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The Conclusion brings film to 1975 because at this time the film industry settled into its contemporary zone. Stephen Spielberg's cinematic triumph, Jaws, ensured that the big-draw picture had returned. The film industry experienced widespread changes in infrastructure and made particularly important inroads to secure its future. With Code break-ups, exhibition realignment, a new ratings system, and audiences willing to stand in line for something new and different, filmmakers adjusted what would be possible on screen. At the same time, popular advocacy was limited by popular discourse. In filmmaking's most liberal period of change, iconic films were largely composed of white experience and perspective. Critiques of race and class in these films remained undeniably minor. Social ills, it was perceived, were results of failed governments, families, churches, and convention. This is not to say that race and class were not part of the films' subtext during the period in focus. Rather, the films that saw culture as the means to social change show what discourses dominated. For the most part, race relations were held at a distance until Spike Lee popularized blacks' perspectives and experiences.
Within the margins of feature-length film, then, the ten pictures in this study helped establish the value of social change as they resolved questions of Americanness through the frameworks of generation, gender, and ethnicity. By virtue of their popular status and box office revenues (or lack of), these feature films helped determine "the discursive function of events" as produced and received. Judging from the films that won audience favor at the box office, in the classroom, or at the Academy Awards, one could make claims about what it meant to think of film as a social agent. Whereas traditional genres such as the Western portrayed ideal Americans overcoming forces beyond their control, these films deconstructed the power of those ideals. Hence, Benjamin of The Graduate and Captain America of Easy Rider refused to be hero and champion. That job was reserved for the film itself; when cinema after 1966 could do what it never was allowed before, the popular feature redefined itself considerably.
Almost a separate culture, like "a secular religion," during these years, film, in the words of one critic, "permeated American life in a way that it never had before and never has since." Susan Sontag chimed in, "It was at this specific moment in the 100-year history of cinema that going to movies, thinking about movies, talking about movies became a passion among university students and other young people. You fell in love not just with actors but with cinema itself."23 Filmmakers found new commercial value for a grittier America between 1965 and 1975. The thriving, critical, feature-length film market made it possible for the Peter Fondas and Dennis Hoppers to experiment with success. A film-school generation followed up with changes of its own, creating new claims for what film could do. The industry reoriented itself toward big business and recentralized production dominance by 1975. The new filmmakers were ready to reinvent classic heroes in time for the upcoming bicentennial celebrations of America and the promotion of its ideals. Until then, a little dose of new, now, and real mixed well with the hope that "telling it like it is" could change things and with the love of film itself.
The corporate criss-crossing, the dollar-lined ... indulgence ... of a plethora of new parent companies, the proliferation of independent production, the mushrooming of packaging from all points of the compass all combined to sweep aside ancient barriers and hallowed taboos. Now people were getting a chance to try as never before, and established people were trying new things as never before.
- William Tusher, Film Daily Yearbook
On Oscar night, April 5, 1965, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, two musical ladies, Mary Poppins and Eliza Dolittle, shared the spotlight when the Academy named Warner Brothers' My Fair Lady as the Best Picture and Julie Andrews as Best Actress in Mary Poppins. A year later at the thirty-eighth Awards ceremony, Twentieth-Century-Fox received Best Picture for The Sound of Music, which honored another singing lady, Maria von Trapp. Musicals and melodious voices were celebrated as the symbol of the industry's glamour on those nights, but this time it was with a difference - 30,000,000 television sets aired the special for the first time in Technicolor. Hollywood actors in tuxedos and actresses in red dresses, silvery shoes, and red lipstick received awards, gave speeches, and told jokes. In the midst, Oscar's gold shone brilliantly, making the 1966 audience the largest for a single-network program.
Yet, Hollywood's dramatically charged image that night dimmed in comparison to the transformation taking place in the industry. At mid-decade, Hollywood was in the process of reinventing itself in other ways. Essential to this transformation was the eclipse of the studio-era moguls. William Tusher, West Coast editor of trade publication The Film Daily, pronounced 1965 as "the year of the death of the Titans, the passing of dynasties, the changing of palace guards, and the birth of paradoxes. Jack Warner cashed in his chips.... Y. Frank Freeman resigned from Paramount," Gone with the Wind creator David O. Selznick and Produc tion Code chief Joseph I. Breen died and the founder of Disney productions and Disneyland, Walt Disney, lay on his deathbed. Only one of the guards, Darryl Zanuck, remained active. With the moguls went the studio system that allowed five major companies to dictate all aspects of the industry. Production, distribution, and exhibition of films spun off in new directions, nurturing innovation and industrial revival. Searching for new survival strategies, industry leaders enlisted expansion and merchandizing programs, exhibition enhancements, and a marriage of convenience with television. Simultaneously, in 1966, the censorship mechanism that policed the business over the past thirty years dissolved under challenge. New opportunities raised a generation of directors who redefined film's cultural role and transported Hollywood into its experimental age. All things considered, Tusher was correct in marking 1965 as "the death of an era" and 1966 as "the year of revolution and upheaval." From the trade's point of view, this moment set forth "the historic blueprints" for Hollywood's foundational changes. It was the last time the feature film was subject to the censorship codes that had regulated the business for the previous thirty years. New material found eager audiences who did not look back. In Tusher's words, 1966 was hailed as "the year that was in Hollywood."'
It was clear in the early 1960s that the film industry either had to change its ways or face serious closures as television rooted itself into American homes even more deeply than studio tycoons were willing to believe. Studios tried to retain their former control by preventing film stars from appearing on television programs or signing on to their own TV specials. Yet, television's capacity for survival forced studio magnates to realize that staying alive meant a conjugal rather than hostile relationship. Thus began the expansion programs during the mid-1960s when adversaries became comrades. Along with tightening cost controls and creating more efficient operations than before, companies transformed half of their production facilities into studios for syndicated television series. Conversely, the television industry realized that a blockbuster in the movie theater meant business for them. "Without theatres - no TV blockbusters," warned Tusher.'
To facilitate changes in operations, motion picture and television filmmakers formed the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers in March 1964.3 This coalition created a network for successful production alternatives and new economic and artistic relationships between TV and cinema. Film and television consolidation allowed union negotiations and contracts to be conducted in one place by one body. The unification, according to Association C.E.O. Charles S. Boren, addressed problems fragmenting the industry. New alliances defined common ground and brought new opportunities all the way around .4
Unification helped pull Hollywood out of deficit years. In the first quarter of 1964, for example, M-G-M brought in $23.6 million worth of television revenues. For the 1964-1965 season the company prepared five television network series. Paramount acquired over eight network projects, and United Artists increased its profits 25 percent by turning to network television. Film and television mergers helped rescue Twentieth-Century-Fox fro
m its Cleopatra (1963) disaster, the most costly film in the industry's history. In 1963, the company did not have a single series on television. By the 1964-1965 season, Fox had scheduled five. The expansion program also included the construction of larger office buildings and new sound stages, which meant more jobs.5 In California, motion picture employment increased 70 percent and, as Tusher put it, created a "rush" of sorts, "resulting in more confusion - and gold fever - than ever." As he claimed, "You need a scorecard to tell the hirelings from the bosses as package deals mushroomed - and paid off- as never before." It appeared that total entertainment "emerged as a new reality."6
Ongoing television programming, Saturday night family entertainment, and soap opera-style drama offered the American public something cinema could not. Television's open-ended, unresolved serials created an entertainment market based on episodic intrigue. At the same time, TV easily adopted cinema. Executives understood television and film as natural extensions of each other and the successful integration of the two brought companies a means of automatic recycling and regeneration. Fox's executive vice president, Seymour Poe, saw the undertaking as a sign of the industry's "coming of age." 7 To continue a general revenue turnaround, three major studios sought outside capital for a cure. Paramount merged with Gulf and Western Industries, a "distributing, manufacturing, and mineral-producing company."8 Columbia offered the Banque de Pares et des Pays Bas 34 percent of its shares and United Artists invited merger talks with Transamerica, a financial conglomerate. As one critic commented, "today's motion picture industry has attracted investors, analysts and acquisition-minded corporations outside the entertainment field to an extent undreamed of a decade ago."9 As Oscar glittered at the Academies in full golden color, the marriage between theater and television was clear. Yet, new revenue guarantees from television and corporate mergers could not completely rehabilitate a struggling industry, since creating a cinematic product ultimately had to address the problem of the available audience. "Total entertainment" still favored television, with nine out of ten homes in America housing a television set by the end of the 1950s.
Along with film company diversification, studios developed stronger methods of promotion and took a pronounced interest in areas of related commerce such as "recorded music, book publishing, [and] merchandizing" businesses. Expansion through assorted retail markets entailed a new promotional scheme focusing on pre-selling. Marketers cross-promoted with such products as the novel, pins, posters, music, and other merchandise. By the end of the decade, film promotion became a big business in its own right.10 Marketers intensified mass-advertising practices and circulated film information through commercial ads, TV and radio spots, teaser trailers, and TV featurettes. Ultimately, an Academy nomination or award made a substantial difference in a film's advertising value and became the leading feature in a film ad. Marketing executives tailored ads for particular audiences. Paramount, too, placed ads describing young "film buffs" who displayed their movie buttons of Romeo &Juliet, Goodbye Columbus, and If. "These young people," the ad claimed, "and thousands like them are doing their movie thing. They are all seeing the three motion pictures that have made their world more meaningful ... like love and the establishment. You should see them, too, if you want to see the great change that is happening.""
At the same time that companies diversified and cross-promoted, they were vigilant at pre-selling through noncommercial channels. Marketers led more concentrated campaigns than in earlier periods. Typical publicity for big pictures generated cover stories in major magazines such as Life and Look and newspapers and local TV news, all of which increased marketing value based on the assumption that entertainment was "real" news.12 Coverage of a film on the local level as a news item added an element of authority to an object of entertainment and contributed to the "must see" sentiment while developing "the proper frame of mind to receive the picture."" Consequently, these persistent methods of promotion further cultivated America's deeply implanted celebrity culture to help charge interest in a film and exploit viewers' acute case of movie-star mania.14
Companies by the mid-1960s, however, could no longer bank on the automatic draw of casting greats such as Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, and others. As one writer reported, "There has been a notable decline in the number of films that are written and produced simply as vehicles for superstars whose box office appeal alone supposedly would carry the picture." The earlier era of Gable and Garbo had been turned over to TV. Producers typically would not touch a package without a "big name," but by mid-decade, it was not clear whose prowess made money. Certainly there were the most famous - Jack Lemmon, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton - but studios that waited to match their script with those names could find themselves without a sizeable project at all. Companies recognized that a "selective moviegoer [would] not automatically parade into the theater." Filmmakers by default attended to new star possibilities when the likes of Bonnie and Clyde registered unexpected box office results." Stanley Kramer, for example, saw a trend toward unknown talent and believed by this time star power in big names detracted from a film's dramatic delivery and narrative value. He even wondered if his own films "wouldn't have been even better ... without the big casts, the Hollywood stars."" More to the point, if casting power was not what it had been, Hollywood faced challenges more critical than just infrastructure modernization. It now had the burden of cultivating new talent, but that would have to wait a few years until scripts offered attractive material for rising stars.'?
While the production end of the industry was busy rejuvenating itself through expansion and diversification programs, new promotional strategies and tie-ins, and a search for new talent, the exhibition branch entered its own revamping. For most of Hollywood's history, the major studios dominated first-run exhibition, but in August 1944, the United States government issued a decree requiring the controlling film companies to divest their economic interest in movie theaters and block bookings.18 Commonly referred to as the Paramount injunction, this decree separated the exhibition arm from the body of production. Despite government intervention, however, changes in exhibition were slow to occur. M-G-M, for example, did not separate production and distribution from its theater assets until 1959 when Loews amassed several U.S. and Canadian theaters.19
Divestment, at the very least, opened doors to independents who formerly had to compete with studios for outlets. Producers were no longer guaranteed movie distribution because theater owners were no longer obligated to show a studio film regardless of its quality. Divestment made it easier for exhibitors to cultivate the new interest in the art films. Yet, exhibitors ultimately faced a greater challenge. It was obvious that the movie-going custom had waned by the 1950s because of television and the changing patterns of leisure resulting from rapid suburbanization.20 During the post-divestment period, many urban movie theaters were demolished, turned into supermarkets, or converted into art theaters and other venues. It was not until the early sixties with the automatic draw of suburban shopping centers that exhibition rebounded.
Taking the theater to the shopping center reconfigured distribution from the first-run theater system to saturation bookings that required more prints and thus circulated more money. In the New York metropolitan area alone, exhibitors added one hundred theaters to shopping centers during the 1960s, making convenient movie-going available to such outlying areas as Hicksville on Long Island.21 The shopping center formula helped theater owners bounce back from their near-bankrupt businesses and brought new entrepreneurs into the exhibition market by mid-decade. One such contender was Eugene Victor Klein, chairman and president of National General Corporation (NGC). Klein brought the company from a $6.7 million loss to a $3.03 million profit by the early 1960s, making NGC the second largest U.S. theater chain. "The big thing for the family today," Klein claimed, "is to do everything in a package - go shopping, have dinner, go to a movie. Nobody wants to schlep all the way downtown to an old barn anymore."22 As mo
vies grew into another "consumer lure," an attachment to shopping, what mattered most to many exhibitors was the ability to offer parking and driving convenience in only one stop off the main road.23
Regulatory changes and movie-house relocation converged with innovations in exhibition business practices. Vice President Jack A. Chartoff of Automated Theatres of America, Inc., explained that "today, automated equipment and the idea that the picture is more important than the theater is giving birth to a new breed of exhibitor." That new breed came from a variety of fields ranging from the Eastman Kodak equipment sector to the furniture busi- ness.24 Exhibitors also developed investment opportunities by creating and offering franchises in theater chains. Encouraged by Jerry Lewis, who campaigned for exhibitors to join him in the most successful money-making segment of the entertainment industry," some hopefuls saw opportunity in the franchising business and opened Jerry Lewis Cinema theaters at an initial cost of $15,000 with an equipment package of $40,000. Others such as Trans- Lux/Inflight flooded the market with chains. As Trans-Lux President Eugene Picker asked, "If we find a location that will draw people from a wide area, why not keep the profits all to ourselves?"25 Theater building rebounded with 40,000 cinemas and 14 million seats filling United States cities and towns.26
Mixing movies with suburbs altered the concept of the theater. Unlike monumental movie houses of the Golden Era such as Fox's five-thousand seater in San Francisco (demolished for a parking structure), contemporary configuration introduced functional, economical structures accommodating between 250 and 700 viewers. This translated into a theater design that stripped away ornamental interiors and left only a screen, a large room, no balcony, a mass of seats, and a projection booth. At the same time, an expanded screen, set against "less gingerbread," highlighted the dramatic quality of the picture. This functional interior contrasted with the dense and diverse activity of the movie. Contemporary design placed the screen, not the architecture, at the center of dramatic intrigue.27 Exhibitors enticed viewers into theaters by offering longer runs, wider screens, an array of food, and a sexy film. The key was to get audiences inside; how they engaged in the setting was up to them. Thus, the dominant architectural theory of function before form fit comfortably with the streamlined, suburban shopping center.