The Hollywood Studio
System, 1946 1949

In the movie industry's roller-coaster postwar ride from the unprecedented heights of 1946 to the panic of 1949, the Hollywood studio powers underwent enormous changes. Their way of doing business and of making movies changed radically in a few short years as the industry peaked and began its rapid descent. In the process, euphoria steadily gave way to a deepening malaise and a growing nostalgia for Hollywood's halcyon days. By 1949, in fact, trade papers were wistfully invoking the prewar era as "the golden age of Hollywood production."¹ And there was also a bitter desperation about the current state of the industry-made all the worse by the economic conditions in the nation at large. "Hollywood," lamented one major producer in 1949, "is an island of depression in a sea of prosperity."²

The studios would endure, of course, and in fact their survival instincts proved...