# The 50 Most Important Hollywood Films **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [July 23, 2002, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400 "2002-07-23T15:55:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/1 "2002-07-23T15:55:30Z")
Testing ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/2 "2002-07-23T15:59:21Z")
10 Films ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/3 "2002-07-23T16:05:18Z")
25 Films ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/4 "2002-07-23T16:07:12Z")
```auto Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh ``` ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/5 "2002-07-23T16:11:27Z")
The Fifty Most Important Hollywood Movies ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/6 "2002-07-23T16:26:12Z")
The 50 most important Hollywood films ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/7 "2002-07-23T16:30:02Z")
Testing ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/8 "2002-07-23T16:31:36Z")
The 50 most important Hollywood films ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/9 "2002-07-23T16:34:20Z")
12:31 ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/10 "2002-07-23T16:35:57Z")
Your chronometer is about three minutes fast. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/11 "2002-07-23T19:47:37Z")
1. **The Squaw Man** _1914, Oscar Apfel and Cecil B. DeMille_ This was Hollywood’s first feature length film. Like many other movie-makers, Apfel and DeMille headed west to avoid Thomas Edison’s fees from his patents. Originally intending to film in Arizona, they moved on because it was raining. Finally settling in sunny California, they rented a horse barn for $250 a month and used it to film their movie, a Western. It cost $15,000 to make and grossed $200,000. At that time, it was considered a box office smash hit. Hollywood became the movie making capital of the world (despite that India makes more movies) and Apfel and DeMille’s “Famous Players-Lasky Co” eventually became Paramount Studios. 2. **Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf** _1966, Mike Nichols_ This powerful drama starring superstars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor is the film that you can thank for the modern rating system. Jack Valenti had just taken over as president of the Motion Picture Association of America, and met with Jack Warner (of Warner Bros fame) and his top aide, Ben Kalmenson, for three hours of discussions about this movie before finally agreeing to delete “screw” and retain “hump the hostess”. Valenti’s discomfort with that meeting foreshadowed an eventual Supreme Court ruling in April, 1968 that upheld the power of states and cities to shield children from books that could not be shielded from adults. On November 1, 1968, the MPAA introduced its first ratings categories: G, M, R, and X. These were modified over time, and on September 27, 1990 became the familiar G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2002, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/12 "2002-07-23T22:12:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Libertarian \* > \*\* > > ```auto > > Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh > > ``` > > \*\* If this is a real movie, I’m rushing out and buying it. I may have found the most important film of my life. 🙂 Fenris ---
**Author:** ![Tars\_Tarkas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tars\_Tarkas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tars_Tarkas)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2002, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/13 "2002-07-24T05:20:51Z")
But what about the 50 most important Bollywood films? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2002, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/14 "2002-07-24T07:03:32Z")
It’s real, Fenris. It’s one of those treasured Alan Smithee films. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2002, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/15 "2002-07-24T11:50:55Z")
Keep your SqawMan fallacies to yourself. eh? ---
**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2002, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/16 "2002-07-24T16:53:54Z")
[Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0101483). ---
**Author:** ![Exgineer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Exgineer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exgineer)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2002, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/17 "2002-07-24T17:48:40Z")
If you guys aren’t careful **TubaDiva** is going to move this to Cafe Society. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2002, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/18 "2002-07-24T19:12:53Z")
Yikes, yer right! Here’s a request to close the thread! ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Griffin-Kentzel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_griffin-kentzel/32/14787_2.png) [@Larry\_Griffin-Kentzel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Griffin-Kentzel)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2002, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-50-most-important-hollywood-films/120400/19 "2002-07-25T03:11:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Yikes, yer right! Here’s a request to close the thread! Done. * * * **Cajun Man** - SDMB Moderator