Hollywood History
For Francis Ford Coppola’s Go-for-Broke Movies, All Roads Lead to Cannes
For his forthcoming one from the heart, Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola has once again violated the cardinal rule of the entertainment business: Never invest your own money in the show. Reports are that to bankroll the $120 million epic he has literally mortgaged the farm, or vineyard. The investment is slated to premiere at the […]
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Oscars Big Snub? ‘Casablanca’ Win Marked Boiling Point at Warner Bros.
Jack Warner had been shouldering in on credit from one of his studio’s top producers. At least that’s what Hal Wallis may have told you after the 1944 Academy Awards when Jack Warner accepted the Casablanca Oscar that some felt should have been palmed by Wallis, the Warner Bros. film’s producer. But who should accept […]
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The Ruthless Rise and Fall of Paramount Pictures During Hollywood’s Golden Age
“I’ve seen Paris, France, and Paris, Paramount Pictures,” Ernst Lubitsch said, or so they say, “and on the whole I prefer Paris, Paramount Pictures.” The great director’s preference for the Hollywood city of lights over the French one expresses a common enough affinity for illusion over reality, but the studio in question was not chosen […]
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‘Dr. Strangelove’ Was a Nightmare Comedy. Time Forgot the Nightmare Part
On Jan. 29, 1964, a triple premiere — in New York, London and Toronto — launched one of Stanley Kubrick’s signature masterpieces into the chilly Cold War atmosphere: Dr. Strangelove, with the marquee-challenging subtitle Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Kubrick described it as a “nightmare comedy.” Sixty years later, the […]
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Was This Hollywood’s Worst Year Ever?
A favorite parlor game for film buffs is to pick Hollywood’s greatest year and then argue. The obvious answer — 1939, the certified Golden Year — always gets the most votes, but a few eccentrics make the case for a dark horse. 1928 was Peter Bogdanovich’s choice, the year that saw the apotheosis of silent film […]
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When Warner Bros. First Left the Family: Betrayal and High Drama In a Classic Hollywood Megadeal
Studio takeovers have been the talk of the town in Hollywood for some time. It’s been less a discussion of if control will be ceded to new companies and more a conversation about who is buying, and why. Will it be studios taking over other studios, or, perhaps, tech giants elbowing further into the industry? […]
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Hollywood Has Been Here Before With Antisemitism
Hollywood, with its lengthy list of Jewish founders, flourished during an era of rampant antisemitism. In recent years, the Anti-Defamation League has said anti-Jewish sentiment has hit levels unseen since after the Great Depression, a time when Jewish studio moguls had difficulty securing bank loans as many lenders would not work with Jews. Now, in […]
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The Pictures Not Seen in ‘Oppenheimer’
In the third act of Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb sits in a darkened hall and watches a slide show of what his gadget hath wrought at ground zero. From offscreen space, the lecturer clinically describes what we in the audience are spared from looking at. The decision by director Christopher Nolan […]
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The Long Shadow of Antitrust Targets From Hollywood’s Golden Age
When the Writers Guild of America released its Aug. 17 report on “The New Gatekeepers” — naming Disney, Netflix and Amazon — it took aim at anti-competitive practices, consolidation in Hollywood and called for additional oversight for streaming platforms that are allegedly stifling creativity. All of this has roots in the negated Paramount Decrees from […]
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When Will the Strikes End? Lessons From 1960
The “double strike” of 1960 — the last time the Writers Guild and SAG marched shoulder to shoulder in a labor action against the owners of the means of production and, crucially, distribution — is the clear precedent to the ongoing reboot. Yet while historians like to believe that the past is prologue, or at […]
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The Last Time Actors and Writers Both Went on Strike: How Hollywood Ended the 1960 Crisis
In 1960, the crumbling infrastructure of the Hollywood studio system was shaken by a one-two strike launched by two essential branches of its workforce — the writers and the actors. Since neither job was yet considered on the cusp of obsolescence, management was forced to negotiate with labor and reach an accommodation. Both sides had […]
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How the FBI Worked With Hollywood to Build the Crime Genre’s Early Years In Film and TV
Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon is the latest turn in a long motion picture tradition of pilfering FBI case files for screen scenarios. Originally, Hollywood coveted the validation of the bureau (“based on actual FBI case histories!”) and the personal imprimatur of its lord high ruler, J. Edgar Hoover […]
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