The introduction of sound to film in the early 1920s helped give rise to the studio system and Hollywood’s Golden Age, with the “big five” studios — MGM, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, and RKO — solidifying their dominance over the industry. They controlled the production, distribution, and exhibition of their films and used iron-clad long-term contracts to maintain authority over the people who made them.
It’s no coincidence that what’s considered by most film historians as the height of the Golden Age — from 1930 to 1948 — coincides with the studio’s perfection of its system of control in every aspect of the film business, per Filmsite. By the 1930s, the five big studios had solidified the industry’s vertically integrated system. Studio lots were like small cities where everyone was under contract. This system allowed directors, actors, and screenwriters to hone their craft without the fear of failure, which helped create some of Hollywood’s greatest films, according to the New York Center for Visual History’s “American Cinema.” But it also meant they had very little control over their work.
