his lecture, sometimes stardom trumps genre. Stars like Humphrey Bogart, Gene Kelly, and Errol Flynn had very specific roles to play in this studio system. Bogart would evolve into almost always playing the hard-boiled, morally questionable, but in the end, heroic good guy. This meant he he did a slew of detective movies which placed him in this role and the studio of Warner Bros. became known for their noir and detective movies. Kelly was always placed as a leading man in musicals which involved heavy dancing as well. MGM therefore, put out many musicals and much of them had Kelly doing this role over and over. Flynn became a staple for heroic action pictures and was a very big draw for the swashbuckling pictures of 20th Century Fox. The star power of these three people ended up helping the studios create what kind of genre films they would produce.

To show how these stars shaped their studios and genres let's look at movies where they played against type. When Humphrey Bogart played a villainous gold seeker (and gave his best performance) in John Huston's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", the film was a commercial and critical flop. Despite winning three Oscars, the film was not regarded as a classic until many years later. Kelly played a brutally cynical and miserable journalist in Stanley Kramer's "Inherit the Wind" and was not given much credit for his performance when released. It is now looked upon as one of his finest. Flynn probably is the best example, playing a self-pitying (though sympathetic) drunk in Henry King's "The Sun Also Rises". This impressive character turn for Flynn was very against type and the film proved to be a flop as well. Yet now it is regarded as truly his best performance.

What is described above shows how stars shaped what audiences expected out of their studios. They wanted a detective story, a showy musical, or a swashbuckling thrill but when these actors tried something different, it proved detrimental to their studios. Bogart could not play a villain at the height of his popularity. Kelly could not have purely dramatic role. Flynn could not play a drunk. The stars made the studio system, yet it provided very little freedom to show their skills and only years later can we fully appreciate the different roles they tried to do.