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→ The Silenced Majority – Women in Early Hollywood

What caused the prevalence and power of women to decline during Hollywood’s Golden Age?

by Alice Tynan

Alongside an economic and cultural crisis, the Great Depression of 1929-1941 witnessed the diminishing agency of women in Hollywood. The Golden Age of cinema was simultaneously woman’s swan song – a plaintive anthem lost in the annals of History. However, women were at the forefront of motion pictures from the very beginning. It was Alice Guy Blaché who created the first ever film La Fee Aux Choux in 1896 as an advertisement for Louis Lumiere’s newest invention. Lois Weber continued to assert female dominance in the burgeoning American industry, becoming the ‘Mayor’ of Carl Laemmle’s Universal studio and actively supporting her female colleagues. Screenwriter Frances Marion was the most prolific and highly paid writer of Hollywood’s Golden Age, receiving the second and third Academy Awards ever bestowed for her creations The Big House (1930) and The Champ (1931). Such was the power and prestige of women in the early days of the motion picture industry. And yet they have been all but forgotten. Seventy years on, revisionist historians are reclaiming cinematic history for the fairer sex, while speculating the cause of women’s exodus from Hollywood. The myriad factors include: the industry upheavals of sound and colour which brought about the end of the silent era, the competing ‘Star’ and studio systems, the infiltration of ‘big business’ Wall Street and of course the impact of the Depression. In addition, religious lobbying and the politicisation of Hollywood through a growing bureaucracy and unionisation further transformed the industry into a male dominated oligarchy. The impact of audience enthusiasm greatly contributed to all of these issues as the entertainment industry continuously sought to maintain public interest. Mentioned above, Frances Marion, her memoirs and Cari Beauchamp’s biography Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood provide an effective case study and predominant focus for investigation. Throughout this essay, Marion’s reflections will symbolise the contemporary ‘voice’ of Hollywood’s women during the decline of their reign.

Women’s departure from Hollywood officially began when the latter found its ‘voice.’ The universal adoption of sound and production of ‘talkies’, significantly altered the industry, as the ‘The Battle of Sound,’ claimed many casualties. With the redundancy of pantomime, and the succession of ‘dialogue,’ Hollywood culled its ranks of actors, directors and scenario writers in favour of those with stage experience. The brutal effect of this technological advancement is parodied by Marion: Listen and you’ll hear the Queen in Alice and Wonderland shouting ‘Off with their heads! Off with their heads!’ It’s going to be our theme song from now on. The day of the voiceless photogenic face is over. The silent era is dead

Indeed her memoirs bear the name Off With Their Heads! adding further weight to the impact of ‘talkies’ on Hollywood. Such an industry ‘shake-up’ disabled women, who constituted over half of the ‘scenarist’ corps. Now their positions were made virtually redundant as ‘dialogue writers’ from the ‘stage’ infiltrated Hollywood. As one of the elite, Marion was deemed capable of tackling the demands of dialogue, and she recalls:

No writer ever forgot his or her first talkie assignment; the vulgar but expressive phrase “I sweated blood” usually followed the mention of it.

Such was the tumult of technological change, which posed the initial threat to Hollywood’s professional women.

The advent of Technicolor further disarmed women in Hollywood. Not only did colour signify a further increase in production costs and overheads, but for women it resulted in a fashion overhaul. ‘Fashion Stylists’ became another authoritative force on women, now obliged to passively allow the remodelling of clothes, footwear, hats, hair and make-up. To be sure, men were subjected to much the same treatment, but it was women who became the vehicles of overzealous male fantasies, as Marion highlights, ‘Breasts were thrust forward, often uplifted by a sculptured Maidenform, and waistlines disappeared.’ With the exponential growth in cinema’s popularity, it was perhaps inevitable that style and fashion would be controlled by studio executives. However Marion’s description of the stylists as, ‘a scourge to us females,’ illustrates Hollywood’s emphasis on women, as colour provided another opportunity for studios to assert their dominance.

The galactic popularity of film created a new breed of celebrity, and a ‘Star’ system was born, which ultimately undermined the collaborative network of women in Hollywood. Reel Women attributes Mary Pickford as, ‘the single handed creator of the star system.’ There is no denying Pickford was ‘America’s Sweetheart,’ ‘the girl with the golden curls,’ images which Marion’s screenplays for Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), and Pollyanna (1920) helped create. Historian Kevin Brownlow even asserts, ‘It would be no exaggeration to state that Mary Pickford…exerted more influence on American productions than anyone else in the industry’ . And yet with the amassing fame and fortune came competition; newspapers and theatres released their lists of ‘Top Stars of the Year’ and studios used these rankings in remuneration negotiations with their stars. Tension, expectation and pressure descended on Hollywood, appropriately articulated by former ‘silent star’ Aileen Pringle in Marion’s memoirs:

The changes are startling…also depressing. What has become of laughter out here? We used to have such jolly times. Now all sense of security seems to be vitiated. Why all this fear and uncertainty? Salaries are still soaring. I was talking to Sam Goldwyn the other day and he said that he had never seen so many unhappy people getting a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Pringle’s questions illustrate the vast changes that had occurred in Hollywood during her nine year absence. The ‘Star’ system was a significant factor in the uncertain climate, as actors clamoured for attention and popular appeal as insurance for their tenuous contracts. The result was a highly charged, competitive environment which Pringle saw as entirely divorced from the ‘jolly times’ of earlier days. While the appeal and nature of celebrity garnered interest and capital from audiences, thereby ensuring the survival of Hollywood, the ‘Star’ system provoked an adversarial atmosphere in the industry, which further inhibited women.

The increasing power and size of production houses resulted in a ‘Studio’ system wherein bureaucracy flourished, diminishing the agency of women. Spurred on by the exponential popularity of ‘talkies’ and their performers, Marion recalls:

Every studio had now become a gigantic factory, cranking out picture after picture, many of them classified as super-productions because they exceeded eight or nine reels.

Small, independent studios could not compete in this arena, and so the Golden Age of Hollywood witnessed the rise of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Universal, Warner Bros and Twentieth Century Fox. The ‘studio system’ also refers to the contractual arrangements directors and actors made, ostensibly tying them exclusively to the one studio. When these ‘gigantic factories’ changed their casting system, Hollywood descended further into disarray. Drawing on the ‘Star’ system, studios limited their long term contracts to the most popular stars, while the vast majority of actors were employed on a single picture basis. Security for the majority of performers and writers became a thing of the past, as the corporatisation of major studios instituted a patriarchal structure; Hollywood rapidly becoming a ‘boys club’of 'big businesses.'

Wall Street’s increasing interest in Hollywood further ingrained this ‘big business’ ethic and resulted in the decline of female control. Investors brought to the cinema a legitimacy desperately sought by studio executives. Furthermore the costs of technological advancement in sound and colour required the support of Wall Street. Joseph P. Kennedy was one of the first to recognise the potential of the film industry. His interest in the ‘gold mine’ of movies piqued as early as 1919 when he began acquiring distribution rights. Kennedy went on to successfully blur the distinction between Wall Street and Hollywood, maintaining the reputation of both a Boston banker, and Hollywood producer. Marion was wary of this infiltration of ‘plutocrats’, who asserted themselves as arbiters of money and creativity. She witnessed the gradual monopolisation of production and distribution, where new layers of bureaucracy effectively sidelined women. Marion illustrates this compromised development, revealing ‘screenwriting became like writing on the sand with the wind blowing.’ As women were predominantly writers, this statement has broader connotations as to the plight of women in the face of increasing financial investment.

The Great Depression effectively removed women from power, as economic crisis claimed Hollywood. Already drastically overdrawn with the adoption of sound technology, the market collapse on 29th October 1929 critically threatened studios and plunged many into receivership or bankruptcy. However, as Beauchamp asserts, ‘bad times were good for the fantasy business,’ and in 1932 MGM even managed an eight million dollar profit. Despite this relative financial success, all major studios sought to minimise costs by cutting wages and putting further limitations on contractual agreements. In response to Roosevelt’s ‘fireside chats’ and subsequent asset freeze during a euphemistic ‘bank holiday’, Universal even went so far as to suspend all employee contracts, citing ‘national emergency’. During this time women were essentially unrepresented at the management level, and as a result, they were further undermined by their studios as the Depression strengthened and legitimised executive power.

The rise of the ‘Agent’ in Hollywood shifted any remaining financial autonomy into the hands of a predominantly male bureaucracy. Marion comments on the predatory nature of agents:

Astute men, facile talkers, their minds uncluttered by any problem beyond their well-organized units, they impressed talented individuals with the need for protection “against the greed of the producers.”

In an increasingly adversarial industry, agents appeared to champion those creative professionals unschooled in the area of big business. However agents became yet another layer of bureaucracy in Hollywood, claiming ten percent of wages and effectively completing the patriarchal process of corporatisation.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences legitimised movies while simultaneously fuelling Hollywood’s competitive nature. The Academy Awards promoted the burgeoning ‘Star’ system, as celebrities congregated in recognition of their own achievements. The recipient of two ‘Oscars’, Marion’s reflection speaks volumes, finding the statute:

a perfect symbol for the picture business: a powerful athletic body clutching a gleaming sword, but the half of his head, the part that held his brains, completely sliced off.

The wry cynicism of this description is indicative of the increasing discontent experienced by Marion during Hollywood’s Golden Age. The Academy became a governing force in Hollywood, and yet here too, women remained unrepresented.

Religion further institutionalised the motion picture industry, instilling ancient patriarchal values into the structure of Hollywood. Responding to the industry’s questionable morals, the Catholic Church founded the Legion of Decency: a nine million strong faction with enough political clout to threaten Hollywood’s brash plutocracy. In 1934 studios responded by signing a ‘Reaffirmation of Objectives of the Production Code,’ which put into effect the heavily religious Production Code created by Martin Quigley and Father Daniel J. Lord four years prior. Joseph Breen was appointed to enforce the Code; his tyrannical reign imposing strict morals on the industry and its writers, who quickly lost any freedom of expression.

Following this religious revolution, Hollywood became an increasingly political arena. And women, who had only gained suffrage less than a decade before, were further sidelined by their political inexperience. Ironically, this development is best illustrated by describing the exceptions to the rule: studio executives Ida Koverman and Kate Corbaley. Koverman came to MGM from a secretarial position with President Hoover, and as Louis B. Mayer’s second in charge, Koverman quickly became a political force within the MGM ranks. In her memoirs, Marion describes Koverman as a ‘mother figure’ and ‘the only woman executive whose advice was respected by the male stars.’ Similarly, Corbaley was a legendary figure at MGM as an authority on plots and story treatments. Beauchamp claims, ‘Mayer and Thalberg both respected an openly depended on Kate and in her decade of service, she had become close to an institution at MGM.’ It is clear from Marion’s accounts that as high ranking and respected executives, these two women were in a class of their own. The economic and political climate of contemporary Hollywood was essentially exclusive of women, as the male-dominated studio management ran the industry.

The prevalence of politics in Hollywood led to a fight for agency among the creative personnel, including women. Antagonised by the increasing executive power and imposition of wage cuts, studio employees banded together as unions. The catalyst came on the 13th March 1933, when unionised stagehands threatened to strike over wage reductions, and successfully shut down Hollywood studios for the first time. Though the workers were quickly appeased, the impact was indelible, as Beauchamp notes:

The veil of industry unity was slowly but surely lifting. The fact that the relatively small group of stagehands was powerful enough to shut down the studios because they were unionized was lost on no one.

Other industry groups quickly mobilised, forming the Screen Actors Guild and the Screen Writers Guild, of which Marion became Vice President. The unionisation of Hollywood illustrates women’s last attempt to reclaim agency in an increasingly politicised industry.

The public’s appetite for movies and celebrity scandal both funded Hollywood, and fuelled the patriarchal evolution. Newspapers and magazines indulged fans with celebrity fashion tips, movie reviews and salacious gossip. Under the auspices of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, gossip columnist Louella Parsons became the ‘High Priestess of the Press’, satisfying the public’s vicarious cravings for the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. The industry’s toleration of Parsons is indicative of the importance Hollywood placed on audiences. As Marion revealed, during such turbulent times:

the public kept a watchful eye on Washington. Meanwhile, the motion picture producers were keeping a watchful eye on the public, the latter being the ore from which their fortunes were mined. A worried or an unhappy public kept theatres filled.

Production and distribution of films therefore became heavily dependent upon audience enthusiasm. However their fickle natures instilled a level of suspicion and fear within studios; as Hollywood raced to satisfy whims and tailor stories towards the current fancy. Marion’s recollection of this ruthlessness is worth noting:

the audiences in the theatres were not unlike those in ancient Roman arenas; once they had turned their thumbs down, they watched with a certain amount of relish as their former heroes were thrown to the lions.

Unpopular celebrities were ‘thrown to the lions’ by studio executives as Hollywood came to adopt the ancient doctrine of pater familias.

The culmination of these factors resulted in a cultural shift within the industry, from a arena of female collaboration to a male-dominated ‘cut-throat,’ competitive environment. At the coalface, Marion articulates this changing culture:

there was definitely a missing element…which many of us old-timers sensed: the joie de vivre of carefree youth, the reward for consistent hard work, and the vision that urges us on. The end of the silent era not only had buried many of yesterday’s performers, but it had also bought into the colony suspicion and avarice.

Such melancholy reflections demonstrate the evolution of Hollywood into a man’s world. Early Hollywood was a boutique industry of creativity and collaboration. Superstar Mary Pickford referred to her best-friend Frances Marion as, ‘the pillar of my career,’ and similarly, Marion called her producer Irving Thalberg, ‘my rock of Gibraltar’. Indicative of fledgling Hollywood, these affectionate titles juxtaposed with pressure, competition, ‘suspicion and avarice’ of the Golden Era effectively illustrates this distinct cultural shift.

Women dominated Hollywood for a brief but influential time. The film industry was founded upon their creative efforts, and fostered by their collaborative network. The popularity of cinema is testament to the tenacity and vision of women like Alice Guy Blaché, Lois Weber, Mary Pickford and Frances Marion. Ironically it was this success which ultimately brought about their decline, as astronomical demand attracted investors. These businessmen transformed the industry, financing the technological marvels of sound and colour and generating a new generation of male talent. As Beauchamp notes, ‘Just as Rosie the Riviter was sent home after World War II, the women of Hollywood were no longer welcome in the jobs men now wanted.’ The patriarchal structures of finance, politics, religion and government were placed on the industry, as popularity soared and the realm of celebrity reached astronomical heights. The Great Depression failed to more than momentarily curtail Hollywood’s progress as movies became a staple of popular culture, and the public an empowered arbiter of success. Competition replaced collaboration as the driving force of the industry, leaving no doubt that Hollywood was now the men’s Golden Age. However the foundations of cinema remain a female domain; their artistic talent, savvy business sense and supportive nature transformed a ‘child’s toy’ into a prodigious empire.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

- Acker, A ‘Reel Women’ <http://www.reelwomen.com/blachebio.html
- Acker, A ‘Reel Women’ – <http://www.reelwomen.com/PICKMAR.htm
- Beauchamp, C ‘Even for Talkies, The Women Who Wrote Worked Silently’
- Beauchamp, C ‘Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood’ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
- Beauchamp, C ‘The Women Behind the Camera in Early Hollywood’
- Black, G.D ‘Hollywood censored: Morality Codes, Catholics and the Movies’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
- Lybarger, D ‘Female Filmmakers’ Pitch Weekly Issue 23. 17th September 1998
- Marion, F ‘Off With Their Heads: A Serio-Comic Tale of Hollywood’ (New York: The Macmillian Company, 1972)
- Moley, R ‘The Birth of the Production Code’ in The Hays Office (Bobbs-Merril, 1945; Ozer, 1971)

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