Producer



STUDIO AND INDEPENDENT PRODUCERS

In the Hollywood studio era (1920–1950), different producers performed these various functions (creative, conceptual, financial, managerial, promotional) to a greater or lesser extent. At one of the major studios (Columbia, MGM, Paramount, RKO, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros.), the executive in charge of production could be creatively involved in the details of all or most of his or her company's films. This was especially the case during the 1920s, and at some studios through the 1950s, under a central producer system of production. For example, Irving Thalberg (1899–1936), the head of production at MGM from 1924 through 1932, conferred with screenwriters on script drafts, with directors on revised scripts, on the rushes shot during principal photography, and on film editing. Darryl F. Zanuck (1902–1979), the head of production at Warner Bros. through 1933 (responsible for the studio's major hits in the gangster and social problem genres such as Little Caesar , 1931; and IAma Fugitive from a Chain Gang , 1932) and then at Twentieth Century Fox from the mid-1930s through the 1950s (and intermittently in the 1960s), likewise was intimately involved in the creative process of making films.

Moreover, production executives like Thalberg or Zanuck chose the property, cast, screenwriter(s), and director for each film, and they also estimated its budget. They did not raise the funds for their studio's annual slate of films; instead, they worked within the annual budget handed them by the exhibition (theater-owning) division of their company. They divided the yearly amount into the budgets for different categories of films (such as programmers and prestige films) featuring various studio stars. Both Thalberg and Zanuck defined their respective studio's house style, genre preferences, and technical qualities (MGM's glossy, tasteful, high production values and Twentieth Century Fox's biopics, Americana films, and musicals).

Executives such as Thalberg and Zanuck either personally produced certain films (usually prestige productions) or assigned subordinates to several properties they had selected for filmmaking that year. By the early 1930s, studio producers sometimes were working with particular production units, comprised of stars, directors, contracted talents, and technicians, which turned out distinctive films in particular genres that added diversity to a major studio's slate of releases during a year. At MGM, Harry Rapf (1882–1949) worked on Joan Crawford melodramas, while Albert Lewin (1894–1968) produced sophisticated play adaptations.

These producer units were a successful way of organizing studio filmmaking, and at several studios (RKO, Paramount in the early 1930s, and MGM after Irving Thalberg's illness in 1933) this system replaced the central producer system. Val Lewton's (1904–1951) unit at RKO turned out memorable, minimalist horror films in the early 1940s ( Cat People , 1942; I Walked with a Zombie , 1943; and The Body Snatcher , 1945). From 1939 onwards, Arthur Freed (1894–1973) ran a unit at MGM that produced some of the best musicals in Hollywood history, including Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), and The Band Wagon (1953). In such cases, the producer formed productive, collaborative relationships with major directors: Lewton with Jacques Tourneur and Freed with Busby Berkeley, Vincente Minnelli, and Stanley Donen. Freed also had such relationships with major stars (Judy Garland and Gene Kelly).

The term "independent producer" is, if anything, more difficult to define than the work of the film producer. Defined strictly, the term can be applied to any filmmaker who does not work with or for a Hollywood studio or distributor. In this broad sense, independent production would extend to avant-garde independent filmmakers, such as Maya Deren (1917–1961); to documentary filmmakers, such as Barbara Kopple (b. 1946) or Errol Morris (b. 1948); to race filmmakers, such as Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951) and Spencer Williams (1893–1969); and to former Hollywood talents who left the industry, such as the blacklisted filmmakers of The Salt of the Earth (1954), Herbert J. Biberman and Michael Wilson. Most commonly, however, the term independent producer is applied to narrative filmmakers or filmmaking companies with no corporate ties to major studios or distributors beyond contracting for the distribution and financing of a single film or series of films. The term, however, is used very loosely.

Individual independent producers could be more or less involved in the realization of a film than studio producers and studio executives. David O. Selznick (1902–1965), one of the industry's major independent producers and best remembered for his blockbuster adaptation of Gone with the Wind (1939), led several independent companies (Selznick International, Selznick Picture Corporation, Vanguard Films Production). He financed his own films with bank loans and the proceeds from company stock, which he sold to himself, his family, and wealthy friends. He owned his own studio facilities. He placed major stars, directors, and technical crew members under contract to himself. But he also hired these talents under contract at the major studios, and with a few exceptions, he produced films for major studio distribution or through United Artists, which had no studio. In this, he was like Samuel Goldwyn (1882–1974) and Walt Disney (1901–1966). Releasing films through the major distributors facilitated financing, since the distributors could actually advance funds or guarantee bank loans for particular films. The effect of these arrangements was that Selznick's independent filmmaking made him closely bound to the major distributors. For Gone with the Wind , for example, Selznick gained some production financing for what was the most

IRVING THALBERG
b. Brooklyn, New York, 30 May 1899, d. 14 September 1936

Irving Thalberg is widely regarded as one of studio-era Hollywood's most successful producers and production executives. Under Thalberg's leadership, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) rose to the position of the most glamorous, technically accomplished, and prestigious studio in the industry from 1924 through the mid-1930s. Thalberg entered the film industry in 1918, rising to the post of special assistant to Universal Studios head Carl Laemmle before becoming head of production within a year at the age of twenty. He moved to Mayer Productions in 1923, which merged the following year into MGM, where he became vice president and supervisor of production. At MGM, Thalberg defined the term "boy wonder" in the industry as he instituted many budget and scheduling efficiencies.

Thalberg also had an excellent eye for filmable properties (often pre-sold projects such as successful plays and novels) and a superlative sense of casting (drawing from among MGM's "all the stars there are in the heavens"). The film industry admired him for maintaining high production values and "good taste." While an executive who assigned films to a team of producers, Thalberg also worked directly on several successful films, collaborating with creative personnel at every stage. He personally supervised as much as one-third of the studio's annual output, including The Big Parade (1925), Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), Flesh and the Devil (1926) with Greta Garbo, and Grand Hotel (1932). Sometimes Thalberg required extensive, costly reshooting and recutting of films after negative previews, and he famously dismissed Erich von Stroheim from the post-production of Greed (1924).

Thalberg was effectively demoted from his executive position after suffering a heart attack in 1932, but he continued to produce many of the studio's most prestigious projects, including an adaptation of the stage hit The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), starring his wife, Norma Shearer. He also produced Ernst Lubitsch's musical comedy, The Merry Widow (1934), the Clark Gable-Charles Laughton seafaring adventure, Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera (1935), as well as backing or personally producing (or both) such unusual films as King Vidor's common man melodrama, The Crowd (1928), his all-black cast musical, Hallelujah (1929), and Tod Browning's cult horror film, Freaks (1932). A year after Thalberg's death, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which he helped found) created the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award "for the most consistent high level of production achievement by an individual producer." He was also the model for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Monroe Stahr in the writer's last novel, the unfinished The Last Tycoon (1941).

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

The Big Parade (1925), Ben Hur (1926), Grand Hotel (1932), The Merry Widow (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), A Night at the Opera (1935)

FURTHER READING

Flamini, Roland. Thalberg: The Last Tycoon and the World of M-G-M . New York: Crown, 1994.

Marx, Samuel. Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints . New York: Random House, 1975.

Rosten, Leo. Hollywood: The Movie Colony, The Movie Makers . New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1941.

Schatz, Thomas. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era . New York: Henry Holt, 1996.

Thomas, Bob. Thalberg: Life and Legend . Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969.

Matthew H. Bernstein

Irving Thalberg.

expensive Hollywood film to date (over $4 million), but he had to grant MGM the right to distribute his epic in exchange for the casting of MGM contractee and major star Clark Gable in the lead as Rhett Butler.

Still, independent producers like Selznick could gain greater creative autonomy than they would enjoy at a major studio as an executive or studio producer. Selznick worked with various scriptwriters to adapt Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel, fired one director and hired another during principal photography, and made major decisions in the post-production phase about which scenes to retain and which to discard, and within each scene, which shots to use. In short, Selznick was completely in charge of the films he produced.

Not all studio-era independent producers enjoyed Selznick's autonomy or chose to be so involved in film production. Samuel Goldwyn financed his own films almost entirely by himself and he owned his own studio facilities, but he generally let his screenwriters and directors work without his detailed participation in production and was content to comment on the overall results. Walter Wanger (1894–1968), who—like Goldwyn and Selznick—released through United Artists in the 1930s, was not financially independent. His production companies always relied heavily on bank loans and distributor advances and contracts from major studios, which meant his productions were subject to the oversight of the banks and distribution companies. Yet, Wanger was still considered an independent producer in the studio era, one who, like Selznick, had worked as both a production executive and a studio producer beforehand, and he produced several controversial political films ( The President Vanishes , 1934; Blockade , 1938; and Foreign Correspondent , 1940) that major studios and other independents would not have backed. The differences among Goldwyn, Selznick, and Wanger demonstrate how elastic the term "independent producer" was during the studio era.



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