Frozen in Hollywood: Postwar Film Policy and the New Power-Geometry of Globalizing Production Labor

Abstract

Since the end of World War II, the Hollywood motion picture industry has become increasingly dependent on overseas markets for exhibition revenues and production services. As a result, the authority of Hollywood's production unions has deteriorated as outsourcing and flexible specialization have become the growth engines of a globalizing industry (Storper & Christopherson, 1987). In this article, I chart the shifting power-geometry (Massey, 1984) of Hollywood labor in the postwar period through an analysis of published debates over the Anglo-American Film Pact of 1948 and 1950. On its surface, the Anglo-American Film Pact was created to define terms by which the Hollywood studios could collect rental fees ‘frozen’ by the cash poor United Kingdom following World War II. However, the policy had far-reaching implications for the future direction of the motion picture industry, and specifically production labor. As depicted within trade and popular press coverage of the Film Pact, we see Hollywood's unions coming to terms with the limitations of an emerging international division of motion picture production labor, including diminishing control over labor mobility and the means of production.