The Tree Of Life, Terrence Malick, US 2011

Having not been to the Cannes Film Festival I am of course unable to say anything about all other films in this year's Competition, let alone comment on their quality. However, I can only presume that the members of this year's jury, still in a daze provoked by the ballyhoo surrounding Lars von Trier's press conference that somehow, they ended up awarding the Palme D'Or to Malick's film for reasons I am entirely incapable to comprehend.

The Tree of Life is a film in search of a story, for its narrative can be told in just a few sentences: In 1950's Texas a father, played by Brad Pitt, keeps his sons on a tight leash raising them in a strict manner. Some 40 years down the line, the eldest of the three sons Jack, played by Sean Penn, looks back on his childhood and starts to question - you guessed it! - the meaning of life.

Malick takes nearly three hours to tell this story which apparently is partly autobiographical, filling the gaps with psychedelic images which at times come across as a blend between Jurassic Park and 2001, A Space Odyssey. Others have suggested that Malick's film seems like a Discovery Channel Special, a comparison that is not far off the mark.

While Malick takes great pains to forge a link between the film's actual narrative and its imagery, to me, at least, there is little connection between the two. The incessant stream of psychedelic and Discovery Channel images, employed to visualise Jack's reflection on the meaning of life, come across as hopelessly pretentious and disconnected, and only the consumer of substantial amounts of illegal substances may be able to see the link between the film's - pitifully thin - storyline and the endless succession of images of deserts, waterfalls, rain forests and the like and, more importantly, to perceive these as mesmerizing or in any way relevant to what the film may want to say.

I feel compelled to add here that I am not usually a fan of typical conventional, linear, Hollywood storytelling. On the same token, putting images where the story ought be by making the film twice as long as necessary, doesn't automatically result in art.

On Polanski

After having recently finished reading Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Manor, I wondered what to read next. Having just read a novel - Singer's - I decided I needed to go back again to the topic I feel passionate about most - Film - and somehow I ended up buying Christopher Sandford's monography on Roman Polanski.

For as long as I can think of, Polanski has always been among the directors whose work I most admire. Others include Kubrick, Hitchcock, Chaplin, Lynch, Lumet and Wilder. This doesn't necessarily mean that I love all of their films - though I do most of them - it's simply that these directors' level of artistry has been unusually high and just as consistent. Certainly in comparison to most of their peers. In my opinion, anyway!

Paul Werner's book on Polanski was one of the first film-books I picked up when I was still in my early twenties. Although I'd already been obsessed with Polanski prior to reading it, Werner's book really opened my eyes. His insight, his analysis of Polanski's films and the way he forges links to Polanski's life without reading too much into them, helped me to better understand not only Polanski's work but also Polanski, the man. Additionally, it buttressed my opinion - already firm back then - that Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion are masterpieces and quite simply milestones in film history. To this day, they remain among my all-time favourite films: Excellently crafted stories which never underestimate the viewer, keeping you at the edge of your seat from beginning to end.

Once I'd started reading Sandford's book it dawned on me that my subconscious must have been playing a trick on me as Sandford's book took me straight back to Poland, though not the Poland of The Manor, but rather the Poland of the German invasion and subsequent occupation. I'd previously known, of course, that Polanksi was of Polish descent and that he spent part of his youth in the Warsaw Ghetto, but it nevertheless startled me how neatly Sandford's account picked up where Singer's book left off.


Roman Polanski and his second wife, Sharon Tate, who was brutally murdered by the Manson family in 1968


Anyhow, unlike Werner's, Sandford's book focusses on Polanski rather than offering sharp analyses of his films. However, it is one of the strengths of his book that Sandford manages to avoid one of the biggest pitfalls in biography-writing: The tendency to become anecdotal. While avoiding anecdotes is, of course, almost impossible in any biography, Polanski - such is the apt title of Sandford's book - introduces these anecdotes with caution and, where possible, even offering corroboration. Moreover, Sandford's is not one of those kiss-and-tell stories - the literary equivalent of a bodice ripper - but rather a well researched account of the life of one of the greatest directors of our time, told by someone who has nothing but admiration for his subject, something which suffuses every page of Sandford's book.

Roman Polanski and Ewan McGregor on location on the German island of Sylt, shooting Polanski's latest, The Ghost. To read my review of The Ghost, click HERE!


Somehow life's full of coincidences ... or is it? After reading up on Polanski had got me back into the mood of watching some vintage Polanski on the big screen - Polanksi is strictly for the movie theatre only! - I ran a google search and what did it throw up? Sadly no Polanksi retrospective anywhere near my home, but nevertheless, I found out that there currently is an exhibition on Polanski, organised by the film museums of Potsdam and Duesseldorf in collaboration with Polanski's alma mater, the Lodz Film School.



Deneuve going off the rails in Repulsion (1965)


The Beckett-inspired Cul-De-Sac (1966), which won the Grand Prix at that year's Berlin Film Festival


Mia Farrow playing the girl who, to use former Paramount executive Charles Bluhdorn's words, "was shtupped by the devil" in Rosemary's Baby (1967)

Until his untimely death in 1968 composer Kryzstof Komeda was a friend and frequent collaborator of Polanski's. Listen to Komeda's hauntingly beautiful score for Rosemary's Baby which much contributes to the cult status the film has since attained:





Faye Dunaway, playing the tragic heroine Evelyn Mulwray in Polanski's film-noir-to-end-all-film-noirs - Chinatown (1974)

Watch an original 1974 trailer of Chinatown here:




Yet another tragic heroine. Polanski's early films are full of women at the verge of a nervous breakdown. In the case of The Tenant (1976), this woman's called Simone Choule (though he's actually called Trelkovsky ...) and is played by none other than Polanski himself.


Adrian Brody walking the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto in one of The Pianist's most devastating scenes.


Recommended books about Roman Polanski:

Sandford, Christopher: Polanski, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (in English)
Werner, Paul, Roman Polanski, Fischer Cinema, 1984 (in German)

Roman Polanski, An Exhibition:

- Filmmuseum Potsdam, until 3 July 2011

City of Angels: The Studios, Part 8: Universal

Universal Pictures was founded in 1912 when Carl Laemmle, a German-Jewish immigrant born in Laupheim in the South-German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, merged his IMP (= Independent Motion Picture Company) with a string of smaller film companies like Bison, Powers, and Nestor, with himself at the helm.

Prior to that, back in 1906 Laemmle ran a nickelodeon in Chicago before moving on to opening a chain of cinemas and subsequently branching out into distribution shortly after. His outfit, Laemmle Film Service, eventually turned into the country’s biggest distribution company.

With Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Company (referred to as The Trust), formed in 1908, out to get anybody who wouldn’t play by the rules and regulations imposed by The Trust, it was a sorry time for anybody trying to break into film. Undeterred by The Trust’s shenanigans, Laemmle started to produce his own pictures in 1909, signing The Biograph Girl, Florence Lawrence, (so called because she had heretofore starred in flicks of the Biograph Company) in 1910, and putting Mary Pickford under contract soon after.

Carl Laemmle Senior

Laemmle's efforts to defy the Trust’s monopoly proved successful when in 1912 the Justice Department deemed Edison’s practices unlawful, giving Laemmle wings to further expand his ever-growing company, which subsequently led to the foundation of Universal.

In 1914 Laemmle bought a 230 acre parcel of land north of Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley, with the intention of building an enormous film studio, called Universal City, which he opened in 1915. In about 1920 a young Irving Thalberg, who would soon makes waves at Metro, was appointed manager of the studio, after having previously worked at Universal’s head office in New York. Driven, and with a fire in his head, Thalberg ran the studio efficiently, which was reflected in the high box office returns, enabling Universal to further assert its position on the increasingly competitive motion picture market.

Irving G. Thalberg

Thalberg went on to run a tight ship during his relatively brief stint at Universal, and his torrid run-ins with Erich von Stroheim, one of Universal’s resident directors, are legend. Thalberg firmly believed that a director was nothing but a hired hand, and any attempt on his side to let his imagination, not to mention the cost of the film, run wild, had to be nipped in the bud. After having gone way over budget already on his opulent Foolish Wives (1922), where Stroheim insisted on a painstakingly precise recreation of Monte Carlo, on his next picture, Merry-Go-Round (1923), Stroheim found himself discharged by the hard-headed Thalberg. The Merry-Go-Round disaster spelled the end of Stroheim’s career in the US. But before returning to Europe he would go on to do a couple of films for MGM where he clashed once again with Thalberg, who had since joined the Mayer Company just prior to its merger with Goldwyn and Loew.

To be sure, Thalberg’s tight reign at Universal was a prelude to his years at MGM, where he was known for keeping its directors on an equally tight leash, exercising his power as production chief wherever and whenever he saw fit. History, however, has been kinder to Stroheim than to his nemesis, Thalberg, as his films are hailed by critics and film historians alike as unique and outstanding masterpieces, while Thalberg’s input and influence has of late become regarded as overvalued.

Other pictures of note of that period in Universal’s history include Wallace Worsley’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1923), and Paul Leni’s films, The Cat And The Canary (1927), and The Man Who Laughs (1928), starring fellow-German Conrad Veidt (of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari fame). Thus started Universal’s love affair with the bizarre, the macabre and the twisted.

James Whale

Carl Laemmle had a reputation for filling all kinds of positions in his company with family members, inspiring a witty unknown to coin the term, “Carl Laemmle has a very big faemmle”. In 1929, the ageing Carl Laemmle Sr. put his son, Carl Jr. in charge of production, who went on to win the studio its first best picture Oscar in 1930 with the anti-war drama All Quiet on the Western Front, based on Erich-Maria Remarque best-selling novel. A year later Laemmle’s nephew, William Wyler, arrived from Europe, to begin what would eventually turn into a successful career as one of Hollywood's leading film directors. His western Hell’s Heroes (1930), stands out amidst all the monsters and dead bodies that tended to fill Universal’s screen during the early 1930s. British import James Whale, since then elegantly and aptly portrayed on screen by fellow Brit Ian McEllan in the elegiac Gods And Monsters (1999), was largely responsible for Universal's reputation as the studio of horror flicks as his string of horror movies, beginning with Dracula (1931), followed by Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride Of Frankenstein (1932) rippled the film world.

Bette Davis in the early 1930s

In 1930 Universal lured the young Bette Davis, then appearing on the New York stage, to Hollywood in order to add her name to the studio’s pitiful roster of stars. Legend has it, that once the aspiring actress, accompanied by her mother, Ruthie, arrived at the Pasadena station, after a strenuous five-day journey from New York, nobody from Universal bothered to show up to greet them. Universal’s negligent treatment of the budding actress was an antecedent of the studio’s cluelessness as to what to do with her, studio boss Laemmle being said to have uttered that “she has as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville”. Consequently, after only a few pictures, most of which on loan-out to other studios, and not one even remotely exploiting her potential, Universal dropped her contract and Bette Davis was ready to go back east, when, in the nick of time, Warner Brothers snapped her up, and turned her into their Queen of the lot.

During the mid-1930s Universal had little to offer in terms of quality pictures.
My Man Godfrey (1936), Gregory LaCava’s hilarious screw-ball comedy, starring Carole Lombard and William Powell, both on loan-out from Paramount and MGM respectively, was one of the rare exceptions. And with box-office returns slackening continuously, there was no denying the fact that Universal was in dire need of funds. The year My Man Godfrey was released, Carl Laemmle Sr. was pressed to sell his interest in the company he founded.

By 1938 Universal was run by Nate Blumberg, and the company slowly climbed out of the red, but with the ailing studio in dire need of stars and talented directors, its output would remain second-rate until the mid/ late forties, when Universal released a couple of exciting thrillers, thereby once again resorting to the dark side of the screen. Fritz Lang’s classic Scarlet Street (1946) and Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946) were among the most outstanding Universal releases during that period.

Joan Bennett and Edward G. Robinson in Fritz Lang's Scarlett Street (1945)

Bearing in mind that the history of the Hollywood studios being also part of the history of corporate America, it was in 1946 that Universal merged with International Pictures, founded a mere three years earlier by William Goetz and Leo Spitz, who both took control over the studio operations in Hollywood while Nate Blumberg continued to be president of Universal, based at the company’s New York headquarters. In an attempt to boost Universal’s performance at the box-office, the studio reached an agreement with the British film company J. Arthur Rank to distribute its films in the US, which also added some much needed cachet to Universal’s chipped reputation.
The deal quickly paid off, though not necessarily in cash, but in giving Universal a long overdue ego-boost, when Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) won a best picture Oscar in 1948. Other British productions released by Universal included like David Lean’s Great Expectations (1948), Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1948), and Carol Reed’s masterpiece Odd Man Out (1947).

Douglas Sirk

In 1952 Universal was in for yet another shake-up when Decca Records seized control over the studio by becoming its major shareholder. The old guard exited, and Milton Rackmil and Edward Muhl entered the studio, the former being its new president and the latter Universal’s new studio chief. It was during the 1950s that Universal finally became a major player again and a force to be reckoned with, when a new breed of producers and directors marched in, headed by Ross Hunter and Douglas Sirk, who brought a new meaning to the term melodrama dazzling 1950s audiences with their polished, impeccably staged soap operas such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), Written On The Wind (1956), and Imitation Of Life (1959). Their films would have a lasting influence on future generations of directors. German film-maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder is said to have been greatly influenced by the films of his fellow-German, inspiring him to his acclaimed Veronica Voss (1981) and The Marriage Of Maria Braun (1978).

Marlene Dietrich in Welles' A Touch of Evil (1958)

Another remarkable film of Universal’s 1950s period is Orson Welles’ A Touch Of Evil (1958). A low-key thriller with a brilliantly crafted screenplay -including a meaty part for Orson Welles’ pal Marlene Dietrich- the film is every bit a masterpiece. But, of course, as Welles’ films go, A Touch Of Evil wasn’t exactly breaking records at the box-office.

Ten years after Decca took control of Universal, it was now the giant Music Corporation of America (MCA), run by the charismatic Lew Wasserman, that swallowed up both companies in one fell swoop in 1962. A highly regarded and well respected man, the bespectacled, magnetic Lew Wasserman was generally agreed to be the most powerful man in Hollywood, in fact, its King. He would continue to run MCA until 1995, five years after the conglomeration’s takeover by Japanese electronics behemoth Matsushita, when Wassermann was named ‘chairman emeritus’.

Like an ancient rock in the surf, Universal stood firm in spite of the numerous takeovers the company had been through over the years, and if anything, these seem to have injected some new life into the ailing film studio, as the 1960s went off to an even better start than the previous decade.

Tippi Hedren in Hitchock's The Birds (1963)

Alfred Hitchcock began his association with Universal in 1962 with his shocker The Birds. Universal granted Hitchcock the freedom he craved, and in turn Hitchcock’s films reaped healthy profits. It was thus a partnership both sides were happy with, and one that would last until Hitchcock’s last film 14 years later, Family Plot (1976).

The Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedies were also universally popular, Miss Day having been rated the most popular film star in three consecutive years, between 1960 and 1963. In terms of artistic merits, however, another Universal release of the 1960s which more than warrants a mention, is Robert Mulligan’s subtle adaptation of Harper Lee's instant classic, To Kill A Mockingbird (1963), for which Gregory Peck rightly won the Academy Award for best actor.
To Kill A Mockingbird also won for best picture, which was the studio’s first best picture Oscar after 43 years.
It was clear that Universal was finally out of the woods.


Steven Spielberg came on board in the 1970s, ringing in the block-buster age with hits like Jaws (1975), and later, E.T. (1982) and Jurassic Park (1993). His much subtler, and better, film, Schindler’s List (1994) was also produced by Universal, winning the studio yet another best picture Oscar, its fifth, after having won again in 1979 for the melancholy The Deer Hunter, and also in 1985, for the melodrama to end all melodramas, Out Of Africa, in which Meryl Streep gives a towering performance of the Danish writer Tania Blixen’s years in East Africa.

Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1985)

Universal’s unbroken string of successes made it a likely, not to mention lucrative, object of desire for investors, and in 1990, after almost 30 years of MCA’s unswerving reign, Universal and MCA were both bought up by Matsushita.
But after only 5 years the electronic giant lost interest in the film company and sold it to the Canadian Seagram Corporation, managed by Edgar Bronfman Jr.
The financial success of Apollo 13 (1995) was dampened by the departure of Spielberg, who left to form Dreamworks with partners Devid Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. However, an agreement was reached that their pictures would continue to be released through Universal.

Julia Roberts in Soderbergh's Erin Brockovich (2000)

Five shaky years later, in 2000, the French media giant Vivendi swallowed Seagrams’ drinks along with Universal’s films, gulping it down to the tune of $ 34 billion.
With the company bouncing back and forth, and a lot of back-scratching as well as back-stabbing going on at the top, Universal had a couple of respectable hits over the past few years, most noteworthy of which is Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich (2000), which won Julia Roberts her richly deserved Oscar as best actress. Universal was also one of the first Hollywood studios to tap the public’s fascination with films and filmmaking, and already during Carl Laemmle’s times as studio chief, the public was granted a peek behind the scenes.

However, 1964 marks the year Universal officially began their organised studio tours, which now have evolved into a theme park emulating Disneyland. There is little, unfortunately, in terms of studio history, as the tour - and the rides - focus on recent studio successes as Back To The Future, Jurassic Park, and the like.

City of Angels: The Studios, Part 7: Pickford & Fairbanks Studios (United Artists), Now: The Lot

In 1922 Hollywood’s royal couple, Mary Pickford and Dougals Fairbanks, purchased this modestly sized studio which had been built two years earlier by Jesse Hampton, a now sadly forgotten film pioneer.

Fairbanks’ Robin Hood (1922) and The Thief Of Baghdad (1924) were both filmed here.
In 1927 the studio was renamed United Artists, after the company Pickford and Fairbanks had founded in 1919 in partnership with David Wark Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, who continued producing his films in his own studio on La Brea, but releasing them through United Artists.


The Lot, today

While space on their studio could be rented, United Artists was first and foremost a distribution company, the vertical integration of production, distribution and exhibition was never a priority. The purpose of United Artists, as the choice of its name suggests, was gaining complete control over the marketing and distribution of their own pictures without having to report to an array of studio bosses and production chiefs yet at the same time enabling United Artists to keep a larger share of the grosses.

Mary Pickford

Although they relished the complete artistic control their own company afforded them, with only a handful of talent under its roof, United Artists was in dire need of product to meet the minimum amount of releases to keep their operation going.
To solve the problem, next to a few new arrivals on the lot such as Gloria Swanson, they were also attracting early independents like Walt Disney, Samuel Goldwyn, David O.Selznick, or British producer Alexander Korda, and, much later, Walter Mirisch.

D.W. Griffith

In 1924 Griffith left United Artists to sign up with Paramount. Left in the lurch, independent producer Joseph Schenk (brother of MGM’s Nicholas, who would replace Marcus Loew in 1927) joined the company, bringing with him his associate, Buster Keaton.

One should imagine that with this high voltage of talent united under one roof, the studio was on a sure-fire road to success. But if anything, the high voltage led to personality clashes and ensuing fights over the way United Artists should be run, as the wispy Pickford was in reality a shrewd business woman, whereas Charlie Chaplin simply cherished the creative freedom United Artists provided him with. That, to him, who loathed working for large conglomerations for their artistic shackles, would always have precedence over profits.

Joseph Schenk, having shunted the startled Keaton off to MGM in 1928, left United Artists in 1935, to fuse his independent Twentieth Century Pictures (formed with Darryl F. Zanuck) with the Fox Corporation. Schenk’s departure left a void, and an endless wrangling started over United Artists’ management that, in a way, is spilling over to the present day.

The incessant management changes, the constant bickering and fights, are also reflected in the equally frequent changes of the company logo. While most other Hollywood studios would hang on to their logo even in the most tempestuous of times, United Artists seems to have changed their with every change of management. All this casts a shadow over the studio’s history, belying the fact that as a distributor, United Artists probably released more quality pictures than any other studio in Hollywood. Among its impressive output are classics like The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925), Nothing Sacred (La Cava, 1937), Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945), Red River (Hawks, 1948), and Some like it Hot (Wilder, 1959). It has more best picture Oscars to its name than any of its rivals, including Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940), The Apartment (Wilder, 1960), West Side Story (Wise, 1961), Tom Jones (Richardson, 1963), and Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969). The fact that they are all independent productions goes to show that the founders of United Artists seem to have realised at an early stage that a certain level of artistic freedom is required in order to produce art.

Samuel Goldwyn

Having first joined United Artists as an independent producer in 1925, Samuel Goldwyn bought the United Artists studio in 1955 for a reported $1.92 million, outbidding Pickford by $400.000.

Purchased in 1980 by Warner Brothers, it was commonly known as the Warner Hollywood studio(complementing their headquarters in Burbank).

In the meantime it finally became a registered historical landmark, but was sold once more in 1999, and is since named simply, The Lot, with Warner Brothers as a tenant, continuing to use its post-production facilities.

City of Angels: The Studios, Part 6: RKO

Considered one of the five major studios during Hollywood's golden age, RKO is mostly identified today as the studio that produced Orson Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941), Merian C. Cooper’s and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s King Kong (1933) and the lavish Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers musicals, which struck a chord with Depression audiences.


RKO during its heyday

But RKO was also the studio of the young and zany Katherine Hepburn, and Lucille Ball, who would later buy the studio when it was on the skids. Besides its strong focus on black-and-white features, the most remarkable thing about RKO probably is the fact that during its brief, torn and torrid history (1928 – 1957), it went through more presidents and reshuffles than any other studio, inducing Andrew Sarris to quip that “Rko is the closest thing we have in Hollywood to a schizophrenic studio experiencing nervous breakdowns”. Although the founding of RKO was preceded by a merger of RCA(= Radio Corporation of America) and FBO(= Film Booking Office), its history officially starts in 1928, when the RKO/ FBO conglomeration fused with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum chain to form the Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corporation, or RKO.

With practically no stars or talent of note under contract to the studio, RKO was lucky to start at a time when proceeds were high, tapping the audience’s hunger for the newly invented sound pictures. Concentrating on musicals RKO did well, and in an act of folly took over the Pathé studio in 1930. With it came a modest roster of stars like Ann Harding and Constance Bennett. The same year the studio landed a critical hit with Cimarron (1930), which garnered a couple Oscars, among which the one for best picture. In 1931 David O. Selznick replaced William LeBaron as head of production, and with his go-getter temperament he was quick in changing things around by plundering the New York stages in order for RKO to sign up a line-up of promising stars and directors.
Joining the roster of stars inherited from Pathé were Katherine Hepburn and Mary Astor, enrolling in 1932, and 1930, respectively. RKO went the way of all film studios, when a - you guessed it! - reorganisation took place in 1932, and RKO’s president Hiram Brown was replaced by Aylesworth, who soon started breathing down Selznick’s neck, causing the latter to join MGM, where Louis B. Mayer was desperate to find a capable replacement to fill in for the missing prowess of Irving G. Thalberg, who had suffered a heart attack and was on an extended leave of absence.


Katherine Hepburn

Katherine Hepburn turned into the company’s most reliable actress, winning an Oscar (her first of four) for her performance in Morning Glory (1933). The studios had a reputation for keeping their stars busy - especially if they were new on the scene - and so the very same year Hepburn also starred in Christopher Strong and Little Women, which was directed by her friend and RKO colleague, George Cukor.

Weathering the storms of the Depression, the studio had a good year in 1935, releasing three films which all went on to become classics. Alice Adams won Hepburn yet another Oscar nod, the Fred Astaire/ Ginger Rogers musical Top Hat was nominated in four categories, while John Ford’s masterpiece The Informer ended up winning four, including one for its director and one for Victor McLaglen, who played the title role. The Atlas Corporation, headed by Floyd Odlum, bought a major stake in the studio, which led to yet another reshuffle, with Leo Spitz emerging as the new president.
But being RKO, this constellation was to last for a mere 3 years, before the next restructuring brought on the ousting of Spitz, who was succeeded by George Schaefer.

Amidst all this muddle at the top, the studio nevertheless managed to come up with a number of memorable pictures, among which one that led to Bette Davis’ (on loan out from Warners) breakthrough as an actress, Of Human Bondage (1935). Based on Somerset Maugham’s novel and directed by RKO’s John Cromwell, the part of the ferocious Mildred Rogers paved the way to turn her into Hollywood’s Grande Dame of Sturm and Drang. Gregory LaCava’s hilarious screwball comedy Stage Door (1937), which united in-house actresses Hepburn, Ball and Rogers in a hilarious romp about the travails of aspiring actresses, room-mating in New York. Stage Door, like many of RKO’s films, catered mainly to women. Having turned the studio’s chronical lack of male talent into a virtue, RKO churned out a string of films aimed at female audiences. The much underrated LaCava also directed the witty morale raiser Fifth Avenue Girl (1939), in which Ginger Rogers has this to say about the upper crust, “Rich people are just poor people with money”.


Bette Davis as the villainous Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes

To make up for the shortage of talent, studio boss Schaefer was adept at encouraging independent producers to work for RKO, thus being a trail-blazer in the Hollywood landscape, for independent productions would only start to become popular with the demise of the studio system in the early 1950s. He struck up deals with early independents like Samuel Goldwyn, Walt Disney and David Selznick’s Vanguard Company, thus limiting RKO’s risks as well as limiting its profits, while at the same time substantially adding to the studio’s cachet, as Goldwyn’s films like The Little Foxes (William Wyler, 1941) and The Best Years Of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946) went on to be showered with praise, not to mention a multitude of Oscars and Oscar nods. His association with Orson Welles’ Mercury Productions, however, led to Schaefer’s downfall, as due to a smear campaign by the Hearst press in which Louella Parsons’ poison pen infamously panned Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941), RKO suffered sizeable losses, which led to Schaefer’s resignation in 1942. Floyd Odlum became chairman of the board, with N. Peter Rathvon in the position of corporate president, as his helpmate.


Orson Welles in Citizen Kane


With the US entering the war in 1941, President Roosevelt encouraged the film studios to contribute to the war effort by producing morale-boosting, patriotic films. RKO’s offerings included Edward Dmytryk’s film Tender Comrade (1943), which in the end turned out to be part anti-Nazi, part women’s picture. In it Ginger Rogers had to utter the now famous line “share and share alike, that’s’ democracy”, which with Russia still an ally, went completely unnoticed. When, however, once the war was over the tides rapidly turned, Dmytryk’s patriotic effort backfired, and it was held against him when the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigated against Communist infiltration among the film community. Ginger Rogers’ mother, Lela, used those very lines against the film’s director, Edward Dmytryk, who subsequently was subpoenaed before the Committee on charges of being a Communist (which, as a matter of fact, he was, but that should never have been the point).


Dore Schary

Milking the high cinema attendance during the war years, reaching its peak in 1946, RKO did well, releasing now classic films like Fritz Lang’s The Woman In The Window (1945) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946). By 1947, RKO was in trouble again, resulting in Dore Schary being hired as production chief. Schary, however, didn’t last long. Odlum’s decision to sell the studio to aviator-turned-tycoon Howard Hughes in 1948 spelled the end of Schary’s stint at RKO, and he left to come to MGM’s rescue, which, with the studio era coming to a close, had also fallen on hard times.
Schary’s departure was followed by a succession of production chiefs and presidents, none of whom managed to rise to the occasion of dealing with the whimsical and elusive Hughes. The difficulties of the incessant change of management notwithstanding, RKO released a string of memorable pictures during its last years, most significant among which are the films by Fritz Lang (Clash By Night, 1952, While The City Sleeps, 1956, Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, 1956), Howard Hawks(The Thing From Another World, 1951), Nicholas Ray (They Live By Night, 1948, On Dangerous Ground, 1952), Otto Preminger (Angel Face, 1952, Sudden Fear, 1953), and Robert Wise’s brilliant boxing-film-noir, The Set-Up(1949).

In 1952, with red baiting still rampant, Hughes, a notorious Communist hater, closed the studio, laid off over a thousand people, in order to implement a screening system with the aim to get rid of possible Communists on the lot. Having run the studio to the ground, Hughes sold RKO to the General Teleradio Corporation in 1955. But failing at injecting new life into the suffering studio, RKO was acquired by Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz in 1958. Renamed DeSiLu Productions, they went on to produce their highly successful and profitable I Love Lucy TV series, until a mere few years later they sold the studio to their next-door neighbour, Paramount, which has since restored the famous RKO globe to its former splendour.

The former RKO lot has become fully and un-distinguishably integrated in the Paramount grounds. However, when director Billy Wilder was told that Paramount had named a building after him, he was touched at first, until he found out that the building in question was on the RKO part of the property.


The RKO globe today

City of Angels: The Studios, Part 5: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro Goldwyn Mayer, or MGM, as it is generally referred to, was founded in 1924, when Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions merged into what would become Hollywood’s biggest, most influential motion picture studio. The merger was very advantageous inasmuch as each individual arm of the future corporation had their own invaluable assets, to be absorbed by the new studio and thereby much contributed to MGM’s meteoric rise.


Louis B. Mayer

Metro’s Marcus Loew and Louis B. Mayer both had an impressive line-up of stars and craftsmen, while Samuel Goldwyn contributed a modest-sized studio on 10202 Washington Avenue, in Culver City (which had previously belonged to film pioneer Thomas Ince), a small chain of cinemas, and a company logo of a roaring lion, which the new corporation quickly turned into their own. However, before MGM got off the ground, Goldwyn dropped out over a falling out with Mayer. According to his biographer, Scott A. Berg, “Goldwyn was bought out of the company, which would thereafter not only bear his name, but also use his grounds, being paid one million dollars”.

Hence, MGM’s lion would roar without Goldwyn.

Samuel Goldwyn

The imperial Louis B. Mayer became head of the studio, assisted by Eddie Mannix, who was the studio’s general manager, and Benny Thau, in charge of labour relations, both of whom would stay with MGM for many years to come. Mayer’s most important sidekick, however, was the feverish Irving G. Thalberg, who had tagged along from Mayer’s previous outfit, and continued in his old job as head of production.

Irving G. Thalberg marrying MGM star, Norma Shearer

A lot has been written about Thalberg’s role in the MGM conglomeration, and his real value appears to be difficult to assess. Considering the relatively few films of artistic value that were produced under his reign, it might well be that Thalberg was “as overvalued as Columbia’s Harry Cohn was undervalued”, as film historian Andrew Sarris states in his book You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet, and I think Sarris does indeed have a point.

Marcus Loew was appointed MGM’s president, pulling the financial strings from the company’s headquarters in New York, thereby following a well established pattern, adopted by most other major film studios, whose financial and artistic power was divided between New York and Los Angeles. Mayer and Thalberg saw eye to eye in terms of their vision for MGM’s future, which was “making beautiful pictures for beautiful people”, and together they turned MGM into the studio of sequined sirens and knights in shining armour. And indeed, besides their technical polish, MGM’s films had a distinct look, almost like a signature, which made it next to impossible for the viewer to mistake them for what they were: MGM motion pictures. Lavish musicals and glossy, escapist visions of an idealised world were the company’s stock in trade, and they were worlds apart from the gritty realism of Warner’s gangster movies or the gritty look of Universal’s horror flicks.

Cedric Gibbons

Cedric Gibbons, who was the head of the art department, was largely responsible for the uniform, sumptuous look of MGM’s films, and next to Thalberg and Mayer himself, he probably was the most important man on the lot, supervising literally every production to make sure it was up to MGM’s high standard.

With so much emphasis on the film’s look, it is hardly a surprise that directors had a tough time at the studio as their artistic freedom was very much curtailed. As a result, directors, who are visionaries by nature were the only creative force MGM had a perpetual lack of, as they chose the artistic freedom at studios like Warner's or Columbia, over MGM’s glitz. Consequently, only few of the early films the studio produced are at all memorable.

MGM’s biggest asset, though, was its massive line-up of stars.

“More stars than there are in heaven” ran the company’s ad-campaign during its golden age, and with names like Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Marion Davies, and Norma Shearer, all under contract to the studio, the statement wasn’t far off the mark.

But there were casualties, too.

Buster Keaton

When Joseph Schenk announced to Buster Keaton in 1928 that he would no longer continue to produce his films, and that Keaton would henceforth be under contract to MGM, whose president Joseph’s brother, Nicholas became, the stunned comedian couldn’t quite fully grasp what he was in for. Used to unbridled freedom, the “man who never laughed” would soon have even less reason to do so, when in 1933, over one last run-in with Mayer, Keaton walked out on the MGM colossus, - never to return there ever again.

The “one big, happy family” the belligerent Mayer deluded himself in having, was only so as long as all the staff complied with his demands and orders. And there are indeed numerous examples - mainly stars and craftsmen - for whom this set-up worked brilliantly. But when it came to having visions and ideas of one’s own, the family ties proved to be more brittle than Mayer cared to admit. MGM’s was Hollywood’s best-oiled, most sophisticated assembly line. But it was nevertheless an assembly line.

The rather tyrannical reign at MGM notwithstanding, during its infancy the company did turn out a small handful of outstanding features, notably Victor Sjöström’s unsettling masterpiece The Wind (1928), starring the legendary Lilian Gish, Todd Browning’s eerie masterpiece Freaks (1932), and King Vidor’s riveting Halleluja (1929), and his equally astonishing The Crowd (1928), which was nominated for two Academy Awards at the first Oscar ceremony.

King Vidor was somewhat an oddity on the MGM lot. Influenced by the German expressionism of the early 1920s, he regarded silent films as superior to sound, labelling the tempo and composition of his films “silent music”. Primarily a visualist, he was one of MGM’s hottest properties, and he would later direct the opulent western melodrama Duel In The Sun (1944), on which he ended up walking out, put off by the incessant meddling of his boss, David O. Selznick.

Boasting an all-star cast, Edmund Goulding’s Grand Hotel (1932), revolving around the travails of a handful of illustrious guests at a Berlin-based luxury accommodation, based on Vicki Baum’s novel, won the studio its second Best Picture Oscar.

Irving Thalberg suffered a massive heart attack in late 1932, which required him to take a long leave of absence, prompting the industrious Mayer to restructure the company and replace Thalberg with David O. Selznick, then married to Mayer’s daughter, Irene. When the stalwart Thalberg returned to MGM, he found a different company with his authority greatly diminished.

David O. Selznick

He died in 1936, the same year Selznick left MGM to found his own production company, though releasing his pictures through MGM. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had been living and working in Hollywood during the 1930s, immortalised the MGM wunderkind in his novel, The Last Tycoon, whose hero, Monroe Stahr, is modelled on Thalberg.

After Thalberg’s death, Mayer decided to oversee the production of MGM’s films himself, and although box-office returns remained stable, the quality of the pictures didn’t much improve. However, the company landed a huge commercial and critical hit with the original Mutiny On The Bounty (1935), starring the brilliant Charles Laughton, winning the company yet another Best Picture Oscar, followed the year after with The Great Ziegfeld (1936), a musical based on the life of legendary theatre entrepreneur, Florenz Ziegfeld.

Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz

From early on MGM had focused on musicals. However, with the pairing of producer Arthur Freed, director Vincente Minnelli, and the company’s new asset, Judy Garland, signed in 1937, and soon to become Minnelli’s wife, musicals became MGM’s biggest artistic contribution during the 1940s. The Wizard Of Oz(1939), Meet Me In St.Louis (1944), and Easter Parade (1948) have since become landmarks in movie history.

Taylor in Lassie

With the arrival of the young British import Elizabeth Taylor in 1943, MGM had yet another asset in its ever-growing stable of stars, with her films Lassie Come Home (1943) and National Velvet (1944) turning out to be immensely successful box-office winners.

Motion picture attendance in the US reached its peak in 1946. Over the years MGM, like most other film companies in Hollywood, had expanded on a steady basis, its lot in Culver City having grown to almost 190 acres, from its original 40, boasting a lake including a harbour, a railway station, a small jungle, and various streets and parks, making it the biggest studio in Hollywood.

In 1951 MGM won yet another best picture Oscar. For a musical, to be sure! An American In Paris struck a chord with post-war audiences, when an American artist, played by the incomparable Gene Kelly falls for a young French waif, played by the elfin Leslie Caron. The film also scored Oscars for Cedric Gibbons and Vincente Minelli, who at that time was still married to Judy Garland, but would divorce her a year later. The Government Consent Decree in 1950 didn’t leave MGM untouched, either, and in 1951, with profits at an all time low, Mayer was asked to leave by Nicholas Schenk.

Dore Schary

Replaced by Dore Schary, who himself would only last until 1956, Mayer’s demise echoed that of his peers, and he died in 1957. However, even after Mayer and Schary had left the sinking ship it was business as usual for MGM, still focusing on sleek and glossy colour productions. Only that now they were shot in 70mm, in a last attempt to draw lost audiences back into the cinemas.

Outside its musicals, MGM also joined other film companies in investing in religious and historical epics, which not only lent themselves to the new widescreen formats, they also went very well with the right-wing leaning political climate of the time. It was hardly a surprise that a rehash of Ben Hur (1959), starring Charlton Heston, who made no bones about his political leanings, won MGM yet another best picture Oscar in 1959, after having scored one for the innocuous musical Gigi (1958) the year before.

But the success of those films couldn’t disguise the fact that the crisp and glossy crust had become very brittle, and that underneath was the festering wound of a company that more than ever lacked talented directors to draw the increasingly fastidious audiences back into the theatres. And with most everyone gone, discharged, or dead to give the company some much needed artistic input, MGM eventually turned into a company run by business men and tycoons, who had little or no interest, let alone the know-how, in running a film studio.


By the late 1960s a fresh and new breeze, coming from the left, caught Hollywood. During that time MGM released two outstanding, noteworthy pictures, which also did more than respectable business, not to mention winning a handful of Oscars. Though old fashioned, Dr. Zhivago (1965), David Lean’s tightly woven epic, was as engrossing as Stanley Kubrick’s space opera 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968) was disquieting and disturbing. However the box-office failure of Lean’s follow-up, the much underrated Ryan’s Daughter (1970), set MGM back another 14 million and further contributed to its demise.

By 1969 the Las Vegas behemoth Kirk Kerkorian seized control over the studio, and branching out into television and record deals, MGM ceased distributing its own pictures in 1973, just shortly before in 50th anniversary, which was nevertheless celebrated with the highly profitable release of That’s Entertainment (1974), a revelry of fifty years of MGM musical making. Even though continuously losing its clout, MGM still came up with the odd masterpiece, most notably among them are the uncanny, clever science-fiction thriller Soylent Green (1973)and the sardonic Network (1976). Both films were way ahead of their time, and sadly, did hardly anything to give the company’s box-office returns the much-needed boost.

After having added United Artists to his shopping cart, billionaire Kerkorian sold both companies to media tycoon Ted Turner, who promptly re-sold them to Kerkorian, who then sold them once again, this time to Pathé Communications in 1990. Eventually Crédit Lyonnais took control of MGM in 1991, but sold its back lot to Sony Pictures in 1993, forcing MGM to relocate temporarily to Santa Monica, until a few years later, the company finally settled in their new headquarters, which, ironically, are located in Century City, sitting on what used to be part of the Twentieth Century Fox back lot!

Unbelievable but true, in 1996 Kerkorian bought the much messed-about company for a third time.

Kirk Kerkorian

To add a sad coda to MGM’s story, what used to be the studio’s back lot and headquarters, is now home to Columbia Pictures, or rather Columbia-Tri-Star, as it is now named, with the whole mash owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment. And even though classics like The Great Ziegfeld (1936), The Wizard Of Oz (1939), and Some Came Running (1960), were all shot on the lot, there is little mention of the studio’s historical link to MGM during the two-hour studio-tour, as it focuses chiefly on recent Sony productions, and of course, television.

It is no surprise that there was little time or room for artistry within all this big-time money traffic and business shenanigans. Norman Jewison’s old-fashioned love-story Moonstruck(1988), Ridley Scott’s feminist road-movie-turned-cult-film Thelma And Louise(1991), and Get Shorty (1995) were among the few artistically interesting films of note that stood out amidst the flood of life-less entertainment.

City of Angels: The Studios, Part 4: 20th Century Fox

Looking at the history of the major Hollywood studios, it quickly becomes apparent that the one thing they all had in common was the fact that, being the product of a fledgling industry, they all expanded rapidly while trying to adapt to the shifting tastes of an ever fickle audience.

Depending as they did, of course, on an ever erratic economy, this usually resulted in a number of sudden changes of ownership and takeovers.

This applies in particular to Twentieth Century Fox, and hardly any studio - with the possible exception of RKO - matched its extraordinary ups and downs. The choppy and inconsistent history of Twentieth Century Fox was reflected in the quality of its product. Unlike Warner Brothers, MGM, or Paramount, whose output during the golden age of Hollywood often bore a distinct, idiosyncratic look, the films of Twentieth Century Fox were as incongruous in quality as their look was interchangeable.


William Fox

The Fox Film Corporation was founded by William Fox in 1914, who, similar to his competitor, Adolph Zukor, also was of Hungarian-Jewish descent. Like Zukor, Fox had once owned a chain of penny arcades and nickelodeons before breaking into distribution, and later, production. Operating from his studio on Staten Island, Fox then relocated to New York. He is credited with discovering the sultry siren Theda Bara, whose box-office appeal was contributory to the company’s speedy growth. Also under contract to Fox were Raoul Walsh and J. Gordon Edwards, Blake’s father, who became Bara’s main director. Like MGM and Paramount, Fox, too, acquired a chain of theatres to ensure his company’s presence on the ever-expanding film-market.


Theda Bara

But after years of steady expansion, by 1924 the studio began to face strong competition from its rivals, which, unlike Fox, had the advantage of having an impressive array of bankable stars and directors. John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Frank Borzage joined the line-up of directors, and in 1927 Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau arrived from Germany. Murnau’s films of his German period, Nosferatu (1921), Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924), and Faust (1926), were resounding triumphs that didn’t go unnoticed in Hollywood, which was forever on the hunt for new talent.


Friedrich-Wilhelm Murnau

Murnau’s first film for Fox, Sunrise (1927) was enthusiastically received. At the first Academy Awards ceremony, held in the Blossom Room of the newly built Roosevelt Hotel, Sunrise won in three categories,including one for the film’s leading actress, Janet Gaynor. Following up on the success of Sunrise , Murnau shot Four Devils (1928) and Our Daily Bread (1929), which were both box-office failures. Tragically, just shortly after the completion of his masterpiece Tabu (1931), Murnau died in a car crash outside Santa Barbara.

The late 1920s were a highly competitive period for the ever-expanding studios, which one by one left their - silent - infancy behind and broke into sound. Fox had embraced sound early on, developing its own sound system, called Fox Movietone. In order to accommodate the requirements of the fledgling technique, Fox built a new studio, including sound stages, in the Westwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles.

The year 1929 was a bad one for William Fox: Not only was he seriously injured in a car accident, his company was also badly hit by the stock market crash. To make matters worse, the Justice Department sued him for his monopolistic dealings, and he was eventually forced to sell his shares in the company. Harley Clarke, who apparently had a hand in ousting Fox, took over as president, only to be replaced by Sydney Kent a few years later.

Financially however, the studio was prospering again, due mainly to the commercial hits of Janet Gaynor’s films and the arrival of Will Rogers in 1929, who was the studio’s biggest box-office draw until his premature death a mere 6 years later.
Cavalcade (1933), based on Noel Coward’s play, won Fox its first Best Picture Oscar to date, also resulting in big box-office receipts. In 1935, the Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Pictures, headed by Joseph Schenk and the fast and furious Darryl F. Zanuck, who, prior to founding his own company, had been production chief at Warner Brothers.

Thus, Twentieth Century-Fox was born.

Zanuck, along with Kent, became the company’s presidents, and he went on to oversee the better part of the company’s 50 or so A features a year, supervising everything from production to editing. During the second half of the 1930s, the films of Shirley Temple became the company’s bread and butter. In dire need of stars, Zanuck signed Don Ameche, Tyrone Power, Alice Faye and Loretta Young, whom he had brought along from his former company, Twentieth Century Pictures. Even tough Zanuck’s pictures were successful in terms of box office receipts, their artistic merits remain somewhat debatable, and apart from John Ford’s efforts such as Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), the bulk of Fox's fare was sheer escapist entertainment.

In 1941 Syndey Kent died, and with Zanuck being called into war service, Spyros Skouras, formerly running the company’s theatre chains, was appointed president.


"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!"

The 1940s saw an artistically more interesting period for the company, releasing films like The Oxbow Incident (1943), Wilson (1944), and the sinister film-noirs Laura (1944) and Leave Her To Heaven (1946), to name but a few. The quality of the films during that decade is unparalleled in the studio’s history. This is underlined by the fact that three Best Picture Oscars would go to the studio during that period, starting with John Ford’s Going My Way in 1941, followed up by Kazan's Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1947, leading up to the classic All About Eve (1950), which currently ranks at number 16 of the American Film Institute’s list of the best American films of the past 100 years. In addition to that, in-house director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, won the Academy Award for best director twice in a row, first for A Letter To Three Wives in 1949, and a year later for All About Eve.

The 1950s got off to a bad start when Twentieth Century Fox, too, was forced to get rid of its theatre chain, which, with the advent of television, resulted in a box office slump. However, with a young, so far neglected starlet under contract to the studio, the fate of Twentieth Century Fox would soon turn around again.

Her name was Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn was first signed up by Zanuck in 1946, who, failing to fully realise her potential, put her in the mediocre Scudda-Hoo!, Scudda-Hay!, where she had a mere decorative part, only to drop her contract the following year yet again. Passed around from studio to studio, and doing a pin-up calendar in between, by 1950, Monroe had met a number of influential honchos and executives. One of them, Johnny Hyde, was a big shot at the William Morris Agency. Upon reading the screenplay to All about Eve, he persuaded Zanuck to give his protégée the part of Claudia Casswell, the famous “graduate of the Copacabana School of Acting”. Zanuck bowed, and so Monroe was back at Fox, with a seven-year contract and the part of Miss Casswell in her pocket. Of course, Marilyn went on to become the studio’s biggest draw since the days of Will Rogers and Shirley Temple, and her films How To Marry A Millionaire (1953), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1954), River Of No Return (1954), and Bus Stop (1955) were among the studio’s biggest grossers during the 1950s.


La Monroe

But apart from Monroe, who, to be sure, would end up doing her best work for other studios (Some like it Hot, 1959, and The Misfits, 1960, both United Artists), there was little else the studio had going for itself. Elia Kazan and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the studio’s most notable directors, both left in 1953 and 1951, respectively. Resident actors were few and far between. They included bomb shells Jayne Mansfield and Joan Collins, as well as the no doubt brilliant Joanne Woodward. With Zanuck’s exit in 1956, there was no disguising the fact that the studio was in trouble and in dire need of some much needed artistic input and talent.

The extravagant production of Cleopatra (1960-1962), whose costs were skyrocketing by the minute, turned out to be the studio’s downfall. In order to pay for the extraordinarily expensive film, the studio had to sell off a part of its back lot while the film’s star, Elizabeth Taylor, was hospitalised in London, fighting for her life. Hence, what used to be a thriving film studio was subsequently turned into a sprawling new neighbourhood, called Century City, abounding with hotels, offices and apartment buildings. Cleopatra remains the most expensive production to date by any studio. And even the four Oscars, which the film ended up receiving, didn’t help to boost its box-office receipts.

To stop the bankers from further pulling the rug from beneath the sinking studio, Spyros Skouras was sacked and Zanuck was called back from his self-imposed exile in France. Running the studio in collaboration with his son Richard as his sidekick, they slimmed Twentieth Century Fox down by getting rid of overheads and staff, and nixing unpromising projects. During his second coming at his old studio, Darryl F. Zanuck produced the second world war drama The Longest Day (1962), which became a respectable hit, and prevented the studio from further collapse. The extraordinary financial success of The Sound Of Music in 1965, however, was of little help when a couple of expensive flops at the end of the 1960s (Hello Dolly!, 1970, Tora! Tora! Tora!, 1970) threatened once more to ruin the shaky studio, which resulted in the departure of the Zanuck-duo, to be replaced by Alan Ladd Jr.


Under Ladd’s reign Fox regained ground financially, but lost further ground artistically. While the New Hollywood movement was in full swing, Fox had already subscribed to the soon-to-be-popular blockbuster rage, producing escapist fare like The Towering Inferno (1974), Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Nine to Five (1980), which were all tremendously successful at the box office, but did little to live up to the studio’s quality pictures of the past.

Alan Ladd left Fox in 1979 to found his own production company. Then, media magnate Marvin Davis acquired the studio only to sell it a mere few years later to another media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch, in 1985. The studio’s artistic output has since declined with films like The War Of The Roses (1989), The Thin Red Line (1998) and Moulin Rouge (2001) being the exception rather than the rule, as Murdoch is reaping the profits of light-weight fare like Independence Day (1996), Titanic (1997), Ice Age (2002), and I, Robot (2004).