Blog Prompt #5

Back when Hollywood was known as Hollywoodland, and into the days where they decided to drop the 'land', the studio system that the abided by was the means to which they produced, distributed, etc. their movies. In addition to the way actors were under contract to perform with one specific company, vertical integration was used as well in this early 1920s studio system. The most important feature that worked to the success of these movie studios (Paramount, Universal, etc.), I believe, is the aspect of vertical integration. With vertical integration, a single studio owned rights to every aspect of production for a movie, had the movies shown in their theatres, and had rights to any merchandise that could be used to make even more money off of the movie.

With vertical integration, since a single studio owned all means to everything involved with the movie, they would know which of their movies were doing the best and build from that. The studio would have access to their number of tickets show, amount of possible merchandise sold, and an all around idea of how expensive that specific genre of movie was to shoot. With all these facts and numbers, the studios could easily figure out (of course with help from newspaper/radio reviews) which of their movies were liked most by audiences and even the things they liked most about a specific movie. They would, of course, use this important information to benefit their company and continue to try and be the best. If one genre was really hitting it big in the theatres, they would make almost the 'same' movie over and over again because they knew audiences would flock to see them.

One example is how MGM learned that the general audience adored Judy Garland and began to almost exploit that fact to bring in the money. With this knowledge, MGM knew that they had a leg up on the competition, so to speak. MGM had exclusive rights to use her talent, so they had exclusive means to make as much money off of her as possible. Judy Garland started out in supporting roles, like in Broadway Melody of 1938 and slowly but surely gained popularity, and soon became the lead in Wizard of Oz. Because of vertical integration in the 1920s, they had 'Mega-Hits' of movies because they were able to control every single aspect of production/distribution and learn from their every move how to better their company.