Movies were bigger and bigger business, and the slow but certain establishment of the long ‘feature’ film, finally forced on the industry by the powerful Paramount distribution business, helped bring about the collapse or withdrawal of many of the old pioneer corporations.
As salaries and production expenses mounted, producers sought ways of standardising production methods, of discovering sure-fire values that could be injected into their films to guarantee success at the box office. Hence, there came into being certain characteristics of American production which were to persist for several decades: the star system, the formula picture (the repetition ad nauseam of a style or subject that was successful with the public), and massive use of advertising and publicity.
As pictures became bigger and more costly and more sophisticated in their technique and content, cinemas also acquired new economic and social status. In the years around the start of the European war, there was a huge boom in cinema building. Cinemas were no longer converted stores, but custom-built edifices, elegant ‘palaces’ in high-class districts.
Questions
1. The establishment of long feature films
2. The increasingly high salaries and costs
3. The tendency to keep to safe topics that appealed to audiences