The Genius of the System
Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era

The Genius of the System isn’t quite a history of Hollywood during the golden age. As the author admits, to have tried to tackle the history of all the studios in this period would have been beyond the resources of a single writer and would have made for an inordinately long book. Instead author Tho......more

This book was a bit of a letdown for me. I had high hopes for an engaging, behind-the-scenes look at classic Hollywood, but what I got felt more like a dry history lesson. This book gives you a behind-the-scenes tour of the studio system that ruled Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1960s. Let's talk ab......more

I thought I knew how the studio system worked before reading this book, but I came away realizing that the system was just a generic term for having exclusive rights to talent and big pieces of real estate in which to make and show movies. The overhead to run big studios was enormous so the trick wa......more

Movies used to wholly produced by studios. Before the 1960s, the studios controlled every piece of production. They generated and formed the ideas, assigned the creative talent, and executed to the schedule proscribed by a production executive. Filmmaking was driven by the studios, not the filmmaker......more

A comprehensive history of the production systems behind Classic Hollywood studios, highlighting how each major studio developed a "house style". Schatz concentrates on MGM, Warner Bros., Universal, and the independent producer David O. Selznick. Major Moguls like Jack and Harry Warner, Louis B. May......more