Defined as “the market condition that exists when there are few sellers, as a result of which they can greatly influence price and other market factors,” by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, oligopoly has been the driving force of the American Motion Picture Industry since as early as the 1920s. Dominating the industry was the “Big Five”: Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox (Fox), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Warner Bros, and Radio Keith Orpheum (R.K.O. Pictures). Together with the “Little Three”: Columbia Pictures, Universal Pictures and United Artists, they successfully reigned the industry, producing 90% of American Film production and 60% of world film production in the 1930s and 1940s (Nelmes 8). Together, they started what we now refer to
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Owner of Loew’s Inc, Marcus Loew, would not have been able to survive the studio era without the help of his later newly-acquired production chief, Irving Thalberg. Marcus Loew met Thalberg through the merger between Loew’s Inc and its two acquired financially failing studios – Metro (1920) and Goldwyn (1924), with Louis B. Mayer’s studio to form Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) in 1924. The Mayer Group at that time was run by Vice President and General Manager Louis Mayer, Second Vice President and Supervisor of Production Irving Thalberg, and Secretary Robert Rubin (Schatz 544). Thalberg, who worked with Carl Laemmle in Universals prior to his job in MGM, became the hero of the company. Thalberg was the source of various great ideas, one of them was the “preview-retake” process during the filming of The Big Parade (1925). This new system has never been implemented before and MGM became the first and the only studio for quite some time to adopt it because many saw it as time-consuming and inefficient. Thalberg was not a risk-averse individual. He figured that the audience’s positive reaction would be worth the extensive rewrites, retakes, and fine-tunings in the long-run. He was proven right when The Big Parade became a big hit when it was screened. It became one of the two successful Box Office hits during the silent era, right next to Big-Hur (1925), which was also produced by …show more content…
Formed as a strategy adopted by R.C.A. in 1929 to address the customer base for their new talking picture technology for movie theatres, the Photophone, R.K.O. constituted of a small movie studio F.B.O. and the Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville theatre circuit. R.K.O. quickly became a major player in the industry when R.C.A. President David Sarnoff assigned former F.B.O. executive Joseph I. Schnitzer as president. Schnitzer was not scared to take the risk of spending a huge sum of money for the screen rights to major Broadway Hits, which quickly became the strategy R.K.O. was famous for. Sarnoff continued to expand his empire by acquiring the broadcast company NBC, a ranch in San Fernando Valley and the US holding of the French film conglomerate Pathé, including production facilities, contract talent, a newsreel division, and an international distribution network. R.K.O. successfully generated a profit of around $3.5 million in its second year of full operation (Nelmes 11). With a huge amount of spending, R.K.O. needed to cut their costs in order to survive the financial crisis, and this did not happen until Sarnoff hired Selznick, who then had gone out of Paramount. Selznick, as vice president in charge of production, oversee the production at RKO-Radio and effectively cut production costs. He was also responsible for hiring stars that would eventually become R.K.O.’s greatest assets, such as Katherine Hepburn, Fred Astaire and
Owner of Loew’s Inc, Marcus Loew, would not have been able to survive the studio era without the help of his later newly-acquired production chief, Irving Thalberg. Marcus Loew met Thalberg through the merger between Loew’s Inc and its two acquired financially failing studios – Metro (1920) and Goldwyn (1924), with Louis B. Mayer’s studio to form Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) in 1924. The Mayer Group at that time was run by Vice President and General Manager Louis Mayer, Second Vice President and Supervisor of Production Irving Thalberg, and Secretary Robert Rubin (Schatz 544). Thalberg, who worked with Carl Laemmle in Universals prior to his job in MGM, became the hero of the company. Thalberg was the source of various great ideas, one of them was the “preview-retake” process during the filming of The Big Parade (1925). This new system has never been implemented before and MGM became the first and the only studio for quite some time to adopt it because many saw it as time-consuming and inefficient. Thalberg was not a risk-averse individual. He figured that the audience’s positive reaction would be worth the extensive rewrites, retakes, and fine-tunings in the long-run. He was proven right when The Big Parade became a big hit when it was screened. It became one of the two successful Box Office hits during the silent era, right next to Big-Hur (1925), which was also produced by …show more content…
Formed as a strategy adopted by R.C.A. in 1929 to address the customer base for their new talking picture technology for movie theatres, the Photophone, R.K.O. constituted of a small movie studio F.B.O. and the Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville theatre circuit. R.K.O. quickly became a major player in the industry when R.C.A. President David Sarnoff assigned former F.B.O. executive Joseph I. Schnitzer as president. Schnitzer was not scared to take the risk of spending a huge sum of money for the screen rights to major Broadway Hits, which quickly became the strategy R.K.O. was famous for. Sarnoff continued to expand his empire by acquiring the broadcast company NBC, a ranch in San Fernando Valley and the US holding of the French film conglomerate Pathé, including production facilities, contract talent, a newsreel division, and an international distribution network. R.K.O. successfully generated a profit of around $3.5 million in its second year of full operation (Nelmes 11). With a huge amount of spending, R.K.O. needed to cut their costs in order to survive the financial crisis, and this did not happen until Sarnoff hired Selznick, who then had gone out of Paramount. Selznick, as vice president in charge of production, oversee the production at RKO-Radio and effectively cut production costs. He was also responsible for hiring stars that would eventually become R.K.O.’s greatest assets, such as Katherine Hepburn, Fred Astaire and