Introduction

Pravanthika Alluri 

The 1930s was referred to as the golden age of Hollywood. Most of the movies from this decade were black and white. The pictures which I want to discuss about were all in color. The 1930s was considered the golden age because many of the movies made in that decade ended up being classics which are still famous and talked about today. Movies such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Wizard of Oz, and many Shirley Temple movies. The Great Depression was happening at this time which caused people to really look for movies as an outlet and escape from their struggles. While everyone was going through a hard time during this period, the Hollywood movie industry was going through this “Golden Age” because movies were doing so well. These movies gave people reason to feel emotions other than the depression that they were going through. Also during this decade was the first film in a three-color Technicolor. It was Walt Disney’s animated talkie, Flowers and Trees (1932). Since the Great Depression was happening at this time, the attendance in movie theaters was not as much as people would have liked. Even through that, the movies still made good profits. The movies which really made a difference and the movies which I would really like to talk about are movies like Snow White and Wizard of Oz because those movies were movies with happy endings which is what people needed at this time period. They needed to see what happiness could be like and that’s what they experienced when they went to see these types of movies. The movie industry was dominated by five main studios. 20^th Century Fox, MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Paramount, Warner Bros., and RKO Radio were studios which had their dream factories and their employees and workers were fully in control which was the studios’ strength. They had a strong influence over the choice of films, the budgets, the selection of scripts, and everyone working for the film whether it be the actors or the technicians. Even though these were the five main strong studios, at that time, there were three other studios which came in a close second. They were Columbia, Universal, and United Artists. The 30s was also the age of glamour so MGM studio soon became the biggest, most predominant and star-studded studio.