123-529: Corinne Anita Loos (April 26, 1888 – August 18, 1981) was an American actress, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. In 1912, she became the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood , when D. W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation . She is best known for her 1925 comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , her screenplay of the 1939 adaptation of The Women , and her 1951 Broadway adaptation of Colette 's novella Gigi . Loos
246-476: A Mainbocher evening gown across the sawdust-covered floor of a saloon." Hollywood (film industry) The cinema of the United States , consisting mainly of major film studios (also known metonymically as Hollywood ), has remained a significant influence on the global film industry beginning in the early 20th century . Classical Hollywood cinema , which developed from 1910 to 1962,
369-452: A Vanity Fair contributor for several decades. Loos returned to California as Griffith was leaving Triangle to make longer films, and she joined director and future husband John Emerson for a string of successful Douglas Fairbanks movies. Loos and company realized that Douglas Fairbanks' acrobatics were an extension of his effervescent personality and parlayed his natural athletic ability into swashbuckling adventure roles. His Picture in
492-603: A Jean Harlow picture on the agenda, we always thought of Anita first." – MGM producer Samuel Marx Loos moved to an apartment in Hollywood, where she was unexpectedly joined by Emerson. Though Emerson expressed contrition about his previous behavior, he did nothing to change it. While Emerson busied himself offering screen tests to young starlets, Loos was now free to see whomever she pleased, including her now quite ill friend Wilson Mizner. Mizner having abused his body with alcohol and drugs, wasted away until dying on April 3, 1932,
615-619: A Wonderful Life , It Happened One Night , the original King Kong , Mutiny on the Bounty , Top Hat , City Lights , Red River , The Lady from Shanghai , Rear Window , On the Waterfront , Rebel Without a Cause , Some Like It Hot , and The Manchurian Candidate . The studio system and the Golden Age of Hollywood succumbed to two forces that developed in the late 1940s: In 1938, Walt Disney's Snow White and
738-592: A beach-front house in Santa Monica. After 17 years of marriage in 1937 Loos finally asked Emerson for a divorce and he agreed but would continue to stave off any talk of plans, making finalization impossible. When Emerson was deemed well enough to leave the sanatorium, she paid for a nurse to care for him in an apartment of his own. MGM had bought the film rights to Clare Boothe Luce 's 1936 smash Broadway hit The Women in 1937. Many writers had, unsuccessfully, taken
861-559: A compromise with Arnold in October 1940 and signing a consent decree agreeing to, within three years: The "Little Three" ( Universal Studios , United Artists , and Columbia Pictures ), who did not own any theaters, refused to participate in the consent decree. A number of independent film producers were also unhappy with the compromise and formed a union known as the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers and sued Paramount for
984-419: A computer and manipulate them digitally. The possibilities became apparent in director James Cameron 's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), in images of the shape-changing character T-1000 . Computer graphics or CG advanced to a point where Jurassic Park (1993) was able to use the techniques to create realistic looking animals. Jackpot (2001) became the first film that was shot entirely in digital. In
1107-534: A date Loos would continue to mark. At MGM, Loos happily turned out scripts; however, she frequently had to use Emerson as a conduit to communicate with directors and other executives who balked at dealing with a woman on equal footing. This worked well to promote the idea they were a happy couple and writing team. She bought a modest house in Beverly Hills in 1934. During the day it was work, and at night parties given by other MGM studio executives or stars, like
1230-495: A divorce; Emerson refused and suggested they live apart, with him giving her a suitable allowance. Blaming herself for his unhappiness, she moved to an apartment on East Sixty-Ninth Street. However, her new life allowed her finally to spend her portion of what she earned for the couple in any way she liked. When the Emerson-Loos team got an offer to write pictures for Irving Thalberg at MGM , Emerson refused to go. Loos took
1353-442: A film studio. In 1915, trying to escape her mother's influence and objections to a career in Hollywood, Loos married Frank Pallma, Jr., the son of the band conductor. But Frank proved to be penniless and dull – after six months, Anita sent him out for hair pins, and while he was gone she packed her bags and went home to her mother. After that, Minnie rethought her position on a Hollywood career. Accompanied by her mother, Anita joined
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#17327830530531476-703: A four-picture deal in New York for more money than they had been making with the Fairbanks unit. Loos, Emerson and fellow writer Frances Marion migrated to New York as a group, with Loos and Emerson sharing a leased mansion in Great Neck, Long Island. Loos wanted Marion as chaperone, as she found herself attracted to Emerson, a man 15 years her senior that she would refer to as "Mr. E". He would readily admit that he "had never been, nor could be, faithful to any one female." Loos convinced herself he would see that she
1599-471: A homegrown supply of actors—lured west from the New York City stage after the introduction of sound films—to form one of the 20th century's most remarkable growth industries. At motion pictures' height of popularity in the mid-1940s, the studios were cranking out a total of about 400 movies a year, seen by an audience of 90 million Americans per week. Sound also became widely used in Hollywood in
1722-640: A major film production center. In Colorado , Denver was home to the Art-O-Graf Film Company, and Walt Disney 's early Laugh-O-Gram Studio was based in Kansas City , Missouri . From 1908, Jacksonville, Florida's motion picture industry saw more than 30 silent film companies establish studios in town, including Kalem Studios , Metro Pictures (later MGM ), Edison Studios , Majestic Films, King-Bee Films Corporation , Vim Comedy Company , Norman Studios , Gaumont Film Company and
1845-578: A musical version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and brought in Joseph Fields as co-author. Loos threatened to quit the production unless assured she would never have to speak to Fields again. The show opened in Philadelphia with a then-unknown Carol Channing . By the time it arrived in New York it was another success. Channing soon was elevated to an A-list star, the show played for 90 weeks and went on tour for another year. The producers closed
1968-753: A number of theaters in the late 1920s, and would hold a monopoly on theaters in Detroit, Michigan . By the 1930s, almost all of the first-run metropolitan theaters in the United States were owned by the Big Five studios— MGM , Paramount Pictures , RKO , Warner Bros. , and 20th Century Fox . Motion picture companies operated under the studio system . The major studios kept thousands of people on salary—actors, producers, directors, writers, stunt men, crafts persons, and technicians. They owned or leased Movie Ranches in rural Southern California for location shooting of westerns and other large-scale genre films, and
2091-452: A painful hand ailment that prevented her from writing. In 1959 Loos opened another Colette adaptation, Chéri , with Kim Stanley and Horst Buchholz in the title roles, but it ran for only two months. Loos continued writing as a magazine contributor, appearing regularly in Harper's Bazaar , Vanity Fair and The New Yorker . Biographer Gary Carey notes: "She was a born storyteller and
2214-619: A picture for his mistress, Marion Davies , Loos included the unnecessary Emerson in the deal. Hearst liked the picture and Getting Mary Married (1919) was one of the first Marion Davies pictures that didn't lose money. In addition to their films, the couple wrote two books: How to Write Photoplays , published in 1920, followed by Breaking Into the Movies in 1921. Loos and Emerson turned down another picture with Davies, preferring to write for their old friend Constance Talmadge , whose brother-in-law Joseph Schenck (husband of Norma Talmadge )
2337-521: A set of still cameras placed in a row. Muybridge's accomplishment led inventors everywhere to attempt to make similar devices. In the United States , Thomas Edison was among the first to produce such a device, the kinetoscope and kinetograph . The history of cinema in the United States can trace its roots to the East Coast , where, at one time, Fort Lee, New Jersey , was the motion-picture capital of America. The American film industry began at
2460-576: A stab at a screenplay version. The studio handed it to Loos and veteran scriptwriter Jane Murfin , and three weeks later Loos handed Cukor a script that he loved. Unfortunately the censorship board did not. They insisted on changing more than 80 lines and the film had to go into production. Loos was apprehensive, but Cukor insisted she do the changes on set, among his all-star bevy of leading ladies on this female-only picture that included Thalberg widow Norma Shearer , Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell . Loos made immediate friends with Paulette Goddard who
2583-434: A star and put Loos once again in the front rank of screenwriters. "She was a very valuable asset for MGM, because the studio had so many femmes fatales – Garbo , Crawford , Shearer , and Harlow – that we were always on the lookout for 'shady lady' stories. But they were problematic because of the censorship code. Anita, however, could be counted on to supply the delicate double entendre, the telling innuendo. Whenever we had
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#17327830530532706-562: A theater company in San Diego . Anita performed simultaneously in her father's company, and under another name with a more legitimate stock company. After graduating from San Diego High School , Loos devised a method of cobbling together published reports of Manhattan social life and mailing them to a friend in New York, who would submit them under the friend's name for publication in San Diego. Her father had written some one-act plays for
2829-652: A time to theaters and use the lock-in to cover for releases of mediocre quality. Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold —a noted " trust buster " of the Roosevelt administration—took this opportunity to initiate proceedings against the eight largest Hollywood studios in July 1938 for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act . The federal suit resulted in five of the eight studios (the "Big Five": Warner Bros. , MGM , Fox , RKO and Paramount ) reaching
2952-573: A two-year contract as a producer at $ 1,250 a week. By mid-1937 Loos had decided not to renew her contract with MGM; since friend and supporter Thalberg's death in September 1936, things had not been going well at the studio and every film felt like a struggle. She signed with Samuel Goldwyn , formerly of MGM and now head of United Artists , for $ 5,000 a week and almost immediately regretted it. Loos soldiered on, working on "unworkable" scripts. In October Loos and her brother Clifford checked Emerson into
3075-401: A vacant lot near Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles. While there, the company decided to explore new territories, traveling several miles north to Hollywood: a little village that was friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood, In Old California , a Biograph melodrama about California in the 19th century, when the state
3198-414: A very expensive sanatorium where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia . Loos, who had always left the finances to Emerson, soon discovered that most of her money was no longer in joint accounts but in his own private accounts. Overworked at the studio and under stress from Emerson, she became more and more depressed. Loos promptly bought herself out of her United Artists contract, re-signed with MGM and bought
3321-509: A woman to be "sloshed on screen for two acts and be rewarded with a happy ending." Loos sold her Santa Monica house to her niece and made certain Emerson understood he would not be joining her in New York under any circumstances. Once again in New York, she and her long time friend, screenwriter Frances Marion , worked on an unproduced play for Zasu Pitts . A few romances came her way, including Maurice Chevalier . Two Broadway producers wanted
3444-420: Is about the actress sisters Constance Talmadge and Norma Talmadge specifically. Loos would become a virtual New York institution, an assiduous partygoer and diner-out; conspicuous at fashion shows, theatrical and movie events, balls and galas. A celebrity anecdotalist, she was also never one to let facts spoil a good story: With each book came a new spate of interviews and as one of the last survivors of
3567-488: Is still typical of most films made in America today. While French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the emerging industry. With more than 600 English-language films released annually as of 2017 , it has produced the fourth-largest number of films of any national cinema , after India , Japan , and China . While
3690-590: Is that my husband liberated me; granted me full freedom to choose my own companions." Loos had become a devoted admirer of H. L. Mencken , a literary critic and intellect. When he was in New York, she would take a break from her "Tuesday Widows" and join his circle, which included Theodore Dreiser , Sherwood Anderson , Sinclair Lewis , Joseph Hergesheimer , essayist Ernest Boyd and theater critic George Jean Nathan . Loos adored Mencken, but gradually realized disappointingly, "High-IQ gentlemen didn't fall for women with brains, but those with more downstairs". In 1925, on
3813-555: The Barbary Coast ) and making friends with the locals. This fed her lifelong fascination with lowlifes and loose women. In 1897, at their father's urging, Loos and her sister performed in a San Francisco stock company production of Quo Vadis? Gladys died at age eight of appendicitis, while their father was away on business. Anita continued appearing on stage, being the family's breadwinner. Her father's spendthrift ways caught up with them, and in 1903 he took an offer to manage
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3936-786: The Bijou Theatre on August 29, 1923, received good reviews and was a moderate box-office success. Soon afterward the couple moved to a small house in Gramercy Park . Emerson had convinced a devastated Loos that he needed to take a break from the marriage once a week. It was on these days he would date younger women, while Loos consoled herself by entertaining her friends: the Talmadge sisters, "Mama" Peg Talmadge, Marion Davies , Marilyn Miller , Adele Astaire and an assortment of chorus girls kept by prominent men. These "Tuesday Widows" soireés would influence her later writings, and it
4059-515: The Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles County, California . Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of a film grammar . Orson Welles 's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time . The first recorded instance of photographs capturing and reproducing motion was a series of photographs of a running horse by Eadweard Muybridge , which he took in Palo Alto, California , using
4182-1107: The Kalem Company began using Fort Lee as a location for filming in the area, other filmmakers quickly followed. In 1909, a forerunner of Universal Studios , the Champion Film Company , built the first studio. Others quickly followed and either built new studios or leased facilities in Fort Lee. In the 1910s and 1920s , film companies such as the Independent Moving Pictures Company, Peerless Pictures Studios , Solax Studios , Eclair , Goldwyn Pictures Corporation , Star Film ( Georges Méliès ), World Film Company , Biograph Studios , Fox Film Corporation , Société Pathé Frères , Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. , Victor Film Company , and Selznick International Pictures were all making pictures in Fort Lee. Such notables as Mary Pickford got their start at Biograph Studios. In New York,
4305-703: The Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens , which was built during the silent film era, was used by the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields . The Edison Studios were located in the Bronx . Chelsea, Manhattan , was also frequently used. Other Eastern cities, most notably Chicago and Cleveland , also served as early centers for film production. In the West, California was already quickly emerging as
4428-497: The Lubin Manufacturing Company . Picture City, Florida was a planned site for a movie picture production center in the 1920s, but due to the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane , the idea collapsed and Picture City, Florida returned to its original name of Hobe Sound . An attempt to establish a film production center in Detroit also proved unsuccessful. The film patents wars of the early 20th century helped
4551-637: The antagonist and protagonist may be blurred. The roots of post-classical storytelling may be seen in film noir , in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and in Hitchcock's storyline-shattering Psycho . The New Hollywood is the emergence of a new generation of film school-trained directors who had absorbed the techniques developed in Europe in the 1960s as a result of the French New Wave;
4674-407: The studios and Hollywood grew. Before World War I , films were made in several American cities, but filmmakers tended to gravitate towards southern California as the industry developed. They were attracted by the warm, predictable climate with reliable sunlight, which made it possible to film their films outdoors year-round alongside the varied scenery that was available. War damage contributed to
4797-429: The "Lorelei" stories. They were satires on the state of sexual relations that only vaguely alluded to sexual intimacy; the magazine's circulation quadrupled overnight. The heroine of the stories, Lorelei Lee, was a bold, ambitious flapper , who was much more concerned with collecting expensive baubles from her conquests than any marriage licenses, in addition to being a shrewd woman of loose morals and high self-esteem. She
4920-466: The $ 1,000-a-week salary alone. The first project Thalberg handed Loos was Jean Harlow 's Red-Headed Woman because F. Scott Fitzgerald was having no luck adapting Katherine Brush 's book. Fitzgerald, an accomplished writer of novels like The Great Gatsby , was fired and replaced by Loos in a predominantly male run studio system. The picture, completed in May 1932, was a smash and established Harlow as
5043-538: The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde marked the beginning of American cinema rebounding as well, as a new generation of films would afterwards gain success at the box offices as well. Filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola , Steven Spielberg , George Lucas , Brian De Palma , Stanley Kubrick , Martin Scorsese , Roman Polanski , and William Friedkin came to produce fare that paid homage to the history of film and developed upon existing genres and techniques. Inaugurated by
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5166-615: The 1969 release of Andy Warhol 's Blue Movie , the phenomenon of adult erotic films being publicly discussed by celebrities (like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope ), and taken seriously by critics (like Roger Ebert ), a development referred to, by Ralph Blumenthal of The New York Times , as " porno chic ", and later known as the Golden Age of Porn , began, for the first time, in modern American culture. According to award-winning author Toni Bentley , Radley Metzger 's 1976 film The Opening of Misty Beethoven , based on
5289-527: The 1990s had access to technological, political and economic innovations that had not been available in previous decades. Dick Tracy (1990) became the first 35 mm feature film with a digital soundtrack. Batman Returns (1992) was the first film to make use of the Dolby Digital six-channel stereo sound that has since become the industry standard. Computer-generated imagery was greatly facilitated when it became possible to transfer film images into
5412-559: The Catholic watchdog organization The Legion of Decency —appalled by some of the provocative films and lurid advertising of the era later classified Pre-Code Hollywood —threatened a boycott of motion pictures if it did not go into effect. The films that did not obtain a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration had to pay a $ 25,000 fine (equivalent to $ 455,976 in 2023) and could not profit in
5535-688: The Fox Film Corporation owned the Fox Theatre . RKO (a 1928 merger between Keith-Orpheum Theaters and the Radio Corporation of America ) also responded to the Western Electric/ERPI monopoly over sound in films, and developed their own method, known as Photophone , to put sound in films. Paramount, which acquired Balaban and Katz in 1926, would answer to the success of Warner Bros. and RKO by purchasing
5658-523: The Hollywood antitrust case, as did the Little Three studios. The United States Supreme Court eventually ruled in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. that the major studios ownership of theaters and film distribution was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act . As a result, the studios began to release actors and technical staff from their contracts with the studios. This changed
5781-466: The Hollywood studios. The Classical style began to emerge in 1913, was accelerated in 1917 after the U.S. entered World War I , and finally solidified when the film The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, ending the silent film era and increasing box-office profits for the film industry by introducing sound to feature films. Most Hollywood pictures adhered closely to a formula— Western , slapstick comedy , musical , animated cartoon , biographical —and
5904-522: The Papers (1916) was noted for its wry style of discursive and witty subtitles : "My most popular subtitle introduced the name of a new character. The name was something like this: 'Count Xxerkzsxxv.' Then there was a note, 'To those of you who read titles aloud, you can't pronounce the Count's name. You can only think it.' " The five films Loos wrote for Fairbanks helped make him a star. When Fairbanks
6027-570: The Paris-based writers Loos had met in America, as well as Gertrude Stein , Alice B. Toklas , Elisabeth Marbury and Elsie De Wolfe . After one more film for Schenck and Talmadge, The Perfect Woman (1920), Emerson refused another contract. After working with Actors Equity during their 1919 strike, he decided that the Loos-Emerson team should make the move to the theater. Their first play, The Whole Town's Talking , which opened at
6150-588: The Schenck estate on June 15, 1919. Loos was among the first to join Ruth Hale 's Lucy Stone League , an organization that fought for women to preserve their maiden names after marriage as she continued with hers. The couple moved into a modest Murray Hill apartment and cut back to two films a year in order to travel. They spent the summer in Paris. Loos and her new assistant, John Ashmore Creeland, visited many of
6273-498: The Seven Dwarfs was released during a run of lackluster films from the major studios, and quickly became the highest grossing film released to that point. Embarrassingly for the studios, it was an independently produced animated film that did not feature any studio-employed stars. This stoked already widespread frustration at the practice of block-booking , in which studios would only sell an entire year's schedule of films at
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#17327830530536396-777: The Thalbergs, the Selznicks and the Goldwyns. Loos was a frequent attendee at George Cukor 's Sunday brunches, which was the closest Hollywood had to a literary salon. In 1935, about the time of the Writer's Guild formation, she was paired with Robert Hopkins , who would later become a frequent collaborator. Their work on San Francisco got an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. She based Clark Gable 's character on some confidence men she had known, including Wilson Mizner. Thalberg had taken ill again and gave Emerson
6519-512: The US film industry. They were able to make their mark in a brand-new business: the exhibition of short films in storefront theaters called nickelodeons , after their admission price of a nickel (five cents). Within a few years, men like Samuel Goldwyn , William Fox , Carl Laemmle , Adolph Zukor , Louis B. Mayer , and the Warner Brothers (Harry, Albert, Samuel, and Jack) had switched to
6642-484: The United States, and she got him a job adapting screenplays at MGM. Privately she had a new partner who had a drinking problem; the relationship would be short-lived and MGM decided to release her from her contract finally. In the fall of 1946, now a free agent, Loos returned to New York to work on Happy Birthday , a Saroyanesque cocktail party comedy written for Helen Hayes . The play had several false starts
6765-419: The actors who appeared in it; MGM , for example, claimed it had contracted "more stars than there are in heaven." Each studio had its own style and characteristic touches which made it possible to know this—a trait that rarely exists today. For example, To Have and Have Not (1944) is notable not only for the first pairing of actors Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) and Lauren Bacall (1924–2014), but because it
6888-399: The decline of the then-dominant European film industry, in favor of the United States , where infrastructure was still intact. The stronger early public health response to the 1918 flu epidemic by Los Angeles compared to other American cities reduced the number of cases there and resulted in a faster recovery, contributing to the increasing dominance of Hollywood over New York City. During
7011-506: The early New Hollywood films like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider had been relatively low-budget affairs with amoral heroes and increased sexuality and violence, the enormous success enjoyed by Friedkin with The Exorcist , Spielberg with Jaws , Coppola with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now , Scorsese with Taxi Driver , Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey , Polanski with Chinatown , and Lucas with American Graffiti and Star Wars , respectively helped to give rise to
7134-550: The early times of talkies, American studios found that their sound productions were rejected in foreign-language markets and even among speakers of other dialects of English. The synchronization technology was still too primitive for dubbing . One of the solutions was creating parallel foreign-language versions of Hollywood films. Around 1930, the American companies opened a studio in Joinville-le-Pont , France, where
7257-613: The end of the 19th century, with the construction of Thomas Edison's " Black Maria ", the first motion-picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey . The cities and towns on the Hudson River and Hudson Palisades offered land at costs considerably less than New York City across the river, and benefited greatly as a result of the phenomenal growth of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century. The industry began attracting both capital and innovative work forces. In 1907, when
7380-528: The end of their careers or used the same creative teams on their films so that a DeMille film still looked like one whether it was made in 1932 or 1956. Post-classical cinema is the changing methods of storytelling in the New Hollywood. It has been argued that new approaches to drama and characterization played upon audience expectations acquired in the classical period: chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature " twist endings ", and lines between
7503-617: The eventual shift of virtually all filmmaking to the West Coast by the 1930s. At the time, Thomas Edison owned almost all the patents relevant to motion picture production and movie producers on the East Coast acting independently of Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by Edison and his agents while movie makers working on the West Coast could work independently of Edison's control. In Los Angeles,
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#17327830530537626-477: The example for other national film industries. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion-picture exhibition was given in New York City , using Thomas Edison 's kinetoscope and kinetograph. In the following decades, the production of silent films greatly expanded, studios formed and migrated to California , and
7749-549: The film Titanic , Cameron wanted to push the boundary of special effects with his film, and enlisted Digital Domain and Pacific Data Images to continue the developments in digital technology which the director pioneered while working on The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day . Many previous films about the RMS Titanic shot water in slow motion , which did not look wholly convincing. Cameron encouraged his crew to shoot their 45-foot-long (14 m) miniature of
7872-434: The film colony in Hollywood where Griffith put Loos on the payroll for Triangle Film Corporation at $ 75 a week with a bonus for every produced script. Many of the scripts she turned out for Griffith went unproduced. Some he considered unfilmable because the "laughs were all in the lines, there was no way to get them onto the screen", but he encouraged her to continue, because reading them amused him. Her first screen credit
7995-418: The films and stories they told became much longer. The United States produced the world's first sync-sound musical film , The Jazz Singer , in 1927, and was at the forefront of sound-film development in the following decades. It was fully released to the public on October 6, 1927. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has primarily been based in and around the thirty-mile zone centered in
8118-459: The foreign language. The Spanish-language crews included people like Luis Buñuel , Enrique Jardiel Poncela , Xavier Cugat , and Edgar Neville . The productions were not very successful in their intended markets, due to the following reasons: Classical Hollywood cinema , or the Golden Age of Hollywood, is defined as a technical and narrative style characteristic of American cinema from 1913 to 1962, during which thousands of movies were issued from
8241-544: The late 1920s. After The Jazz Singer , the first film with synchronized voices was successfully released as a Vitaphone talkie in 1927, Hollywood film companies would respond to Warner Bros. and begin to use Vitaphone sound—which Warner Bros. owned until 1928—in future films. By May 1928, Electrical Research Product Incorporated (ERPI), a subsidiary of the Western Electric company, gained a monopoly over film sound distribution. A side effect of these " talkies "
8364-472: The major studios owned hundreds of theaters in cities and towns across the nation in 1920 film theaters that showed their films and that were always in need of fresh material. In 1930, MPPDA President Will Hays created the Hays (Production) Code , which followed censorship guidelines and went into effect after government threats of censorship expanded by 1930. However, the code was never enforced until 1934, after
8487-567: The modern " blockbuster ", and induced studios to focus ever more heavily on trying to produce enormous hits. In the US, the PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984 to accommodate films that straddled the line between PG and R, which was mainly due to the controversies surrounding the violent content of the PG films Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins (both 1984). Film makers in
8610-566: The monopoly they still had over the Detroit Theaters—as Paramount was also gaining dominance through actors like Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, Betty Hutton, crooner Bing Crosby, Alan Ladd, and longtime actor for studio Gary Cooper too- by 1942. The Big Five studios did not meet the requirements of the Consent of Decree during WWII, without major consequence, but after the war ended they joined Paramount as defendants in
8733-516: The most successful film of its time, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . This distinction was promptly topped in 1939 when Selznick International created what is still, when adjusted for inflation, the most successful film of all time in Gone with the Wind . Many film historians have remarked upon the many great works of cinema that emerged from this period of highly regimented filmmaking. One reason this
8856-533: The movie-making process. Nestor Studios of Bayonne, New Jersey , built the first studio in the Hollywood neighborhood in 1911. Nestor Studios, owned by David and William Horsley, later merged with Universal Studios; and William Horsley's other company, Hollywood Film Laboratory, is now the oldest existing company in Hollywood, presently called the Hollywood Digital Laboratory. California 's more hospitable and cost-effective climate led to
8979-671: The national cinemas of the United Kingdom , Canada , Australia , and New Zealand also produce films in the same language, they are not part of the Hollywood system. Because of this, Hollywood has also been considered a transnational cinema , and has produced multiple language versions of some titles, often in Spanish or French. Contemporary Hollywood often outsources production to the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The major film studios of Hollywood are
9102-511: The pandemic, public health officials temporarily closed movie theaters in some jurisdictions, large studios suspended production for weeks at a time, and some actors came down with the flu. This caused major financial losses and severe difficulties for small studios, but the industry as a whole more than recovered during the Roaring Twenties . In the early 20th century, when the medium was new, many Jewish immigrants found employment in
9225-437: The paradigm of film making by the major Hollywood studios, as each could have an entirely different cast and creative team. The decision resulted in the gradual loss of the characteristics which made Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures, RKO Pictures, and 20th Century Fox films immediately identifiable. Certain movie people, such as Cecil B. DeMille , either remained contract artists until
9348-477: The play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (and its derivative, My Fair Lady ), and due to attaining a mainstream level in storyline and sets, is considered the "crown jewel" of this ' Golden Age '. At the height of his fame in the early 1970s, Charles Bronson was the world's No. 1 box office attraction, commanding $ 1 million per film. In the 1970s, the films of New Hollywood filmmakers were often both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. While
9471-535: The previous year, but now proceeded with Joshua Logan as director, and produced by Rodgers and Hammerstein . It opened in Boston, but the audiences hated it at first. Loos kept improving the script throughout the Boston run; when it opened in New York at the Broadhurst it was a hit and ran for 600 performances. Katharine Hepburn was eager to play in the screen version but the Hollywood censors weren't ready for
9594-402: The primary source of the most commercially successful and most commercially successful movies in the world. Hollywood is considered to be the oldest film industry, where the earliest film studios and production companies emerged. It is the birthplace of various genres of cinema —among them comedy , drama , action , musical , romance , horror , science fiction , and epic —and has set
9717-629: The production side of the business. Soon they were the heads of a new kind of enterprise: the movie studio . The US had at least two female directors, producers and studio heads in these early years: Lois Weber and French-born Alice Guy-Blaché . They also set the stage for the industry's internationalism; the industry is often accused of Amero centric provincialism . Other movie makers arrived from Europe after World War I: directors like Ernst Lubitsch , Alfred Hitchcock , Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir ; and actors like Rudolph Valentino , Marlene Dietrich , Ronald Colman , and Charles Boyer . They joined
9840-449: The same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For example, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always worked on MGM films, Alfred Newman worked at 20th Century Fox for twenty years, Cecil B. De Mille 's films were almost all made at Paramount , and director Henry King 's films were mostly made for 20th Century Fox . At the same time, one could usually guess which studio made which film, largely because of
9963-477: The same sets and wardrobe and even mass scenes were used for different time-sharing crews. Also, foreign unemployed actors, playwrights, and winners of photogenic contests were chosen and brought to Hollywood, where they shot parallel versions of the English-language films. These parallel versions had a lower budget, were shot at night and were directed by second-line American directors who did not speak
10086-492: The second time around meant Loos had a greater profile than ever before. She moved to a more spacious apartment at the Langdon Hotel and bought a car. In 1950 Loos wrote A Mouse is Born , another novel, and once sent to her publisher, she left her first trip to Europe in 20 years. A Mouse is Born had a lukewarm reception, but by then Loos was already working on a dramatic adaptation of Colette 's Gigi . The production
10209-473: The ship as if "we're making a commercial for the White Star Line". Even The Blair Witch Project (1999), a low-budget indie horror film by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick , was a huge financial success. Filmed on a budget of just $ 35,000, without any big stars or special effects, the film grossed $ 248 million with the use of modern marketing techniques and online promotion. Though not on
10332-420: The show when Channing became pregnant. Herman Levin commented: "I was convinced the show wouldn't work without Carol, and in my opinion it never has." A musical film version was produced in 1953, directed by Howard Hawks and adapted by Charles Lederer . It starred Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe . Loos had nothing to do with the production, but thought Monroe was inspired casting. The success of Blondes
10455-399: The silent era, Anita's stories became more exaggerated and she was soon reported to have sold her first scenario at the age of 12. She continued to thrive on interesting people and interesting activities – and held an opinion on everything – but worked hard on keeping the vivacious and flippant image and hiding her loneliness. She once commented, "I've enjoyed my happiest moments when trailing
10578-443: The spread of film companies to other parts of the US, outside New York. Many filmmakers worked with equipment for which they did not own the rights to use. Therefore, filming in New York could be dangerous, as it was close to Edison's company headquarters, and close to the agents the company sent out to seize cameras. An alternative was Los Angeles , which had mild winters, a large selection of places to film, and, most importantly, it
10701-468: The spring of 1926 she completed the stage adaptation, which opened a few weeks later in Chicago and ran for 201 performances on Broadway. Emerson had developed a serious case of hypochondria by this time, affecting laryngitis attacks to divert attention from her work; in the words of his wife, "he was a man who enjoyed ill health." It was the opinion of New York psychiatrist, Smith Ely Jelliffe, "that she
10824-608: The stock company, and he encouraged Anita to write plays; she wrote The Ink Well , a successful piece, for which she received periodic royalties. In 1911, the theater was running one-reel films after each night's performances; Anita would take a perfunctory bow and run to the back of the theater to watch them. She sent her first attempt at a screenplay, He Was a College Boy , to the Biograph Company , for which she received $ 25. The New York Hat , starring Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore and directed by D. W. Griffith ,
10947-434: The stock market crash , and suggested she return to work. Loos was not completely unhappy with this, and within a few months had produced a stage adaptation of But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes and a comedy Cherries are Ripe . With their income reduced, the couple moved to a residential hotel and did less traveling in 1931. Not long after, Loos came upon a love letter from one of Emerson's conquests. Devastated, Loos offered him
11070-451: The studios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as The Wizard of Oz , Gone with the Wind , Stagecoach , Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Wuthering Heights , Only Angels Have Wings , Ninotchka and Midnight . Among the other films from the Golden Age period that are now considered to be classics: Casablanca , It's
11193-565: The surprise best-seller of 1925. Loos garnered fan letters from fellow authors William Faulkner , Aldous Huxley and Edith Wharton , among others. " Blondes " would see three more printings sell by year's end and 20 more in its first decade. The little book would see 85 editions in the years to come and eventually be translated into 14 languages, including Chinese. When asked who the models for her characters were, Loos would almost always say they were composites of various people. But when pressed, she admitted that toothless flirt Sir Francis Beekman
11316-583: The theater every night. It worked; at times he spoke in normal tones. The couple traveled on to Paris as Emerson's recovery continued. In September, their vacation was cut short; Loos was needed back in New York to do revisions on Blondes for its Waldorf Theatre ( Selwyn Theatre ?), Broadway debut in September 1926, running for 199 performances in two theaters, closing at the Times Square Theater , in April 1927. When But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes
11439-727: The theaters, as the MPPDA controlled every theater in the country through the Big Five studios. Throughout the 1930s, as well as most of the golden age, MGM dominated the film screen and had the top stars in Hollywood, and they were also credited for creating the Hollywood star system altogether. Some MGM stars included "King of Hollywood" Clark Gable , Lionel Barrymore , Jean Harlow , Norma Shearer , Greta Garbo , Joan Crawford , Jeanette MacDonald , Gene Raymond , Spencer Tracy , Judy Garland , and Gene Kelly . Another great achievement of American cinema during this era came through Walt Disney's animation company . In 1937, Disney created
11562-600: The time was an independent city. In the Sultan's Power, directed by Boggs for Selig Polyscope Company, also starring Bosworth, is considered the first film shot entirely in Los Angeles, with shooting at 7th and Olive Streets, in 1909. In early 1910, director D. W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the West Coast with his acting troupe, consisting of actors: Blanche Sweet , Lillian Gish , Mary Pickford , Lionel Barrymore and others. They started filming on
11685-451: The train to Hollywood with Mencken, she became keenly aware of this fact when he solicited the attention of a blonde in the dining car. Loos then began to write a sketch of Mencken and his vacant lady friends that would later become Gentlemen Prefer Blondes . Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady , began as a series of short sketches, illustrated by Ralph Barton , published in Harper's Bazaar , known as
11808-549: The trick, they returned with a cured Emerson. Not wanting to undo all her efforts, Loos retired to a life of leisure. The first film version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (now lost) was released in 1928 starring Ruth Taylor as Lorelei Lee and Alice White as Dorothy. It was somewhat of a flop. From 1927 to 1929, Loos and Emerson traveled extensively, which was hard on Loos's health. All their winters were spent in Palm Beach, where Emerson would indulge in social climbing. Loos
11931-621: The weekly to The Dramatic Review , filled with the photographs of pretty girls, that copied the format of the British Police Gazette , and lead to her father's romance with the opera singer Alice Nielsen . By age six, Anita Loos wanted to be a writer. While living in San Francisco, she accompanied her father, an alcoholic, on exciting fishing trips to the pier, exploring the city's underbelly (the Tenderloin and
12054-464: The wing of socialite Sibyl Colefax , whose drawing room had become filled with "the bright young things" of the day such as John Gielgud , Harold Nicolson , Noël Coward and notables such as Arnold Bennett , Max Beerbohm and Bernard Shaw . Photos of Loos on the London social scene appeared in the New York papers, and the unwell Emerson subsequently joined Loos. To keep his spirits up she took him to
12177-520: Was a practical young woman who had internalized the materialism of the United States in the 1920s and equated culture with cold cash and tangible assets. The success of the short stories had the public clamoring for them in book form. Pushed by Mencken, she signed with Boni & Liveright . Modestly published in November 1925, the first printing sold out overnight. The initial reviews were rather bland and unimpressive, but through word of mouth it became
12300-446: Was always in peak form when reshaping a real-life encounter to make an amusing anecdote." Loos began a volume of memoirs, A Girl Like I , published in September 1966. Her 1972 book, Twice Over Lightly: New York Then and Now , was written in collaboration with friend and actress Helen Hayes . Kiss Hollywood Good-by (1974) was a Hollywood memoir about her MGM years and would be very successful, while her book, The Talmadge Girls (1978)
12423-891: Was an independent producer. Both A Temperamental Wife (1919) and A Virtuous Vamp (1919) were great hits for Talmadge. The couple joined the Talmadges and the Schencks at the Ambassador Hotel on Park Avenue , with Constance filling the void left by the loss of her sister. When Anita and Constance weren't working, they went shopping. The Talmadge-Schencks convinced Anita to summer with them in Paris without Emerson. Much of this adventure would end up as fodder for Loos's book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes . Upon returning, they produced five more films in 16 months. During this time, Loos had filed for divorce from her estranged first husband. Emerson proposed marriage and they were married at
12546-619: Was born in Sisson (now Mount Shasta ), California , to Richard Beers Loos and Minerva Ellen "Minnie" (Smith) Loos . She had one sister, Gladys Loos, and one brother, Dr. Harry Clifford Loos, a physician and a co-founder of the Ross-Loos Medical Group . About pronouncing her name, Loos said, "The family has always used the correct French pronunciation which is lohse . However, I myself pronounce my name as if it were spelled luce , since most people pronounce it that way and it
12669-511: Was claimed as the first to have been filmed in Los Angeles , in 1907. A plaque was unveiled by the city, in 1957, at Dearden's flagship store on the corner of Main Street and 7th Street, to mark the filming on the site when it had been a Chinese laundry. Bosworth's widow suggested the city had got the date and location wrong, and that the film was actually shot in nearby Venice , which at
12792-516: Was different from all his other girls, and that behind his outwardly dull exterior was a great mind. She would later consider herself misled on both counts, writing: "I had set my sights on a man of brains, to whom I could look up", she lamented, "but what a terrible let down it would be to find out that I was smarter than he was." The pictures for Famous Players–Lasky were not as successful as their previous films, partly because they starred Broadway headliners not adept at screen acting and their contract
12915-465: Was for an adaptation of Macbeth in which her billing came right after Shakespeare 's. When Griffith asked her to assist him and Frank E. Woods in writing the intertitles for his epic Intolerance (1916), she traveled to New York City for the first time to attend its premiere. Instead of returning to Hollywood, Loos spent the fall of 1916 in New York and met with Frank Crowninshield of Vanity Fair . They had an instant rapport and Loos remained
13038-555: Was her third screenplay and the first to be produced. Loos dredged real life, including her own, for scenarios: she dished up her father's cronies and brother's friends, also using the rich vacationers from the San Diego resorts; eventually every experience became grist for her script mill. By 1912, Loos had sold scripts to both the Biograph and Lubin studios. Between 1912 and 1915, she wrote 105 scripts, all but four of which were produced. She wrote 200 scenarios before she ever visited
13161-504: Was modeled after writer Joseph Hergesheimer and producer Jesse L. Lasky . Dorothy Shaw was modeled after herself and Constance Talmadge and Lorelei most closely resembled acquisitive Ziegfeld showgirl Lillian Lorraine , who was always looking for new places to display the diamonds bestowed by her suitors. Emerson first attempted to suppress its publication and then settled for a personal dedication. Loos continued to be overworked throughout 1926, sometimes working many projects at once. In
13284-402: Was not renewed. The scripts carried both names but were mostly products of Loos alone. Later Loos would claim that Emerson took all the money and most of the credit, though his contribution usually consisted of observing from bed as she worked. Much to the chagrin of her friends, her adoration of Emerson had manifested as subservience. When William Randolph Hearst offered Loos a contract to write
13407-408: Was offered a sweetheart deal with Famous Players–Lasky , he took the team of Emerson-Loos with him at the high income of $ 500 a week. During this time Loos, Fairbanks, and Emerson collaborated well together, and Loos was getting as much publicity as either Lillian Gish or Mary Pickford . Photoplay magazine labeled her "The Soubrette of Satire". In 1918, Famous Players–Lasky offered the couple
13530-501: Was only 90 miles to the border of Mexico , in case they needed to run if Edison's enforcement agents found them. By 1912, most major film companies had set up production facilities in Southern California , near or in Los Angeles , because of the region's favorable year-round weather. The 1908 Selig Polyscope Company production of The Count of Monte Cristo , directed by Francis Boggs and starring Hobart Bosworth ,
13653-427: Was part of "the bright young things" crowd. Wilson Mizner had also relocated to Hollywood as a screenwriter. Since Emerson had his own entertainment, Loos was often in the company of Beaton or Mizner. When they returned to New York in the spring of 1930, Emerson expressed his unhappiness at her inattention, threatening a relapse of his throat ailment and Loos would spend much more time alone. Emerson had also lost money in
13776-464: Was possible is that, with so many movies being made, not everyone had to be a big hit. A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively unknown actors: Citizen Kane , directed by Orson Welles (1915–1985) and often regarded as the greatest film of all time , fits this description. In other cases, strong-willed directors like Howard Hawks (1896–1977), Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980), and Frank Capra (1897–1991) battled
13899-511: Was published in 1927, Emerson proposed another European vacation and went ahead of Loos. A seriously ill Loos followed him, coming down with a sinus attack in Vienna. She and the ear, nose and throat specialist who was treating her came up with a method of fixing Emerson's hypochondria. The doctor arranged a bit of sham surgery for him and presented him with the polyps that had been supposedly removed from his vocal cords. This placebo treatment did
14022-517: Was starved of intellectual male companionship and met Wilson Mizner there, a witty and charming real estate speculator, and in some quarters – confidence man . Though they saw each other every day, the relationship was rumored to have stopped just short of having a full-blown affair. Emerson's throat ailment returned, though he recovered quickly after his second round of "Viennese surgery". Loos and Emerson traveled to Hollywood for Christmas in 1929 with Loos's new friend, photographer Cecil Beaton , who
14145-557: Was surprisingly well-read. When Hunt Stromberg , the last producer she respected, left MGM to produce independently; Loos tried to get out of her contract, but by then she had grown into too valuable a property to the studio. Throughout the war Loos wrote screenplays, grew vegetables in her Victory garden and knitted socks and sweaters for the boys overseas. She also had houseguests Aldous and Maria Huxley , from England, when World War II began in September 1939. Loos convinced Huxley that it would be safer for his family if they stayed in
14268-608: Was that many actors who had made their careers in silent films suddenly found themselves out of work, as they often had bad voices or could not remember their lines. Meanwhile, in 1922, US politician Will H. Hays left politics and formed the movie studio boss organization known as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). The organization became the Motion Picture Association of America after Hays retired in 1945. In
14391-546: Was that of Paul Swan, the aging "Most Beautiful Man in the World". Her next musical, The Amazing Adele starring Tammy Grimes with music by Albert Selden , never got off the ground and swiftly closed. Both Emerson and Helen Hayes' husband, Charles MacArthur , died within a few weeks of each other and the women threw themselves into their work together, with Loos working on an adaptation for Hayes' filming Anastasia in London. Loos worked and traveled even while being treated for
14514-403: Was to blame and in order for Emerson to get better she would have to give up her career." She resolved to retire after her next book, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes , a sequel to Blondes that she had promised Harper's Bazaar . The couple had planned another European vacation. Unwell at the last minute, Emerson insisted that Loos continue alone. Arriving in London, she was promptly taken under
14637-429: Was too much trouble to correct them." Her father founded Sisson Mascot , a tabloid newspaper, for which her mother did most of the work of a publisher. In 1892, when Anita was three years old, the family moved to San Francisco, where her father bought the newspaper Music and Drama , with money that her mother "wheedled" from her maternal grandfather, dropped the subject of music, in which he had no interest, and retitled
14760-499: Was under Mexican rule . Griffith stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York. Also in 1910, Selig Polyscope Company of Chicago established the first film studio in the Los Angeles area in Edendale , and the first studio in Hollywood opened in 1912. After hearing about Griffith's success in Hollywood, in 1913, many movie-makers headed west to avoid the fees imposed by Thomas Edison , who owned patents on
14883-499: Was under way before Colette wired that she had found their "Gigi"—she had seen Audrey Hepburn in a hotel lobby in Monte Carlo. Gigi opened in the fall of 1951 and would run until the spring of 1952; by then Hepburn had been elevated to an A-list star, contracted to Paramount Pictures . Loos worked on more adaptations for the next few years during travels while relocating to an apartment on West Fifty-Seventh Street. The apartment
15006-471: Was with the "Tuesday Widows" that she visited one of her favorite hangouts, Harlem, where she developed a deep and lifelong appreciation for African-American culture. "Sometimes I get enquiries [ sic ] concerning my marriage to a man who treated me with complete lack of consideration, tried to take credit for my work and appropriated all my earnings", Loos wrote in Cast of Thousands . "The main reason
15129-649: Was written by two future winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature : Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), the author of the novel on which the script was nominally based, and William Faulkner (1897–1962), who worked on the screen adaptation. After The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, Warner Bros. gained huge success and were able to acquire their own string of movie theaters after purchasing Stanley Theaters and First National Productions in 1928. In contrast, Loews theaters owned MGM since forming in 1924, while
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