<em>Introduction:</em> Movies in America

Abstract

Introduction: Movies in America Richard Koszarski This issue of Film History covers an unusually lengthy period – from the nickelodeon era to the film school generation – through a series of essays which address very different aspects of production, distribution, exhibition, and reception. While previous issues have generally focused on more limited topics, examining them through a series of overlapping case studies, the perspective this time is much broader, and the ultimate goal, a vision of American cinema as seen through a collage of discrete historical inquiries, considerably more complicated. Of course, no account of American cinema can be understood as a model for developments elsewhere. But on the other hand, only the American cinema offers the scope (and the surviving research archives) for the sort of multi-faceted inquiry assembled here. We start with Marc Raymond’s look at Street Scenes 1970, a relatively recent film that, for many reasons, should be well known to anyone reading this journal. The events it records, the people involved in making it, the story of its production and distribution, would all seem worthy of a book or two on their own. Why the film is, instead, a cipher, turns out to involve its own history much less than the subsequent development of film history itself The question of who controls what we see on screen, for whatever reason, has been central to this medium from the beginning. Important studies of motion picture censorship have proliferated in recent years, often built on the archival files of the governmental and non-governmental agencies created for this task. Working with surviving municipal records, Mary P. Erickson takes a first look at the efforts of concerned citizens in Portland, Oregon – businessmen, progressives, and political functionaries alike – to deal with objectionable film content in the days before the Mutual decision. There is no modern equivalent to Hedda Hopper, the syndicated columnist who, along with Louella Parsons, exerted so much power over the American film industry during the classical studio era. Parsons’s connection to William Randolph Hearst is well understood today, but Hopper’s political position – often to Louella’s right – has generally been overlooked. Jennifer Frost uses Hopper’s own files to present a revealing account of a columnist more concerned with Hollywood politics than Hollywood parties. Before any film could even reach the public (or the censors), someone in power first had to authorize its production. For a Hollywood studio, that decision was primarily economic, and while other rewards (prestige was one) were not to be casually dismissed, the financial bottom line was still the ultimate yardstick. Orson Welles always rejected the accusations of overspending which began during his brief career at RKO and followed him, thanks to a series of biographers, right to the end. Vincent Barnett has the real figures, which tell their own story. Today, when nothing moves in Hollywood without extensive consideration of promotional spin, ancillary income streams, and crafty media manipulation, the days of Col. William Selig and the Motion Picture Patents Company might seem an innocent pre-history. But by looking carefully at the publicity circus surrounding Selig’s 1915 “Movie Exposition Special”, Kia Afra finds that Hollywood hucksterism was already in full flower at the dawn of the feature picture. Another film pioneer, Marcus Loew, famously argued that exhibitors were not selling tickets to someone else’s movies, but to their own theaters. Once inside, those customers were the most valuable sort of captive audience, self-selected, highly motivated film buffs not unwilling to part with an extra dollar. The candy counter was only a first step: over the last two decades exhibitors have increasingly [End Page 131] been selling promotional access to their own customers. Deron Overpeck details the process by which competing exhibitor factions have taken advantage of a shifting cultural landscape to overcome their audience’s long-established hostility to big screen commercials. Did Hollywood have a position on the Cold War? The growing number of “Cold War Cinema” studies suggests that a genre which began on the right suddenly changed direction in the time of Kramer and Kubrick, then swung back with Rambo for the second Cold War. But looking carefully at Norman Jewison’s 1966...