For an eleven year period between 1948 and 1959, all of the top studios were coerced by antitrust law into so-called 'consent decrees' wherein production companies had a legal obligation to sell their cinema chains and that they had to cease block-booking. They could no longer rent all their films to some rural cinema with the implicit threat that the cinema would get all or nothing. These decrees had radical effects ; they confirmed Hollywood's post-war emphasis on the notion of hit films. In lieu of gearing their studios to assembly-line production, the moguls did aim for one-trick pony successes. Zanuck himself would declare his policy for his esteemed 20th Century Fox in 1946 before Columbia and Universal would respond. The Paramount Case in 1948 would mark the beginning of the end of the Hollywood studio system era.
MGM conferred about economizing on budgets by whittling down movie lengths and since theirs was the most traditionally organized studio it was deemed a novel approach, however by 1958 MGM adopted the old proverbial if you can't beat them, join them philosophy and applied the 'one-hit' policy
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| MGM pus forth their own brand of pander hose with 1957's Silk Stockings. |
It was soon abundantly clear that a film that featured and hosted select key ingredients and one that would adumbrate success, that it was all the more likely to be booked by independent theatre owners and therefore sold at steeper prices. The A-list star, the glorious technicolor and a snappy soundtrack via Cole Porter or any combination of the aforementioned could all but assure a film sale to the persnickety cinema owner as well as the public.