Classical Hollywood Film Cycles

Zoe Wallin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367199531
• eBook ISBN: 9780429534546
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the ways in which Hollywood film cycles from the 1930s to the 1960s were shaped by their surrounding industrial contexts and market environments, to build an inclusive conception of the form, operation, and function of film cycles.

By foregrounding patterns of distribution, spaces of exhibition, and modes of consumption as key components of the form and mechanics of cycles, this book develops a methodology for defining cycles based on an analysis of the industry and trade discourse. Applying her unique framework to six case studies of different cycles, Zoe Wallin blends a wide range of historical sources to analyze the many cultural, social, political, aesthetic, and industrial contexts relevant to these films.

This book makes an important contribution to the literature in the area of film historiography, and will be of interest to any scholars of film studies, history and media studies.

1 ‘Pictures Seem to Run in Cycles’

Industry Discourse and the Economics of Cycles

Disputes over cycles were prevalent across the Classical Hollywood era, and are significant in several ways. These discussions indicate that the practice of cycles was not restricted to films exploiting topical subjects but, rather, underpinned the business strategies of the studios more broadly. Additionally, distribution was clearly recognized in these discourses as a key factor in the formation of cycles and as the principal means to end the ‘cycle evil’. A closer examination of the way cycles were discussed reveals the conflicted role they played in the industry, while illuminating the mechanics of the studio system.

Under the studio system, from the late 1920s to the late 1940s, the industry was structured as a vertically integrated oligopoly of eight corporations: the ‘Big Five’ dominated production, distribution, and exhibition, while the ‘Little Three’ focused on production-distribution and utilized the majors’ theaters to exhibit their films. Mae D. Huettig’s contemporary account argues that the majors’ financial structure at this time was dependent on their affiliated theater chains. These cinemas were used as security to raise investment for production, and their concentrated ownership in the hands of the majors enabled them to control the first-run market where the majority of profits were located.¹ A shift in the industry’s economic foundation started in 1948 when, compelled by the Supreme Court’s antitrust ruling in the Paramount decision, the majors progressively divorced their exhibition chains. The majors’ control over the three facets of production, distribution, and exhibition had previously acted as a barrier to entry for smaller companies which could not compete on the same scale; by outlawing practices such as block booking and forcing the sale of the affiliated theaters, the Department of Justice had sought to break the monopoly and open the market to independent companies. Yet divorcement occurred at a time when the theaters were themselves a declining asset, representing a fixed investment in an inflexible form with rapidly falling revenue.² Through the conglomeration and diversification of the major corporations that took place in the following decades and in the retention of their control over distribution, the essential oligopolistic structure of the majors remained in place.

Film cycles were particularly prominent within the studio system. Pictures were mass produced, and in the semi-competitive studio system, the majors pursued portfolio investment strategies to spread the risks of production across a wide variety of films. In an industry where a degree of imitation and recycling was accepted practice, cycles were created as competing studios sought to replicate one another’s successful film formulas and build on audience expectation. The particular form of cycles was shaped by Classical Hollywood’s pattern of staggered distribution, the run-zone-clearance system. The circulation of pictures was punctuated by clearance windows that divided their exhibition runs into designated geographic zones, which enabled the distributors to control the flow of films to audiences. In practice, this enabled the large theater circuits and those affiliated with the major studios to receive top product more quickly while delaying and limiting the access of smaller exhibitors to such product. While the former group were often sold films individually on a percentage basis, the smaller exhibitors were bound by the Standard Exhibition Contract and bought the product in bulk, a practice known as block booking.³ As I will explore in subsequent chapters, the rate at which the films of the cycle flowed into theaters could dictate when the moment of market saturation could occur and influenced the general life span of the cycle.

Throughout the Classical Hollywood period, the major Hollywood trade publication Variety primarily identified cycles as the increased production of a certain film type. This was usually based on a similarity of content, such as a narrative theme, character type, or setting, but it could also include aesthetic style or an overarching tone or treatment. The most consistent uses of the label were to announce cycles as part of upcoming production schedules, or to identify groups of similar films currently in release. Although this extended beyond the Classical era, the term was less commonly used after the 1950s.⁴ This pattern of trade press usage belies the common critical assumption that cycles are largely a post-Classical era phenomenon, increasingly developed to exploit niche markets following the fracturing of the industry’s conception of the ‘universal audience’. There were occasional uses of the word ‘cycle’ in the trade press to describe and measure developments in the industry in terms of a life cycle, as in the case of sound, independent production, the career of a particular industry worker, and the larger scale economic upward trends and downturns.⁵ Such uses of the term are minimal, however, and the label was more commonly applied to groups of films.

In the trade press, industry commentators generally invoked film cycles as a way to detect patterns of change and repetition among popular types of film stories.⁶ These discussions alternated between an understanding of cycles as simply a way to label and measure current audience interest and taste, and a suggestion that the industry actively constructed and stimulated this interest. This tension between cycles as a naturally occurring phenomenon and a practice actively pursued by producers ran throughout the trade discourse, and was evident in Howard T. Lewis’s 1933 industry analysis:

Pictures seem to run in cycles – producers work according to the theory that the public is interested in gangster pictures at one time and at another time is primarily interested in war pictures, and at some other time it is interested in sophisticated triangle pictures. Here again it is very doubtful whether the theory held can be sustained. What actually happens is that an outstanding gangster or war picture is produced. Immediately after other directors try to imitate it in an effort to take advantage of the new idea conceived by someone else and to capitalise on the favourable publicity which the good picture has received. As a result, a flood of such pictures, more or less copies of the original, inundates the screen. This fact does not prove that the public is interested in gangster pictures at that moment. It proves only that those responsible for production are copyists, assuming with more or less justification that the public, having seen one eminently good gangster production hopes (usually in vain) that the next on will be equally good.⁷

While producers would rather claim that they were releasing products in response to demand, the elements of the industry that suffered most from a saturated market, such as exhibitors and viewers, were more skeptical of the practice.

As economic film historians John Sedgwick and Michael Pokorny argue, films are ‘experience goods’, the value of which is determined only after they have been consumed. Sedgwick and Pokorny view the film industry as a high risk business for both producers and consumers, with producers anticipating the financial performance of a film based on a perception of how it might be received in theaters.⁸ Cycles are part of an attempt to mitigate risk through the replication of particular elements or formulae that have already proven successful in the marketplace.

Sedgwick and Pokorny also explore risk as something experienced by cinema audiences in terms of the gap between the expectation of pleasure and the actual pleasure derived from viewing a film.⁹ This shapes the business environment faced by producers, with the task of distributors and exhibitors being to induce consumers to take a chance in paying to view an unknown product. Cycles can be considered part of the attempt to reduce risk in production investment, as well as audience consumption, through a strategy of affiliation and expectation. Producer-distributors attempt to generate a certain level of expectation that will persuade viewers to purchase a ticket in anticipation of a similar pleasure, while still promising a degree of novelty or difference in the product. This balance of repetition and innovation drives film production. A film is considered a ‘hit’, according to Sedgwick and Pokorny, when there is a large degree of positive divergence between the consumer’s initial expectation for the product, and the actual pleasure derived from viewing the film, or when a high level of expectation is fulfilled. In searching for a hit formula, the studios could hedge their bets over a wide variety of product, in accordance with a portfolio investment strategy.

In Classical Hollywood, a studio would plan a large number of films in its annual production schedule, with each film holding a perceived level of risk. The production budgets for each film were determined in reference to the distribution of risk across the group as a whole.¹⁰ Within these large portfolios, cycles could work to differentiate a studio’s output across a range of film types, and act as a risk attenuation strategy in providing proven formulas on which to model productions, while attempting to remove some of the uncertainty over audience response by associating the film with a similar success. The allocation of space for cycles in the preparation of production schedules was addressed by Lewis when he argued for a more organized procedure. Discussing Paramount’s production, he noted that the number of the company’s commercial failures in the 1929–30 season revealed the necessity for a more systematized planning process that was less reliant on the judgment of executives. From 1930, the studio scheduled only 75 per cent of its annual program in advance to allow for the flexible production of films according to current public tastes, and incorporated market analysis to determine the existence and extent of ‘style cycles’.¹¹

The range of products within an investment portfolio generally followed two forms of differentiation, according to Sedgwick: horizontal differentiation and vertical differentiation.¹² With quality understood as the consumers’ anticipation of pleasure, a product is differentiated vertically when it holds more desirable qualities for consumers than other products on offer. Horizontal differentiation complicates consumer choice as it offers more of some desirable qualities, but less of others. Sedgwick identifies how genres and stars are forms of horizontal differentiation, although vertical difference of quality can also exist within such categories. On a basic level, the different film cycles in circulation at any one point are an instance of horizontal differentiation by subject matter, with the range of film types positioned to appeal to a variety of audience groups and taste publics.

The booking chart (Figure 1.1) indicates the films available for first-run exhibitors to book over an eleven-week period in mid-1944. The studio releases contain a variety of product that illustrate forms of both vertical and horizontal differentiation. Paramount’s releases include two blocks of product and a special release. The vertical differentiation is most evident in this ‘special’ designation for Going My Way (Paramount, 1944), which was sold individually to exhibitors, rather than part of a block package. This indicates the studio’s expectation for high returns for their investment. Paramount’s blocks also contain several pictures whose short running times indicate their status as B features, which played a supporting role on double bills. Series entries Henry Aldrich Plays Cupid (Paramount, 1944) and Henry Aldrich’s Little Secret (Paramount, 1944) sit alongside the low-budget films from semi-independent producers Pine-Thomas, Gambler’s Choice (Paramount, 1944) and Take It Big (Paramount, 1944), as product that hold fewer desirable qualities for viewers. Enticing qualities could instead be found in well-known Paramount stars, such as Fred MacMurray, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour, and directors Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, who carried expectations of quality that differentiated their pictures vertically, and whose association with particular types of films, such as comedies or musicals, could differentiate them horizontally. The booking chart also diffe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Pictures Seem to Run in Cycles’: Industry Discourse and the Economics of Cycles
• 2 The Girl Reporter Pictures: Programmer Cycles and Modes of Seriality
• 3 The Prestige Cycle of Historical Biopics: Measuring the Deluge
• 4 The Wartime Musical Revues: Cycles, Topicality, and Industrial Flux
• 5 The Anti-Prejudice Pictures and the Process of Cycles
• 6 The Biblical Epics: Blockbuster Cycles and Market Control in the ‘New Era’
• 7 Beach Party Pictures: Independent Production, Circulation, and Market Exploitation
• Conclusion: Cycles in Post-Classical Hollywood
• Index