While it is true that Warners Brothers reigned supreme in topical and impeccably edited realistic pictures in the early 1930s, that it was MGM who turned out your classier comedy and musical and that it was Paramount who encouraged a continental form of sophistication, while Universal went from chiefly horror movies in the Thirties on to the greener pastures of Technicolored adventure films in the Forties, every studio independently made films that would run counter to its prevailing image.
For instance, when a studio is associated with a certain visual style this often refers to the 'look' of a film, due to the laboratory processing favored by each respective studio. A seasoned film editor might discern at first glance which studio was responsible for making the film according to the graininess of the black and white or the tones of the color.
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| The way Paramount Pictures were sometimes Released |
An easier though perhaps less reliable guide to the studio origins of a particular film lay in the recurrence of particular stars in one studio's movies. Actor Tyrone Power was identified with 20th Century Fox, Alan Ladd was one of Paramount's darlings, Clark Gable had an allegiance with MGM and so on down the list of supporting cast and technicians.
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| A bird's eye view into Fox. |
The studio system encouraged high standards of technical excellence. Most films that were independently produced in the 1930s and 1940s were seemingly tatty by comparison, they lacked the strong casts and lavish settings that the big studios could always provide. Goldwyn and Selznick never had a problem with investment and often plonked down the same budgets on a scale equivalent to that of the majors, if not in excess of it, but the other independents were often short of cash or hellbent on being as parsimonious as possible, crossing their fingers to get adequate results.
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| One of Bette Davis' prisons note she was not released for good behavior. |
Bette Davis once famously quipped ' the studio system offered the safety of a prison'. But good films were made nevertheless and every company allowed for the occasional experiment. Columbia, Paramount and Republic, all for example indulged the offbeat notions of writer and director Ben Hecht, Orson Welles however fiercely single-minded, was more productive while the big studios were flourishing than he had been at any time since.