Edison was determined to exploit the money-making potential of his company's invention. He tried to force filmmakers out of business by bringing paten violations suits against them. Another company American Mutoscope & Biograph survived by inventing cameras that were different from Edison's Patent.

 

In 1908 Edison cooperated with Biograph in forming the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). This was done to control the many other film companies using their technology. Edison and Biograph were the only stock holders and patent owners. They then licensed other members to make, distribuite and exhibit films. The MPPC never succeeded in eliminating the competition. During this time, numerous independent companies arose. The US government brough a suit against MPPC and it was declared a monopoly.

 

To escape the harrassment of MPPC, many film companies started to move west to California around 1910. Some of the MPPC companies moved as well. There were major advantages to Hollywood. The climate for one. This allowed shooting year round. The are was also geographically diverse. Locations with mountains, oceans, desert and cityscapes were all close by.

 

Edison soon learned to accept the fact no one film company could meet the demands for films. Before 1920, the American film industry assumed a structure that would remain in place for decades: A few large studios with individual artists under contract and a peripheral group of small independent producers. Hollywood adapted a factory system, with each production under control of a producer who usually didn't actually work on the films.

 

Originally, in the earliest years of the motion picture industry, production, distribution, and exhibition were separately controlled. When the industry rapidly grew, these functions became integrated under one directorship to maximize profits. There were eight major (and minor) studios that dominated the industry. They were the ones that had most successfully consolidated and integrated all aspects of a film's development. By 1929, the film-making firms that were to rule and monopolize Hollywood for the next half-century were the giants or the majors, sometimes dubbed The Big Five. They produced more than 90 percent of the fiction films in America and distributed their films both nationally and internationally. Each studio somewhat differentiated its products from other studios.

 

The Big Five Studios

Warner Bros. Pictures, incorporated in 1923 by Polish brothers (Jack, Harry, Albert, and Sam); in 1925, Warner Brothers merged with First National, forming Warner Bros.-First National Pictures; the studio's first principal asset was Rin Tin Tin; became prominent by 1927 due to its introduction of talkies (The Jazz Singer (1927)) and early 30s gangster films; it was known as the "Depression studio"; in the 40s, it specialized in Bugs Bunny animations and other cartoons.

 

Paramount Pictures, Adolph Zukor's Famous Players (1912) and Jesse Lasky's Feature Play - merged in 1916 to form Famous Players-Lasky Corporation; it spent $1 million on United Studios' property (on Marathon Street) in 1926; the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation became Paramount studios in 1927, and was officially named Paramount Pictures in 1935; its greatest silent era stars were Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks; Golden Age stars included Mae West, W.C. Fields, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and director Cecil B. DeMille.

 

RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures, evolved from the Mutual Film Corporation (1912), was established in 1928 as a subsidiary of RCA; it was formed by RCA, Keith-Orpheum Theaters, and the FBO Company (Film Booker's Organization) - which was owned by Joseph P. Kennedy (who had already purchased what remained of Mutual); this was the smallest studio of the majors; kept financially afloat with top-grossing Astaire-Rogers musicals in the 30s, King Kong (1933), and Citizen Kane (1941); at one time, RKO was acquired by eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes.

 

MGM Marcus Loew of Loew's, Inc., was the parent firm of what eventually became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Metro Pictures Corporation was a production company founded in 1916 by Richard A. Rowland and Louis B. Mayer. In 1918, Mayer left this partnership to start up his own production company in 1918, called Louis B. Mayer Pictures. In 1920, Metro Pictures Corporation (with its already-acquired Goldwyn Pictures Corporation) was purchased by early theater exhibitor Marcus Loew of Loew's Inc. In another acquisition, Loew merged his 'Metro-Goldwyn production company with Louis B. Mayer Pictures.MGM, first named Metro-Goldwyn Pictures, was ultimately formed in 1924 from the merger of three US film production companies: Metro Pictures Corporation (1916), Goldwyn Pictures Corporation (1917), and the Louis B. Mayer Pictures Company (1918); Irving Thalberg was head of production at MGM from 1924 until his death in 1936; the famous MGM lion roar in the studio's opening logo was first recorded and viewed in a film in 1928; its greatest early successes were The Big Parade (1925), Broadway Melody (1929), Grand Hotel (1932), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), A Night at the Opera (1935), The Good Earth (1937), Gone With the Wind (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), as well as Tarzan films, Tom and Jerry cartoons, and stars such as Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, and Spencer Tracy

 

20th Century Fox Fox Film Corporation/Foundation, founded in 1912 by NY nickelodeon owner William Fox (originally a garment industry worker), was first known for Fox Movietone news and then B-westerns; its first film was Life's Shop Window (1914); it later became 20th-Century Fox, formed through the 1935 merger of 20th Century Pictures Company (founded in 1933 by Darryl F. Zanuck) and Fox; it became famous for Shirley Temple films in the mid-30s and Betty Grable musicals in the 40s

The Big-Five studios had vast studios with elaborate sets for film production. They owned their own film-exhibiting theatres (about 50% of the seating capacity in the US in mostly first-run houses in major cities), as well as production and distribution facilities. They distributed their films to this network of studio-owned, first-run theaters (or movie palaces), mostly in urban areas, which charged high ticket prices and drew huge audiences.

 

The Minor Film Studios: The Little Three

Three smaller, minor studios were dubbed The Little Three, because each of them lacked one of the three elements required in vertical integration - owning their own theaters:
 

Universal Pictures, (or Universal Film Manufacturing Co), founded by Carl Laemmle in 1912; formed from a merger of Laemmle's own IMP - Independent Motion Picture Company (founded in 1909) with Bison 101, the U. S. production facilities of French studio Éclair, Nestor Film Co., and several other film companies; its first successes were W.C. Fields and Abbott and Costello comedies, the Flash Gordon serial, and Woody Woodpecker cartoons

 

United Artists, formed in 1919 by movie industry icons Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Charlie Chaplin, and director D.W. Griffith as an independent company to produce and distribute their films; United Artists utilized an 18-acre property owned by Pickford and Fairbanks, known as the Pickford-Fairbanks Studio, and later named United Artists Studio in the 1920s.

 

Columbia Pictures, originally the C.B.C. Film Sales Company in 1920 founded by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn, and Joseph Brandt, and officially named Columbia in 1924; their studios opened at the old location of Christie-Nestor Studios; established prominence with It Happened One Night (1934), Rita Hayworth films, Lost Horizon (1937), The Jolson Story (1946), and Batman serials.

 

 

 

Within this system of mass production studios, the American cinema became definitively oriented toward the narrative form.