The US "war economy" (full employment, round-the-clock factory operations in major cities, severe restrictions on travel and entertainment) helped induce a complete reversal in Paramount's fortunes. A decade earlier, its massive theater chain concentrated in major markets (where the mortgages were heaviest) had financially strapped the company; now its chain generated enormous revenues and profits, enabling the studio to cut back production and concentrate increasingly on the booming first-run market. Between 1940 and 1945, Paramount's feature film output fell from 48 releases to 23, while its revenues rose from $96 million to $158.2 million, and its profits surged from $6.3 million to a record $15.4 million. The war boom continued into 1946, Hollywood's best year ever, when Paramount's profits reached a staggering $39.2 million on only 22 releases—accounting for fully one-third of the Hollywood studios' profits ($119 million) in that all-time record year.
Paramount's enormous prosperity during the war era was fueled by its films, of course, which enjoyed critical as well as commercial success despite the radical changes in its house style and the departure of so many top stars and directors. Balaban's cost-cutting campaign and shift away from Paramount's long-standing emphasis on the European market (and style) led to the departure in the late 1930s of contract stars Dietrich, Colbert, Cooper, March, Carole Lombard (1908–1942), and Mae West, and directors von Sternberg, Lubitsch, and Mamoulian. Bing Crosby and Barbara Stanwyck (1907–1990) remained, as did director Mitchell Leisen, all of whom accommodated Paramount's changing production and market strategies. DeMille stayed on as well, although his epic bent was sorely limited by war-related budgetary and material constraints. Paramount's vacated star stable was quickly filled with a new crop of stars, notably Ray Milland (1905–1986), Bob Hope (1903–2003), Dorothy Lamour (1914–1996), Fred MacMurray (1908–1991), Paulette Goddard (1910–1990), Veronica Lake (1919–1973), and Alan Ladd (1913–1964). Several important new directors emerged as well, most notably Preston Sturges (1898–1959) and Billy Wilder (1906–2002), both of whom rose from the studio's ranks to become two of the foremost "hyphenate" writer-directors in Hollywood.
Sturges quickly established himself as a master of dark comedy, offbeat romance, and acerbic dialogue, and as one of the most prolific filmmakers in the A-film ranks as well, turning out eight pictures in four years for Paramount, including several of the very best Hollywood films of the war era: The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). Wilder, meanwhile, started somewhat slower before delivering some of the era's most powerful dramas, including Double Indemnity (1944) and The Lost Weekend (1945). Leisen continued to turn out quality romantic comedies and melodramas at a prodigious rate (12 pictures from 1940 to 1945), while DeMille managed only two lackluster pictures during the same period. Much of the studio's success came with films that teamed particular stars—the pairing of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in two noir thrillers, This Gun for Hire and The Glass Key (both 1942), for instance, and the teaming of Crosby, Hope, and Lamour in the hugely successful run of "road pictures" ( Road to Singapore , 1940; Road to Zanzibar , 1941; Road to Morocco , 1942; et al.). Crosby and Hope enjoyed tremendous success during the war in a wide range of films, with Crosby in particular emerging as a true cultural phenomenon, considering his concurrent success in the radio and recording industries. His most successful film for Paramount, and its biggest wartime hit, was as a crooning priest in Going My Way (1944), a quasi-independent project produced, directed, and written by free-lancer Leo McCarey.
A consummate American screen hero of Hollywood's classical era and the archetypal "strong silent type," Gary Cooper spent roughly the first half of his career at Paramount, where he paid his dues as a studio contract star and, in the course of the 1930s, rose to top stardom. Cooper enjoyed sufficient clout by the late 1930s to demand a nonexclusive contract with Paramount, and within a few years he was essentially a freelance star. Thus many of Cooper's most memorable roles, including his Oscar ® -winning performances in Sergeant York (1941) and High Noon (1952), were done elsewhere. But during the early years at Paramount, Cooper did some of his best work and steadily refined his distinctive screen persona: the tall, laconic, hesitant but steadfast hero whose diffident honesty and physical beauty masked an undercurrent of anxiety and self-doubt. He established a remarkable acting range as well, handling comedy, romantic drama, and action-adventure roles with equal assurance.
Cooper broke into films as an extra in silent westerns—due largely to his genuine skills as a horseman. He soon signed with Paramount and appeared in some twenty supporting roles before starring in his breakthrough hit, The Virginian (1929), his first talkie, in which he famously intoned, "When you say that—smile." The picture clinched his early stardom and led to a succession of similar roles in 1930 and 1931, until the western was downgraded to B-movie status. Cooper did star in one of the Depression era's few "A" westerns, The Plainsman , a 1936 biopic of Wild Bill Hickok and his first film for Cecil B. DeMille, and he helped facilitate the resurgence of the western in 1940 with another DeMille epic, North West Mounted Police , and The Westerner , one of many films Cooper did for independent producer Sam Goldwyn.
During the western genre's decade-long hiatus, Cooper played action-adventure roles for Paramount in films like The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), The General Died at Dawn (1936), and Beau Geste (1939). Cooper also proved to be a serviceable romantic costar in films like A Farewell to Arms (1932) and Peter Ibbetson (1935). But the real surprise was his emergence as a top comedy star in films like Design for Living (1933) and Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), both directed by Ernst Lubitsch; on loan to Columbia in the Capra-directed Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936); and on loan to RKO in the Hawks-directed Ball of Fire (1941). By 1941 Cooper was a freelance star, and although he stayed busy throughout the 1940s and 1950s, remaining one of Hollywood's top box office stars, his only subsequent work for Paramount was in the Goldwyn-produced For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and in DeMille's The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944) and Unconquered (1947).
The Virginian (1929), Design for Living (1933), The Plainsman (1936), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), The General Died at Dawn (1936), Beau Geste (1939), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), High Noon (1952)
Kaminsky, Stuart. Coop: The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Gary Cooper: American Hero . New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001.
Thomas Schatz
Paramount's tremendous success continued into the early postwar era, although it became evident as the Justice Department revived its antitrust campaign against the studios that its glory days were numbered. In May 1948 the Supreme Court issued its momentous Paramount decree, which cited Paramount Pictures as the first defendant because the company's domination and manipulation of the movie marketplace had been most pronounced. Unlike several of the other Big Five integrated majors (i.e., MGM, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros., and RKO, which also owned theater chains), Paramount readily complied with the Court's demand to divorce its theater chains, splitting in late 1949 into two corporate entities, Paramount Pictures and United Paramount Theaters (UPT). Besides dis-integrating the company, the Paramount decree also dashed Balaban's plans to exploit the emergent television medium. Paramount had been actively pursuing
television broadcasting for over a decade in various ways, notably its purchase of television stations in Chicago and Los Angeles, and its investment in video pioneer DuMont, which involved video projection in theaters as well as delivery of Paramount films to the home. The antitrust ruling enabled the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to prohibit the studios from active participation in the burgeoning TV industry, however, so Paramount Pictures sold off its television and video interests while UPT became a major investor inthe ABC television network.
Hollywood's general postwar decline was especially pronounced for Paramount, whose profits fell from over $22 million in 1948 to just $3 million in 1949. The studio survived through a two-pronged strategy of "bigger" films and independent productions. DeMille effectively initiated the postwar blockbuster trend with Samson and Delilah , released in late 1949 just weeks before the Paramount-UPT split, and he sustained it with The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and The Ten Commandments (1956), which earned an astounding $34.2 million. Meanwhile, the studio realized major hits via financing-and-distribution deals with independent producer-directors like George Stevens (1904–1975) ( A Place in the Sun , 1951; Shane , 1953) and Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) ( Rear Window , 1954; To Catch a Thief , 1955; The Man Who Knew Too Much , 1956). Paramount was the last of the majors to acquiesce to network television, opening its vault to TV syndication in 1958 and moving tentatively into telefilm series production. The studio faded badly in the early 1960s due to a succession of costly flops and the ongoing erosion of the movie-going audience. This led to Balaban's removal and the 1966 purchase of Paramount by Gulf + Western—the first of several studio buyouts by huge nonmedia conglomerates in the late 1960s, and a crucial step in the transition from the Old Hollywood to the New.
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