The Film Industry In The 1940's

Filmmaking was the established forefront in media driven entertainment during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Once sought as a luxurious consumer product film ended up becoming one of the great national pastimes that told stories and allowed it’s viewers to escape their lives. At the end of World War II however things changed permanently for the film industry. No longer were they able to enjoy their assumed monopoly; they had to fight against the advent of television. Fighting against television film makers turned to some interesting traits such as the film matter, changing of the production code and embracing television to sell their business model. Television viewing ramped up in America much faster than it did across the rest of the world. Once the transmission towers and infrastructure was in place Americans no longer needed to go to the theatre to see entertainment. This put a big hole in the film making industry with a few entities not even able to recover. At one time with almost 100 million viewers the film industry was now hovering around less than 20 million a week in theatre goers. Revenues plummeted and ideas were needed to refresh the industry. Film makers eventually had to remove the established star system and go with a picture to picture model. No longer bearing guaranteed …show more content…
Moral guidelines some called the Hays code after Will H. Hays became the governing body to censor film. Eventually as all things come to the center the old production code foundation was chipped at and eventually destroyed through a combination of allowance of taboo issues, allowance of vulgarity and drug use and sexual themes. The film makers knew enough to give their customers what they wanted. And what they wanted they could not get from television. Eventually through enough chiseling the production code went by the wayside and was replaced by a more sensible MPAA rating