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Oscars Wild: the Impact of Studio Politics on the Academy Awards Post-WWII (1946-1950)

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Oscars Wild: the Impact of Studio Politics on the Academy Awards Post-WWII (1946-1950) Monica Sandler Oscars Wild: The Impact of Studio Politics on the Academy Awards Post-WWII (1946-1950) Abstract This essay examines the Oscars as a promotional tool within the American film industry in a period that saw Hollywood reach new box office highs followed by extreme turbulence as antitrust lawsuits called into ques- tion the legality of the entire studio system. The Oscars, and the wider Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences organization, faced a similar phrase of crisis, having to consider options for self-funding and indepen- dence from the Hollywood studios in a way it had never before. The postwar period saw the Academy Awards reach new heights of popularity as Hollywood studios expanded movie campaigning exclusively focused on the annual ceremony. This paper examines the role that the event played within the studio system during this tur- bulent moment, while also considering how the Academy sought to utilize its most valuable asset to weather the wider storms occurring across Hollywood. In December of 1948, just months before the annu- Picture win for Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) al Academy Awards ceremony, production compa- and a sudden postwar surge in global competition nies across Hollywood announced that they would for Oscar’s most prestigious prizes.4 Whatever the no longer send money to help pay for the event’s actual intentions, the Academy and its awards were production costs. In previous years, roughly thirty suddenly caught in the middle of major industry percent of funding had come directly from the transformations. donations of the big five studios: MGM, Warner The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Bros., Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and RKO.1 Sciences (AMPAS) was founded in 1927 for “the This change sent the Academy into a crisis, cut- welfare, progress and protection of the industry as ting costs at every turn; the event was moved to the a whole.”5 The Academy’s original design was to be organization’s own small theater, leaving many in- a united representative for the entire working-body siders without a ticket come awards night.2 These of the Hollywood film industry.6 An early AMPAS sudden studio cuts emerged from the industry-wide informational pamphlet entitled simply “The Rea- crisis following the Paramount Decision that began sons Why” highlights the organization’s intended the process of eliminating vertical integration with- role in PR: in these corporations. Soon after the ceremony in 1949, it was announced that the cuts to the Acad- For many years, you and we of the cre- emy Awards would become permanent. A joint ative forces in this industry have left to statement from industry leaders including Nicholas others the promotion and protection of Schenck and Albert Warner argued that, “Compa- our interests. Collectively, we have done nies should not be in the position where they can nothing effective either to harmonize and be accused of subsidizing an artistic and cultural fo- correct conditions within our own ranks rum,” despite the previous decades of doing precise- or to cooperate for the welfare of the in- ly that.3 Meanwhile, gossip wires across the world dustry as a whole...We can take aggres- speculated that the move was a response to the Best sive action in meeting outside attacks that 40 The System Beyond the Studios Luci Marzola, editor, Spectator 38:2 (Fall 2018): 40-49. SANDLER are unjust...We can adopt such ways and event’s history. means as are proper to further the welfare My research expands on and combines several and protect the honor and good repute of strands of scholarship on American filmmaking our profession.7 post-WWII. Canonical texts such as Tom Schatz’s Boom and Bust: The American Cinema in the 1940s ex- Many of these listed objectives emerged direct- pose the enormous changes during a period of three ly in response to a growing movement of right-wing years from when Hollywood reached its biggest box groups that were denouncing Hollywood as amoral; office in 1946 to the 1948 Paramount decision that AMPAS was to serve as the united front against prohibited vertical integration in Hollywood.10 As those national attacks. If the Academy’s intention Schatz notes, this was an era in which the American was to serve as a major PR venture for Hollywood, film industry faced extreme ups and downs, end- its Awards for Merit certainly were one of the orga- ing with studios in crisis as they were forced to do nization’s biggest successes in this arena. The event away with long-term practices like block-booking brought together the industry’s best and brightest and vertical integration. The Academy Awards also to celebrate the creative accomplishment of movie changed forever, directly as a by-product of these making, annually glorifying the craft of Hollywood wider studio issues. productions to American film-goers. My discussion of the awards in relation to With AMPAS seemingly a unified publicity 1940s history, however, goes beyond merely what wing for the movie studios, what happened when was happening in the Hollywood system, examin- the studios’ and the Academy’s interests were in op- ing the growth of the Academy Awards as a global position? Through an analysis of Academy in-house phenomenon in wake of a rise in international dis- records and trade articles, I examine the compli- tribution during the era.11 The core of my argument cated dynamics of this relationship. During the considers how the awards fit within economies of post-WWII period the original contract between prestige and the role that the Academy Awards AMPAS and Hollywood was reconsidered in the played in setting those standards as both a PR de- face of global competition and economic turmoil. vice and a tangible way of itemizing Hollywood’s Suddenly, AMPAS’s goals began to move away top filmmaking. Chris Cagle’s recent work Sociol- from defending the will of the American movie ogy on Film: Postwar Hollywood’s Prestige Commod- distributors towards protecting and further devel- ity considers how the notion of prestige changed oping the organization’s own interests and its big- following the war, focusing in on the movement gest commodity, the Academy Awards. towards lower budget productions that featured Little has actually been written on the Acad- pressing social issues and more emotional perfor- emy Awards during this era. Pierre Norman Sands’s mances.12 He notes examples such as The Best Years A Historical Study of the Academy of Motion Pictures of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946), The Lost Week- Arts and Science (1927-1947) provides a wider con- end (Billy Wilder, 1945), and Gentlemen’s Agreement text of issues facing the organization through its de- (Elia Kazan, 1949), all of which went on to win Best velopment and has been an invaluable resource for Picture. This paper expands on Cagle’s argument by scholars regarding the early phrase of the Academy articulating the role that awards contention played as a whole. Sands, however, ends his study at 1947, in bolstering this new distinction in prestige picture emphasizing how this year was a turning point for productions. the institution.8 Furthermore, the essay, “Oscar’s My purpose is to examine how the awards, and Close-up: Producing the Live Television Broadcast therefore the Academy as a whole, fit within these of the 25th Academy Awards” by Dimitrios Pavlou- issues of production, globalization, and distribution nis describes the production of the first television as a vital public relations fixture. At the same time, ceremony in 1953.9 Pavlounis, with his focus on the I extrapolate a new understanding of the event’s organization from 1946 to 1949, provides context relationship to filmmaking by looking at its wider for many of the economic circumstances that lead organization’s budgeting, branding, and its often- to this first televised celebration and emphasizes complicated association to the industries around it the importance of this transitional moment in the that it claimed to serve. By doing so, I show how THE SYSTEM BEYOND THE STUDIOS 41 OSCARS WILD this event, often seen as frivolous or extraneous, was ultimately received mixed reviews at its release, the central to the reconfiguration of the system. movie’s ad campaign focused on Frank Capra’s pre- vious victories at the ceremony positioned the film Oscar Season and Postwar Hollywood as a prestige release. The Oscars celebration itself had become one By the end of World War II, the Academy Awards of the most central function of the Academy of had earned its title as Hollywood’s biggest night. Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences by this time. Starting as a small banquet event in 1929, over the In 1946, the second listed goal of the organization course of its first two decades the event had proven for the year was to “recognize outstanding achieve- itself to have a vital role as a PR platform both to ments by conferring annual Awards of Merit, serv- individual films and the American movie industry ing as a constant incentive within the industry and as a whole. By the postwar period, the end-of-year focusing wide public attention upon the best in mo- movie season prominently featured ads announc- tion pictures.”15 World War II had seen the event ing Awards potential. One review in Modern Screen reach new heights of national popularity, predomi- explained of future Best Picture nominee The Year- nantly due to the development of its live public ra- ling (Clarence Brown, 1946): “They have made it dio broadcast. While there were radio broadcasts as into an Academy Award picture--a work of such early as the second event, they were irregular during honest beauty and shining tenderness;” the movie’s the 1930s because of AMPAS’s budget restrictions quality is summed up simply through the reference in the height of the Great Depression.
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