rushfilms

Paramount

Warner Bros.

RKO Radio

Columbia

Universal

United Artists

Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win an Academy Award (as Best Supporting Actress)

The beginning of the decline of the major studio system in the late 30s was signaled by various aggressive producers who split off and became independent.

Best Film-winning Grand Hotel (1932), set in an opulent hotel in Berlin

John Barrymore as a jewel thief

Joan Crawford as a young stenographer

Warner Bros. was male-dominated and fast-moving, and noted for gritty, cutting-edge, realistic films

s Little Caesar (1930)

Scarface (1932),

The Biggest 30s Stars:

The Greatest Directors of the Era:

The top-grossing Gone With the Wind (1939) was the most expensive film of the decade at $4.25 million.

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"

allegedly fined $5,000 for using the word "damn."

The 'star system' flourished with each studio having its own valuable 'properties'

The 30s was the age of lavish glamour and sex appeal

highly-paid contract actors:

Swedish star Greta Garbo as a ballet dancer

Wallace Beery as a braggart businessman

Lionel Barrymore as a terminally-ill bookkeeper

Films were made with specific stars in mind who often played familiar character types, including the decade's biggest stars: Clark Gable, Paul Muni, Janet Gaynor, Eddie Cantor, Wallace Beery, Mae West, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Astaire and Rogers, Claudette Colbert, Dick Powell, W. C. Fields, Joan Crawford, Marie Dressler, James Cagney, Bing Crosby, Jeanette MacDonald, Barbara Stanwyck, Johnny Weismuller, Gary Cooper, Norma Shearer, Robert Taylor, Myrna Loy, Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Veronica Lake, and Katharine Hepburn. Many audiences enjoyed the juvenile company of Shirley Temple, Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland, and Mickey Rooney. There were also a number of British stars in the decade, including Ronald Colman, Basil Rathbone

Despite censorship and strict studio control, many of cinema's best films were produced in this decade. Under the studio system, certain directors achieved a distinctive style or genre pattern. MGM's directors (George Cukor, King Vidor, Jack Conway, Sidney Franklin, Fritz Lang, Clarence Brown, Sam Wood, and Victor Fleming) were the best filmmakers in the 1930s. Craftsman-director George Cukor directed Dinner at Eight (1933) with a galaxy of MGM stars including Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore and more. Also he directed W. C. Fields in David Copperfield (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936) with an older Norma Shearer (Irving Thalberg's own wife) and Lesley Howard, and screen goddess Greta Garbo in one of her last great roles in the exquisite romance Camille (1936) - a magically-romantic melodrama opposite up-coming MGM star Robert Taylor. Cukor also directed Katharine Hepburn in three classics: Little Women (1934), Holiday (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940).

Three other minor studios were close behind:

For example, David Selznick resigned from MGM in 1935 and established his own independent company - Selznick International Pictures.

ted cost at the time), cast the stars for the film (gambling on Vivien Leigh as the fiery Scarlett O'Hara), conflicted with and bullied director George Cukor and finally dismissed him, and insisted on using the audacious words of Rhett Butler's farewell

Universal prospered with noted director Tod Browning, westerns, W.C. Fields and Abbott and Costello comedies, the Flash Gordon serials, and its archetypal, low budget horror films such as Dracula (1931)

Gimme a vhiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby"

Exotic German actress Marlene Dietrich's stardom was launched by von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (Germany, 1929)

Hollywood's first full-length feature film photographed entirely in three-strip Technicolor was Rouben Mamoulian's Becky Sharp (1935)

In the late 30s, two beloved films, The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939)

Disney-produced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was the first feature-length animated film - a milestone.

Most of the early talkies were successful at the box-office, but many of them were of poor quality

The first musicals were only literal transcriptions of Broadway shows taken to the screen. Nonetheless, a tremendous variety of films were produced with a wit, style, skill, and elegance that has never been equalled - before or since.

Applause (1929)

Love Me Tonight (1932))

As the 1930s began, there were a number of unique firsts:

in 1930, the Motion Picture Production Code

set film guidelines regarding sex, violence, religion, and crime

the first daily newspaper for the film industry had its debut in 1930, The Hollywood Reporter

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

German director Fritz Lang's first Hollywood film

Fury (1936)

French director Jean Renoir's classic WWI POW drama Grand Illusion (1937)

The Greatest Year for Films Ever: 1939

Of Mice and Men (1939)

Stagecoach (1939) -

Wuthering Heights (1939)

Gone With the Wind (1939)

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Ninotchka (1939)

Dark Victory (1939),

Love Affair (1939).

In 1938, Hitchcock signed to make his first US film with producer David O. Selznick - Rebecca (1940)

Wuthering Heights (1939)

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) - the controversial, landmark film was denounced and banned in numerous European countries. It was a remarkable film that used 'advanced' sound dubbing techniques - incorporating sound effects, dialogue, and music on one soundtrack.

The studio had its greatest success with its cycle of classic horror films. Actually, the horror film releases were the first modern horror movies (a resurrected genre), beginning with Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) (expressionistically filmed by Karl Freund). The film starred Bela Lugosi in a star-making role as the vampire Count Dracula, a creation of Irish writer Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel Dracula. [Dracula would become the most frequently-portrayed character in horror films.]

MGM stars Clark Gable and Joan Crawford (who were paired in eight films - the first of which appeared in 1930) were crowned the "King and Queen" of Hollywood (Tinseltown) in 1937 at the El Capitan Theater, after a popularity poll.

Tragically, Gable appeared in only one film - No Man of Her Own (1932) - with his own wife Carole Lombard (she died in an airplane crash in early 1942). Among the films that increased Clark Gable's popular pre-eminence in films was director Frank Capra's hit It Happened One Night (1934) (in which his removal of a shirt revealed his bare chest and the absence of an undershirt - setting the US underwear industry into a tailspin).

The best example of an all-star production heavily bankrolled by the studios was MGM's Best Picture-winning Grand Hotel (1932), with "Garbo" (speaking her oft-quoted line: "I want to be alone")

The Code Challenges Gangster Films:

including Little Caesar (1930)

Scarface (1932),

genre of films was required to be cleaned up, to display social consciousness, to combat the depiction of the criminal as a folk hero

Bette Davis emerged as a star at Warner Bros

Wyler's Jezebel (1938)

a role she was given (again as consolation) after failing to win the coveted role of Scarlett O'Hara in the following year's epic, Gone With The Wind.

second Best Actress Award

Charlie Chaplin: