128-528: William Hal Ashby (September 2, 1929 – December 27, 1988) was an American film director and editor . His work exemplified the countercultural attitude of the era. He directed wide ranging films featuring iconic performances. He is associated with the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking with filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese , Woody Allen , Mike Nichols , and Sidney Lumet . Before his career as
256-471: A Lorimar agreement with the American Federation of Musicians . Initially set to helm Tootsie after two years of negotiations and Ashby-directed wig and makeup tests, Lorimar executives blocked him from working on the film because part of the pre-production period overlapped with final work on the long-gestating Lookin' to Get Out , which was eventually recut by the studio when Ashby's work
384-619: 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
512-482: A black comedy inspired by the actor's chance meeting with an international arms dealer on an airplane. Although Southern (who had not had a screenplay go to production in a decade) was rejuvenated by the prospect of working with the duo and produced a script that was said to be on par with his 1960s oeuvre, the project went into development hell after Sellers sudden death from a heart attack in July 1980. During this period,
640-559: 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
768-419: 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
896-755: A director Ashby edited films for Norman Jewison , notably The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), which earned Ashby an Oscar nomination for Best Editing , and In the Heat of the Night (1967), which earned him his only Oscar for the same category. Ashby received a third Oscar nomination, this time for Best Director for Coming Home (1978). Other films directed by Ashby include The Landlord (1970), Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), and Being There (1979). Ashby
1024-420: A drug that he only used intermittently after the production of Bound for Glory . As a consequence of these rumors, he slowly became unemployable. Eva Gardos, an editor who worked with Ashby during the period, has asserted that his drug intake remained largely confined to marijuana and psilocybin . Following Being There , Ashby was provisionally set to reunite with Sellers and Terry Southern on Grossing Out ,
1152-594: A great deal of frustration and inconvenience to the general public. Meanwhile, another set of problems was developing in Northern Ireland where politics had become increasingly tense and divided during the 1960s. This developed into a sectarian conflict with the British Army involved known as The Troubles which continued over several decades. This conflict caused more than 3,500 deaths. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became prime minister and brought about
1280-528: 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
1408-614: A hundred years by the late 1960s of 27.2 and 24.7 years for men and women respectively. Cultural norms and government policy encouraged marriage and women to focus on their role as homemaker, wife and mother whilst their husband acted as the household's primary breadwinner . The treatment of those who did not meet society's expectations in their personal lives was often quite unsympathetic. Abortion and homosexuality were illegal whilst later investigations suggest that many women who gave birth out of wedlock had their babies forcibly removed from them. Laws were liberalised significantly in
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#17327838025541536-538: A job in the timber industry. His mother, a cooking enthusiast, opened a restaurant in Portland. After several years in Portland, the family returned to Ogden, where Ashby primarily lived with his father. When Ashby was 12 years old, his father committed suicide . Ashby subsequently dropped out of high school. Ashby-approved studio biographies concealed this, falsely stating that he graduated from Utah State University (situated in nearby Logan, Utah) to ensure he fit into
1664-434: A limited theatrical release. In September 1983, Ashby directed Solo Trans , a Neil Young concert video that was released the following year. The Slugger's Wife , with a screenplay written by Neil Simon , was a critical and commercial failure. Ashby (whose cocaine use had accelerated throughout the shoot) was fired after delivering a 20-minute rough cut of the beginning of the film that included almost no dialogue. When
1792-422: A little under $ 1 million in returns and rentals on an estimated $ 17 million budget. During this period, Lorimar executives grew less tolerant of his increasingly perfectionist production (811,000 feet of film were used shooting Lookin' to Get Out ) and editing techniques, a montage in the latter film set to The Police 's " Message in a Bottle " took six months to perfect but proved to be logistically unusable due to
1920-640: 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
2048-509: A member of the Silent Generation. As a birth cohort, Silents never rose in protest as a unified political entity. Widely seen as "following the rules" and benefiting from stable wealth creation, their Boomer and Gen X children would become estranged from them due to their different views regarding social issues of the day and their relatively decreased economic opportunity, creating a different generational zeitgeist . For example,
2176-566: A muted biography of Woody Guthrie starring David Carradine , was the first film to use a Steadicam . In June 1973, Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz hired Ashby to direct One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , after the original director Miloš Forman became unavailable due to the reimposition of censorship in his native Czechoslovakia after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and after Forman's initial replacement Richard Rush
2304-515: A navy-blue blazer so as to suggest that he was once again employable. Despite these efforts, he could only find work as a television director, helming one of three pilots for Beverly Hills Buntz , an unsuccessful Hill Street Blues spinoff starring Dennis Franz . He also directed Jake's Journey , a sword and sorcery fantasy conceived by Graham Chapman . Longtime friend Warren Beatty advised Ashby to seek medical care after he complained of various ailments, including undiagnosed phlebitis . He
2432-815: 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
2560-441: A product's lifespan, i.e., "get their money's worth." This led some members of the Silent Generation to develop hoarding behaviors in the guise of "not being wasteful." As with their own parents, Silents tended to marry and have children young. American Silents are noted as being the youngest of all American generations in the age of marriage and parenthood. As young parents, the older members of this generation primarily produced
2688-521: 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
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#17327838025542816-407: A shortage of teachers and supplies, the distress pupils suffered from air raids and the disruption caused by evacuations. The degree of supervision children received also fell as fathers left to fight and mothers joined the workforce. However, rationing during World War II and the years after improved the health of the population overall with one study conducted in the early 2000s suggesting that
2944-543: A significant influence on the global film industry beginning in the early 20th century . Classical Hollywood cinema , which developed from 1910 to 1962, 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
3072-601: 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
3200-591: A typical 1940s child ate a healthier diet than their counterpart at the start of the 21st century. Following the Second World War, the school-leaving age was raised to 15 with every child being allocated to one of three types of school based on a test taken at the age of 11 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (selection between two types of school took place at age 12 in Scotland ). The years after
3328-401: 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
3456-516: Is called the "Children of XX-th Congress ". There was a slump in birth rates in the UK between the two major baby booms following each world war . This roughly correlated with the economic downturn in the 1930s and World War II. The era of the Great Depression was a time of deprivation for many children, unemployment was high and slum housing was common. However, education was compulsory from
3584-571: 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
3712-1107: 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,
3840-703: 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
3968-529: The Korean War . Upon coming of age in the postwar era , Silents were sometimes characterized as trending towards conformity and traditionalism, as well as comprising the " silent majority ". However, they have also been noted as forming the leadership of the civil rights movement and the 1960s counterculture , and creating the rock and roll music of the 1950s and 1960s. In the United Kingdom,
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4096-497: 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
4224-473: The Oliver Stone -written 8 Million Ways to Die fared similarly at the box office, Ashby's post-production process was considered to be such a liability that he was fired by the production company on the final day of principal photography . Attempting to turn a corner in his declining career, Ashby stopped using drugs, trimmed his hair and beard, and began to frequently attend Hollywood parties wearing
4352-535: The Silent Generation , the filmmaker (who had been a habitual marijuana smoker since 1950), eagerly embraced the hippie lifestyle, adopting vegetarianism and growing his hair long before it became de rigueur . Over the next ten years, Ashby directed several acclaimed and popular films. Many were about outsiders and adventurers traversing the pathways of life. They included the off-beat romance Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), and
4480-616: The State Pension from the age of 60 and men from the age of 65. A 2019 report stated that Pensioner Poverty in the UK had increased rapidly during the 1970s and the 1980s but fell in the 1990s and early 21st century. According to the report 20% of the silent generation, which it described as individuals born from 1926 to 1945, had lived in poverty at the age of 70 in comparison to 45% of the Greatest Generation and 15% of Baby Boomers at similar ages. The report attributed
4608-637: 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;
4736-571: The baby boomers . The generation is generally defined as people born from 1928 to 1945. By this definition and U.S. Census data, there were 23 million Silents in the United States as of 2019. In the United States, the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the early-to-mid 1940s caused people to have fewer children and as a result, the generation is comparatively small. It includes most of those who fought during
4864-506: The later Baby Boomers , while younger members of the generation and older members who held off raising a family until later in life gave birth to Generation X . Whereas divorce in the eyes of the previous generation was considered aberrant behavior, the Silents were the generation that reformed marriage laws to allow for divorce and lessen the stigma. This led to a historically unprecedented wave of divorces among Silent Generation couples in
4992-400: The social milieu of college-educated peers like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese . Ashby was married and divorced by the time he was 19. As Ashby was entering adult life, he moved from Utah to Los Angeles , California, where he pursued a bohemian lifestyle and ultimately became an assistant film editor through a long apprenticeship. His career gained momentum when he served as
5120-407: 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
5248-482: 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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5376-615: 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
5504-527: 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
5632-454: The Boomer children were instrumental in bringing about the counterculture of the 1960s , and the rise of left wing, liberal views considered anti-establishment , which went directly against the "work within the system" approach that many Silents had practiced. Gen X children grew up in the 1970s and 1980s with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over them and a resultant bleak view of
5760-559: 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
5888-604: The College Class of '49 was subtitled "Taking No Chances". This generation was also heavily influenced by the transformations brought about by the Golden Age of Radio , the rise of trade unions, the development of transatlantic flight and the discovery of penicillin during their formative years. From their childhood experiences during the Depression and the example of frugality set by their parents, Silents tended to be thrifty and even miserly, preferring to maximize
6016-688: 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
6144-523: 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
6272-466: 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
6400-517: The Night .Ashby often stated that the practice of editing provided him with the best filmmaking background outside of traditional university study and carried the techniques learned as an editor with him when he began directing. At the urging of mentor Norman Jewison , Ashby directed his first film, The Landlord —an early rumination on the social dynamics of gentrification in Park Slope, Brooklyn —in 1970. While his birth date placed him within
6528-604: The Night Together , the director was a longtime fan of the group. He collapsed before the final filmed concert at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona , on December 13, 1981. Although Jeff Wexler said Ashby was "partying way beyond his capabilities with the Stones," Caleb Deschanel has said that Ashby (who directed the concert shoot on a gurney) simply had the flu. The film was well-received but gained little traction during
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#17327838025546656-532: The Second World War saw a continuation of difficult social conditions, there was a serious housing shortage and rationing was at times more restrictive than it had been during the war. The late 1940s saw substantial social reforms and changes to the structure of the British economy. Economic conditions and living standards improved significantly during the 1950s and 60s. Unemployment rested at roughly two percent during this period, much lower than it had been during
6784-498: 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
6912-461: The Silent Generation was also born during a period of relatively low birthrates for similar reasons to the United States and was quite traditional upon coming of age. They lived through times of prosperity as young adults, economic upheaval in middle age, and relative comfort in later life. The Sixtiers is a similar age group in the Soviet Union whose upbringings were also heavily influenced by
7040-498: The Silents, further estranged those Boomers from their parents and, among other things, gave rise in the 1970s to the term generation gap . This was to describe the initial conflict of cultural values between the Silents and their Generation Joneser (younger Baby Boomers) and to a lesser extent, their Generation X children in the 1980s, although it wasn't quite as extreme as it was between the Greatest Generation and
7168-586: The Soviet Union is similar to Sixtiers . These people were born into Stalinism , raised during collectivization , and were witnesses of the Holodomor . So even though there was no Great Depression in the Soviet Union, they still experienced a lack of resources and food as children. In the 1930s and 1940s many of them lost their parents or close relatives during Stalinist repressions and later during battles and German occupation in WWII . Sometimes this generation
7296-512: 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
7424-500: The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The major film studios of Hollywood are 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
7552-510: The United States were members of the Greatest Generation ( John F. Kennedy , Lyndon B. Johnson , Richard Nixon , Gerald Ford , Jimmy Carter , Ronald Reagan , and George H. W. Bush ); four presidents have been Baby Boomers ( Bill Clinton , George W. Bush , Barack Obama and Donald Trump ); two presidents were members of the Lost Generation ( Harry S. Truman ; and Dwight D. Eisenhower ), only one President, Joe Biden , has been
7680-536: The United States. Critics of the theory that Silents tend towards conformity and playing it safe note that, at least in the United States, leaders of 1960s-era rebellion/innovation/protest such as Muhammad Ali , Bob Dylan , Noam Chomsky , Martin Luther King Jr. , and Jimi Hendrix were members of the Silent Generation, and not Baby Boomers , for whom these figures were heroes, although the majority of their followers were Boomers. While seven Presidents of
7808-419: 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
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#17327838025547936-508: The age groups the analysis covered and environmental factors are also important in influencing the development of voter behavior. As a cultural narrative, the Silent Generation are described as children of the Great Depression whose parents, having revelled in the highs of the Roaring Twenties , now faced great economic hardship and struggled to provide for their families. Before reaching their teens, they shared with their parents
8064-511: The age of five to fourteen years old. Gaining a place at grammar school was a way for young people whose families could not afford them to be privately educated to gain full access to secondary schooling. In a time before widespread car use, children commonly played outside in the street and further afield without adult supervision. Toys of this era were quite simple but examples included dolls, model aeroplanes, and trains. Other popular activities included reading comics , playing board games, going to
8192-470: The betrayal of post-war agreements and rise of the Soviet Union . Unlike the previous generation who had fought for "changing the system," the Silent Generation was about "working within the system." They did this by keeping their heads down and working hard, thus earning themselves the "silent" label. Their attitudes leaned toward not being risk-takers and playing it safe. Fortune magazine's story on
8320-421: The change to more private pensions , increased home ownership and government policy. Commentators suggested that older people were somewhat insulated from the effects of the austerity programme in the 2010s. Though pensioner poverty was rising slightly by the mid to late 2010s and early 2020s, especially among women. The average life expectancy was around 80 years old, a few years older for women than men, in
8448-493: The cinema, and joining children's organizations such as the scouts . It was estimated that more than 85% of British households owned a wireless (radio) by 1939. The Second World War impacted the lives of children in various ways. Significant numbers of schoolchildren were evacuated without their parents to the countryside to avoid the threat of bombing throughout the war years. The quality of education fell everywhere but particularly in urban areas for various reasons, including
8576-481: The conflict are sometimes considered to be cultural, if not demographically, baby boomers. Australia's McCrindle Research uses the name "Builders" to describe the Australian members of this generation, born between 1925 and 1945, and coming of age to become the generation "who literally and metaphorically built [the] nation after the austerity years post-Depression and World War II". The Silent Generation in
8704-452: The country, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime – nor indeed in the history of this country. The idea of the "teenager" as a distinctive phase of life associated with rebellion against adult authority and older generations social norms became increasingly prominent in public discourse during the 1940s and 50s. Though in many ways those reaching maturity in
8832-399: 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
8960-497: The depression or would be later in the 20th century. Consumer goods such as televisions and household labour saving devices became increasingly common. By the late 1950s, Britain was one of the most affluent societies anywhere in the world. In 1957, 52% of the British population described themselves as "very happy" in comparison to 36% in 2005. That year, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan famously said: Let us be frank about it: most of our people have never had it so good. Go round
9088-506: 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
9216-550: 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
9344-531: The editor of The Loved One (1965), an adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel that involved such New Hollywood contemporaries as screenwriter Terry Southern and cinematographer Haskell Wexler . After being nominated for the Academy Award for Film Editing in 1967 for The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming ,his big break occurred one year later when he won the award for In the Heat of
9472-613: 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
9600-528: 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
9728-632: The end to some aspects of the Post-war consensus on economic policy. For instance, her government created the right-to-buy scheme which allowed renters to buy up their council homes at a reduced prices. Middle aged people were one of the social groups which particularly benefited from this policy. Her policies have been described as giving millions of people direct ownership of capital through share or house ownership but have also been associated with high unemployment, rising poverty and social unrest. For several decades prior to 2010, women received
9856-617: 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,
9984-477: 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
10112-549: 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
10240-418: 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
10368-409: The finest motion picture directors of the 20th century." Michael Cimino's 1996 film The Sunchaser , about a teenager with pancreatic cancer who refuses medical treatment, was dedicated to Ashby. For the 2012 Sight & Sound Directors Top Ten poll Niki Caro , Cyrus Frisch , and Wanuri Kahiu voted for Harold and Maude , with Frisch describing the film as "an encouragement to think beyond
10496-459: 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
10624-614: The fourth-largest number of films of any national cinema , after India , Japan , and China . While 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
10752-554: The future, contributing to their generational disaffection, in contrast to the optimistic outlook of their Silent Generation parents. The style of parenting from the Lost Generation or the Interbellum Generation (older members of the Greatest Generation ), was known to the Silents and the generations before them originated in the late 1800s, when the Lost Gens were Children or Teenagers. Representative of this
10880-566: The generation, but the term somehow migrated to the later years currently in use. A reason later proposed for this perceived silence is that as young adults during the McCarthy Era , many members of the Silent Generation felt it was unwise to speak out. The term "Silent Generation" is also used to describe a similar age group in the UK but has been at times described as a reference to strict childhood discipline which taught children to be "seen but not heard." In Canada, it has been used with
11008-484: The horrors of World War II but through children's eyes. Many lost their fathers or older siblings who were killed in the war. They saw the fall of Nazism and the catastrophic devastation made capable of the nuclear bomb . When the Silent Generation began coming of age after World War II, they were faced with a devastated social order within which they would spend their early adulthood and a new enemy in Communism via
11136-544: 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 "
11264-451: The late 1960s, but change was slower in certain areas in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Heavy industry had been troubled in the UK throughout the 1960s, this combined with a global energy crisis and influx of cheap goods from Asia led to rapid deindustrialisation by the mid 1970s. New jobs were either low wage or too high-skilled for those laid off. This situation led to significant political instability and industrial unrest causing
11392-489: The late 2000s and 2010s. An analysis of British Election Study surveys for the 1964 to 2019 general elections suggested that the Silent Generation as a cohort became more likely to vote for the Conservative Party as they grew older. The results suggested that at 35 years old, people born from 1928 to 1945 were about 5 percentage points less likely to vote Conservative than the national average, but that by
11520-472: 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
11648-567: 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
11776-566: 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
11904-516: 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
12032-533: 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
12160-828: The obvious!" A 2018 documentary about the director was screened at the Sundance Film Festival . The moving image collection of Hal Ashby is held at the Academy Film Archive. The material at the Academy Film Archive is also complemented by material in the Hal Ashby papers at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library. Cinema of the United States The cinema of the United States , consisting mainly of major film studios (also known metonymically as Hollywood ), has remained
12288-445: 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
12416-437: 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
12544-477: 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
12672-629: 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
12800-483: The productions of Second-Hand Hearts and Lookin' to Get Out the latter a Las Vegas caper that reunited him with Voight and featured Voight's young daughter, Angelina Jolie was plagued by the increasingly strained relationship between Ashby and Lorimar. Filmed in 1979, Second-Hand Hearts only received a poorly reviewed limited release in 1981 before being pulled from circulation for nearly thirty years. Belatedly released in October 1982, Lookin' to Get Out earned
12928-469: The range 1925 to 1945. This generation had reached maturity as early as 1946 and as late as 1963, but the majority of Silents had become of age in the 1950s, in the wake of the Civil rights movement , which was followed by older boomers in the 1960s. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe use 1925 to 1942. People born in the later years of World War II who were too young to have any direct recollections of
13056-449: 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
13184-566: The same meaning as in the United States. The cohort is also known as the "Traditionalist Generation". The Pew Research Center uses 1928 to 1945 as birth years for this cohort. According to this definition, people of the Silent Generation are 78 to 96 years old in 2024. The Intergenerational Centre of the Resolution Foundation has used 1926 to 1945, while the Encyclopedia of Strategic Leadership and Management uses
13312-477: 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
13440-598: The scale of George Lucas 's $ 1 billion prequel to the Star Wars Trilogy , The Blair Witch Project earned the distinction of being the most profitable film of all time, in terms of percentage gross. Silent Generation The Silent Generation , also known as the Traditionalist Generation , is the Western demographic cohort following the Greatest Generation and preceding
13568-473: 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
13696-462: The social satire Being There (1979), with Peter Sellers , giving the star a well-received role after many felt he had lapsed into self-parody. His most significant commercial success was Shampoo (1975), a collaboration with Warren Beatty and Robert Towne that satirized late-1960s sexual and social mores through the life of a hairdresser modeled after such contemporaneous figures as Jay Sebring and Jon Peters . Bound for Glory (1976),
13824-499: 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
13952-451: 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
14080-476: The success of Coming Home , Ashby was able to form a production company, Northstar, under the auspices of Lorimar . After Being There , Ashby became more reclusive , often retreating to his home in Malibu Colony , a gated enclave in the city. Later, it was widely rumored in a likely whisper campaign from Lorimar (whose executives clashed with the director) that Ashby had become dependent upon cocaine ,
14208-526: The term appears to precede the publication: The most startling fact about the younger generation is its silence. With some rare exceptions, youth is nowhere near the rostrum. By comparison with the Flaming Youth of their fathers & mothers, today's younger generation is a still, small flame. It does not issue manifestoes, make speeches or carry posters. It has been called the "Silent Generation." The Time article used birth dates of 1923 to 1933 for
14336-727: 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
14464-480: The time they were 70 years old, they were about ten percentage points more likely to do so than the national average. They were, however, by the end of the time period studied, less likely to vote for the Conservatives than the next youngest age group, baby boomers. An article on the analysis commented that it is conventional wisdom that people become more conservative as they get older but that isn't true of all
14592-666: 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
14720-512: The troubles of the mid-20th century. The term "the builders" has been used to describe a similar cohort in Australia. Most people of the Silent Generation are the parents of Baby Boomers and older Generation Xers . Their own parents most commonly belonged to either the Greatest Generation or the Lost Generation . Time magazine first used the term "Silent Generation" in a November 5, 1951, article titled "The Younger Generation", although
14848-416: The years after the Second World War were quite traditionally conservative in experience and attitudes. National service ( military conscription ) was reintroduced after the war and continued throughout the 1950s. Young people would often attend ballroom dances to socialise and find potential romantic partners. The average age of first marriage in England and Wales fell reaching its lowest level in more than
14976-512: Was born September 2, 1929, in Ogden, Utah , the youngest of four siblings born to Mormon parents Eileen Ireta (née Hetzler) and James Thomas Ashby, a dairy farm owner. Ashby's parents divorced in 1936, after which his father remarried. Following the divorce, Ashby and his siblings lived with their mother, briefly in Logan, Utah , before relocating to Portland, Oregon , where his elder brother took
15104-511: 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
15232-476: Was deemed to be unsatisfactory. (Decades later, Ashby's cut was rediscovered and released on DVD in 2009.) As Dustin Hoffman had not offered a "formal commitment" to the production at the time of Ashby's dismissal, the director forfeited his $ 1.5 million fee. While post-production of Lookin' to Get Out continued, Lorimar permitted Ashby to film The Rolling Stones ' 1981 American tour documentary, Let's Spend
15360-414: Was for this film that Ashby earned his only Best Director Oscar nomination. Arriving in the post- Jaws and Star Wars era, Coming Home was one of the last films to encapsulate the modestly budgeted, socially realistic ethos of the New Hollywood era, earning nearly $ 15 million in returns and rentals on a $ 3 million budget. Because of his critical success and dependable profitability, shortly after
15488-501: 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 ,
15616-464: 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
15744-576: Was soon diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that rapidly spread to his lungs, colon, and liver. Ashby died on December 27, 1988, at his home in Malibu, California . The Last Detail , Bound for Glory , Coming Home , and Being There were all nominated for the Palme d'Or . American songwriter and guitarist Guthrie Thomas, who coordinated the music in Bound for Glory and acted in the film, called Ashby "one of
15872-608: 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
16000-499: Was the idea that "children should be seen but not heard". These ideas were ultimately challenged following the 1946 publication of the book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock , which influenced some Boomers' views on parenting and family values when they became parents themselves. The book also influenced how Baby Boomers were parented. These less-restrictive behavioral standards, seen as overly permissive by
16128-486: Was unable to secure studio funding. Ashby was responsible for casting Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy, but this resulted in a nine-month delay during which Forman fled to the United States and was rehired as director. Aside from Shampoo , Ashby's most commercially successful film was the Vietnam War drama Coming Home (1978). Starring Jane Fonda and Jon Voight , both in Academy Award -winning performances, it
16256-499: 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
16384-649: 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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