Blog # 4---Option 3

There were many different Hollywood studios that produced a variety of movies. Studios had their own personality and it became able to tell what studio produced certain movies juts by what type of movie they were. A lot of actors were contracted with the same studio for large portions of their career which made it easier to make the same type of movies for one studio. Some the popular studios were M-G-M, Paramount, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and RKO. Their golden ages were from the 1930’s until about the 1950’s.
M-G-M had a huge amount of stars working for them. Some of the actresses that dominated the screen for them were Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Louise Rainer, Myrna Loy, and Greer Garson. They brought sincerity, refinement, and sophistication to their screen roles (p.78 Belton). They had a polish and gloss image although they had earlier actresses such as Marie Dressler and Lassie which was more earthly. Some of the movies that M-G-M produced are, Tod Browning’s Freaks. The Marx Brothers made sober, restrained, and calculated comedies for M-G-M such as
A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, and Room Service.
Paramount’s leading actresses were Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Claudette Colbert, and Carole Lombard. These ladies combined sexual savoir-faire with tongue-in-cheek wit. The Marx Brothers also made pretension-deflating comedies for paramount such as Animal Carackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup. Paramount also had a deft European style in the subtle ironies of Ernst Lubitche’s comedies, including The Love Parade, Monte Carlo, trouble in Paradise, and Design for Living. That style was also in the exotic erotic fantasies produced by Josef von Sternberg in movies such as Morocco, Shanghai Express, and The Scarlet Empress.
Warner Brothers was considered to be the working man’s studio. The photographic style was more hasty and rough looking to look more realistic. Their specialty was gangster films such as Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, The Petrified Forest, and The Roaring Twenties. Some of the major stars in them were James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart. These men were categorized as the tough-guy. Some of the other movies that Warner Brothers produced are Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, I Was a Fugitive from the Chain Gang, Wild Boys of the Road, and Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Most of those were threw at the lower class though. Some of Warner Brothers actresses were Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan, and Lauren Bacall. These women played parts such as the girl-next-door, gold diggers, molls, and down-to-earth dames that even traded wisecracks with men and were still feminine. Warner’s audience tended to be urban, blue-collar workers and shop girls.
20th Century Fox targeted the opposite audience as Warner Brothers. Their audience was rural. It was run by an Irish Catholic former cop named Winfield Sheehan and then a Methodist named Darryl Zanuck took over. It was the only studio that wasn’t owned or operated by Jews. Some of Fox’s major stars were Will Rogers, Stepin Fetchit, Shirley temple, Henry Fonda, Tyrone Power, Betty Garble, Marilyn Monroe and Don Ameche. Zanuck discovered that the audience liked films with a certain social consciousness. Therefore films like Gentleman’s Agreement (staring Gregory Peck), The Grapes of Wrath (produced by John Steinbeck), Tobacco Road (produced by Erskine Caldwell), The Ox-Bow Incident, Boomerang, The Snake Pit, and Pinky. Fox’s biggest hit was Star Wars in 1977.
RKO did not just stick to one type of film, their films ranged from King Kong to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals and Citizen Kane. RKO had many different Heads of productions. They had David Selznick whom produced What Price Hollywood? and Bill of divorcement; Merian C. Cooper whom produced The Lost Patrol; George Schafer whom produced Abe Lincoln in Illinois and Citizen Kane; Charles Koerner whom produced The Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and The Spiral Staircase; Dore Schary (supervisor) of Crossfire, Out of the Past, and They Live by Night; and last but not least, Howard Hughes that produced I Married a Communist, Vendetta, and Jet Pilot. Some of the directors for RKO were John Ford, George Stevens, Robert Siodmak, and Jacques Tourneur. Some of the stars for RKO were Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Robert Mitchum. Even though RKO had all those people, they still lacked the thematic and stylistic consistency that other majors enjoyed. During RKO’s golden age, they had Clara Bow, Gary Cooper, William Powell, Claudette Colbert, Alan Ladd, and Marlene Dietrich.