Golden Age of Hollywood

The Jazz Singer (1927)

American musical film, released in 1927, that was the first feature-length movie with synchronized dialogue. It marked the ascendancy of "talkies" and the end of the silent-film era.

Little Three Studios

Columbia, Universal, United Artists

Propaganda

Ideas spread to influence public opinion for or against a cause.

Big Five Studios

Paramount, MGM, Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, RKO

Vertical Integration

Practice where a single entity controls the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution

HUAC Committee

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, investigated allegations of communist activity in the U.S. during the early years of the Cold War (1945-91).

Censorship and changes overtime

The established film industry in the United States began a form of self-censorship in the late 1920s called the Motion Picture Production Code to forestall any possible formation of a federal censoring agency. In 1968, the Production Code was superseded by the MPAA film rating system. The rating system is broken down into five categories and each have a respective definition.

Paramount Decision

US Supreme Court case of 1948; decided the fate of movie studios owning their own theaters and holding exclusivity rights over where their films were shown - no more vertical integration - no more block booking - independent producers and studios get more opportunity - smaller studios could now make films with larger budgets

Teenpics

a film genre targeted at teenagers and young adults in which the plot is based upon the special interests of teenagers and young adults

block booking

an early tactic of movie studios to control exhibition, involving pressuring theater operators to accept marginal films with no stars in order to get access to films with the most popular stars

B-roll

footage that is used to support the story being told.

Interviews

person-to-person conversations for the purpose of gathering information by means of questions posed to respondents

Golden Age of Hollywood

roughly from the 1930s until the 1950s, was the age of the movie star(because of the enormous amount of money the movies produced and the images of the glittering and glamorous movie stars that filled the movie screens)

Star System

the film studios' use of stars' popularity to promote their movies