The first movie I can remember seeing was The War of the Worlds (also known in promotional material as H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds). My uncle took me to a neighborhood movie theater (remember those?) in 1953 to see this film directed by Byron Haskin, produced by George Pal, and starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.
You know the story: the Martians invade the Earth with cool weapons and flew around zapping humans. All I know is that War of the Worlds blew my mind and made me a movie fan.
In the 1950s, my parents took me and my siblings to mostly Disney movies. It wasn’t until 1957 when another mind-blowing movie wowed me: my uncle took me to see Forbidden Planet! (I was 8 years old.)
While I fell in love with movies in 1950s and early 1960s, Foster Hirsch makes a serious case that the Fifties was the most important decade in Hollywood history: “As the studio system slowly but inexorably unraveled, the traditional seven-year contract also began to be dismantled. Actors, directors, producers, designers, cinematographers, and screenwriters who had the protector of a major studio throughout their careers were suddenly cut loose. ” (p. xvi)
Hirsch asserts that massive changes started in the Fifties and changed the trajectory of the movie industry. “Today’s young audiences have no way of gauging what going to the movies was like in mid-century America. Back then, we saw films in large, architecturally flamboyant theaters designed in a variety of fanciful historical styles ranging from Spanish baroque to Mayan to Egyptian to neoclassical revival to Far Eastern. Unlike the anonymous multiplex auditoriums of the present, single-screen movie houses at midcentury were temples of enteraintment with blinking neon marquees, enticing display cases, and spacious lobbies.” (p. xviii)
Hirsch takes the reader through the strategies the various studios took to adjust to the decade of massive changes. Howard Hughes at RKO released most of his movies in wide-screen SuperScope. Paramount, Warner Brothers, and 20th Century Fox opted for CinemaScope. Bigger was better in screen size. Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Samuel Goldwyn, and other movie moguls grappled with the growing threat of television: “At the end of the war in 1945, there were fewer than ten thousand sets in American homes. By 1949, consumers began to buy televisions at the rate of approximately one hundred thousand every week. By 1950, there were six million sets; a decade later, in 1960, 90 percent of American homes had a television. Thoughtout the decade, as Hollywood struggled to lure patrons back into theaters, the threat of in-home entertainment was relentless. ” (p. xv)
Now with 110 inch flat screen TVs, surround sound, and streaming services, movie theaters seem to be an endangered species. How long can AMC and REGAL survive? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
PROLOGUE: The Past is a Foreign Country — ix
PART ONE: THE ROOMS AT THE TOP
Showdown at Tiffany’s — 3
The Fox — 32
A madman in charge — 49
All for love — 65
The man you love to hate — 70
The stix nix hix pix … or do they? — 87
Who Is Y. Frank Freeman? — 99
Last man standing — 109
New game in town– 124
PART TWO: RUNNING SCARED
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Cinerama!” — 143
“A lion in your lap, a lover in your arms” — 160
The miracle mirror screen — 192
The finer things/the bottom feeders — 243
Race films — 282
(Out of sight) — 301
PART THREE: THE RED AND THE BLACK
At the Waldorf — 319
The red menace! — 346
On the other hand — 367
PART FOUR: THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD
The senior class (I) — 399
The senior class (II) — 419
New faces (I) — 430
New faces (II) — 445
PART FIVE: LAST RITES
Darker than night — 481
The time for parting — 497
How do pharaohs speak? — 506
Magnificent obsessions — 518
The long distance runners — 538
In the beginning — 551
Epilogue : the lessons of the past — 569
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS — 575
NOTES — 577
BIBLIOGRAPHY — 589
INDEX — 597
