Title Information
Title
Hollywood's Trade Organizations: How Competition and Collaboration Forged a Vertically-Integrated Oligopoly, 1915-1928
Name: Personal
Name Part
Afra, Kia
Role
Role Term: Text
creator
Origin Information
Copyright Date
2011
Physical Description
Extent
x, 506 p.
digitalOrigin
born digital
Note
Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2011)
Name: Personal
Name Part
Rosen, Philip
Role
Role Term: Text
Director
Name: Personal
Name Part
Doane, Mary Ann
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Joyrich, Lynne
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Corporate
Name Part
Brown University. Modern Culture and Media
Role
Role Term: Text
sponsor
Genre (aat)
theses
Abstract
This dissertation examines how producer-distributor trade organizations contributed to the emergence of the American studio system during the 1910s and 1920s. Established to oppose censorship in the wake of the Mutual v. Ohio (1915) ruling that denied films First Amendment rights and protection in interstate commerce, trade organizations developed into protective associations for securing market share and barriers to entry against independent producers, distributors, and exhibitors. Three successive trade organizations form the basis of this study: the Motion Picture Board of Trade, the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI), and the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). In addition, I also consider the FILM Boards of Trade and the various exhibitor leagues. By examining corporate documents, legal files, and trade articles, I argue that producer-distributor associations functioned to stabilize, standardize, and protect studio assets. In turn, this guardianship facilitated Wall Street investment in Hollywood's theater expansions in the 1920s. While previous histories have focused on the studios' competitive policies, this project demonstrates that Hollywood's emergence was a case of both competition and collaboration. Trade organizations functioned as the medium for conflicts as well as the facilitators for cooperative action on censorship, public relations, trade practices, film distribution, labor issues, and exhibitor opposition. In challenging established histories, I claim that the origins of the studio system's market structure lay not in the late 1920s but much earlier in the aftermath of the Motion Picture Patents Company's (MPPC/Edison Trust) forced disbandment in 1915. Unlike the MPPC's attempt to monopolize production and distribution through its patent licenses and its distribution wing, the General Film Company (GFC), the Hollywood majors used vertical integration to combine production, distribution, and exhibition according to the logic of scale economies. By the mid-1920s, commentators began to describe the MPPDA as a new "Trust," despite the fact that it was merely an institutional manifestation of the Hollywood oligopoly.
Subject
Topic
U.S. Film Industry
Subject
Topic
Trade Organizations
Subject
Topic
NAMPI
Subject
Topic
MPPDA
Subject
Topic
Hollywood Studio System
Subject
Topic
Oligopoly
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/622416")
Topic
Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/850568")
Topic
Censorship
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1082892")
Topic
Public relations
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1165600")
Topic
Vertical integration
Record Information
Record Content Source (marcorg)
RPB
Record Creation Date (encoding="iso8601")
20111003
Language
Language Term: Code (ISO639-2B)
eng
Language Term: Text
English
Identifier: DOI
10.7301/Z0CJ8BQK
Access Condition: rights statement (href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
In Copyright
Access Condition: restriction on access
Collection is open for research.
Type of Resource (primo)
dissertations