The Studio System

In a short summary, studios in the era of "Classical Hollywood" worked through vertical integration. Everything the studios produced was through their own company. They did the production, distribution, and exhibition. Something I think helped generate a lot of the studios' success, however, was their ideas of using stars to promote their company. Celebrities were the faces and representations of the studios.

Like we talked about in the lecture this past week, stars were the "best representations of what studios did." If a studio signed an actor that could sing, then most likely that studio would be making lots of musicals. The studios worked with their stars' talents; a studio who hired a dancing actor would be making films with dance numbers. This would attract audiences to certain film genres because of the actors who starred in the films, and the studios would use this to make money.

An example would be Judy Garland. Judy Garland was a representation for MGM studios, and was also used to promote other MGM stars. Judy was assocated with the innocent and "girl-next-door" look, and kept that association through must of her career. She was mostly known to sing, so when audiences previewed a movie starring Judy Garland, they knew it would most likely be a musical film, such as The Wizard of Oz. Judy Garland was associated with the musical genre, and helped promote MGM through that.