Features produced in the U.S.
1915: 617
1920: 744
1925: 755
1929: 524
1930: 530
1931: 541
1932: 557
1935: 605
1940: 523
Other way around. The theaters owned the studios. The usual progression was a theater chain went into the distribution business, then went into the production business. For example, M-G-M was controlled by Loew’s Inc., a theater chain.
Was it really that different during the war? Until World War II, middle-class American families typically had one or more servants to help around the house. In 1940, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 2.6 million domestic servants, almost one job in 20.
I’d say the contract system pretty much died out in the late 1950s. I can’t think of anyone who was under a long-term contract, outside television, in the 1960s.
People who like to read rarely feel a screenplay does justice to the book it is based on. Even when they don’t cut out much or change major points, it is still never as good as it was when I read it.
Part of this is due to the mental images one comes up with when reading. All the FX and CGI can’t hold a candle to the human imagination. When an author writes that the heroine is a stunning beauty, she becomes the reader’s idea of perfection. When she appears on screen, she is only the casting department’s idea of perfection, and only part of the audience will agree.
Before TV came along, going to the movies twice a week would be a lot. I suspect that an audience raised on books and radio dramas found that color didn’t add all that much and often took something away. I also suspect this is why directors tended to make the early color films REALLY colorful…they were trying to make them as vivid as they were used to imagining.
I’m old enough that only one family in the neighborhood had a color TV when I was in grade school. They’d invite us over when something special was due to be on. I don’t recall being all that impressed with the color. Heck I still have a little B&W TV I watch when Kevbabe really wants to see some reality dreck on the main set, and I mind the small screen a lot more than the lack of color.
I honestly only notice that a good movie is in black and white for the first couple of minutes. Once I start to suspend disbelief and get into the story, my mind is filling in the color.
And there was a lot of angst among silent cinemaphiles about people pouring into theaters to see crappy talkies.
On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin’s silent City Lights was released in 1931, well after the advent of talkies, and it was a big hit.
Technology alone does not trump really great entertainment.
By the way, I’ve always liked B&W movies and photos. But I switched to digital photos over a decade ago and even with the capability of shooting B&W, I’ve rarely bothered. Maybe it’s because lots of the photos I take are of plants/gardens, and no matter how well you shoot a perennial garden in B&W (check out some of those 1930s garden books) it looks like something out of Edward Gorey.
