Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood

2010
Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1

EP1 Peepshow Pioneers (1888-1907) Nov 01, 2010

As America was transformed by the arrival of millions of immigrants in the 1890s, the first generation of American filmmakers joined with other innovators and entrepreneurs to create a bright new entertainment form that would transform the world. Thomas Edison perfected a device called the Kinetoscope that made pictures move, for one viewer at a time. In France, the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière brought scenes of everyday life to the screen for a large audience, while the magician Georges Méliès created startling visual effects on film and Alice Guy Blaché became the first female film director. In the U.S., moviemaking in these early days was concentrated in New York, New Jersey and Chicago.

EP2 The Birth of Hollywood (1907-1920) Nov 08, 2010

California was quickly recognized as the ideal setting for the American film industry, with its relative freedom from patent problems, constant sunshine and varied geography. As early as 1909, moviemakers were hard at work in Hollywood, including William Selig, who had founded one of the country's first movie studios in Chicago. In 1913 Jesse Lasky, Samuel Goldwyn and Cecil B. DeMille formed a filmmaking company and established themselves among the first generation of Hollywood moguls, producing one of the first feature-length films in the U.S., The Squaw Man (1914).

EP3 The Dream Merchants (1920-1928) Nov 15, 2010

The Hollywood studio system flowered in the 1920s, headed by strong-willed leaders -- most of them immigrants and small-time entrepreneurs and many of them Jewish. Each studio had its own house style. MGM, headed by Russian-born Louis B. Mayer with Irving Thalberg as his "boy wonder" production head, was super-glossy. Warner Bros., eventually to be led by brother Jack, provided grit, while Paramount, headed by Hungarian-born Adolph Zukor, lent glamour. Laemmle's Universal Pictures produced lavish spectacles and a series of fantastic dramas starring Lon Chaney. The movies' influence grew more powerful, affecting real life in terms of fashion, attitudes and behavior.

EP4 Brother, Can You Spare A Dream? (1929-1941) Nov 22, 2010

The movies broke their silence in 1927, as Warner Bros. introduced the first major synchronized sound film, The Jazz Singer. Stage-trained actors were suddenly in demand, and among those to break though in the early sound era were James Cagney, Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn and Edward G. Robinson. For the most part, the movies were able to ride the storm of the Great Depression, as crowds flocked to escapist Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals. Most of the moguls toughed out the hard times, though some tumbled.

EP5 Warriors and Peacemakers (1941-1950) Nov 29, 2010

When the U.S. entered World War II, movies became a powerful means of promoting patriotism, not only through overt propaganda but through films that rallied support while also entertaining. Some directors of the era, including Howard Hawks and Raoul Walsh, were as hard-bitten as their subject matter, while such filmmakers as Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges added an edge of humor and Orson Welles created his masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941). Directors such as George Stevens, John Ford and John Huston saw combat first-hand and created powerful documentaries, as did Frank Capra. When the war finally ended, producer Samuel Goldwyn and director William Wyler summed up the country's uncertain optimism with The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). A darker tone was conveyed by the shadowy world of film noir and the examination of such topics as anti-Semitism (Gentleman's Agreement, 1947) and racism (Home of the Brave, 1949).

EP6 Attack of the Small Screens (1950-1960) Dec 06, 2010

During the 1950s, with the nation enjoying a new prosperity and television providing fierce competition, the reign of the old moguls began a long decline. The movies needed new ideas that went beyond 3-D, widescreen processes and stereophonic sound. Dore Schary became the new production head at MGM, and by 1951 L. B. Mayer was forced out of his own company. At Warner Bros., a hot new director named Elia Kazan brought earthy realism to the screen with such films as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront (1954). An ominous atmosphere was created by the anti-Communist blacklist, poisoning a tough business where reputation was everything. In 1958 Stanley Kramer produced and directed The Defiant Ones, which gave Sidney Poitier above the-title billing and created the first African-American superstar.

EP7 Fade Out, Fade In (1960-1969) Dec 13, 2010

In the 1960s America was in the midst of the most jarring political and social upheaval in decades. Without the old Hollywood structure, as studios were bought, sold and reconfigured, moviemakers searched for new ways to survive and prosper. The grand movie palaces were being replaced by multiplexes, and television was here to stay. In this shifting landscape, the power of the moguls was usurped by super-agent Lew Wasserman, whose aggressive business strategies turned MCA into a powerhouse that absorbed Universal Pictures in 1962. Old-style entertainments such as The Sound of Music (1965) and the James Bond adventures still prospered, but low-budget productions for a younger audience -- such as the works of Roger Corman -- gained importance. Movies would never again be quite the same.
8.5| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 01 November 2010 Ended
Producted By: Turner Entertainment
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Budget: 0
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Official Website: http://tcm.com/moguls/
Synopsis

Each installment focuses on a different era of American movie history, from the invention of the first moving pictures to the revolutionary, cutting-edge films of the 1960s.

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John T. Ryan WITH ALL OF the documentaries about movies that we've had compete for our attention during the years., one would think that all had been said and everything had been covered. Well, that's what we thought until in 2010, TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES aired this multi-episode gem.THOROUGH AND QUITE unpretentious, the series clearly rejects plush modern sets and high priced & well known on screen personalities; who are employed as "Host/Narrator." Instead, the series opts for solid research, the rarest of available surviving films, excellent writing and a very memorable original score on the soundtrack.AS FAR AS the Historical aspects, MOGULS & MOVIE STARS traces the origins of the Movies, not just to Edison or Lumierre, but deep into the 19th Century. It was during this period that we find some of Motion Picturs ancestors; prominent in this Genelogy is an invention known as "The Magic Lantern". Using powerful lights and a series of slides, it was among the Modern Wonders of the World.ONE ASPECT OF the story of Movies is covered quite well. That would be answering the question of just how did how did the phenomenon known as the Studios come into being? How did we wind up with such names as MGM, Warner Brothers, 20ty Century-Fox, Paramount, RKO, Universal, etc., become household words in just a few years? Moguls & Movie Stars does a fine job in shedding plenty of light in this area.WHEREAS PREVIOUS Documentaries have told of how motion picture came to be and how people would plunk down their hard earned nickels to watch short filmed records of a guy chopping wood, Batleships in Havana harbor or Cowboys and Indians of the contemporary West. MOGULS goes far beyond that; even to informing that the Movie Industry once rivaled that of Steel, Oil, Railroads and Automobile.TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES has rerun the series and most likely will again. It is also available on a set of DVD's for the home entertainment market. Either way, if you haven't seen it, do it. It is a great primer for the Movie Buff, The Serious Film Student or a Historian of the American Experience.
metalrox_2000 I should be clear that I am a film history buff, and i really thought I knew pretty much everything there was to know, until I saw Moguls and Movie stars.The documentary starts off in the penny arcades, where we are told that films are considered the entertainment choice of the poor and less educated. This quickly dismissed medium soon takes the world by storm.We then learn how powerful women where at the beginning stages of Hollywood, working as writers and directors, and producing some of the biggest films of the era. The documentary examines the pre-Hayes code films, and what Hollywood did to clean up its own image.Hollywood's handling of Hitler and World War II is told with amazing insight, and it contains a real eye opening story on how Casleblanca may never had been made if it weren't for Pearl Harbor.We then move on to the films of the 50's and 60's, and the story of James Dean is told. The series does end way too soon, as the 1970's, and the era of the cheap drive in flick don't get this stories told.Christopher Plummer is amazing as the narrator, and makes the entire series enjoyable. Hopefully, another installment will be produced, connecting a hundred plus years of Hollywood. This is a must series for not only the true film buff like myself, or the novice with a new interest in the history of Hollywood.
calvinnme If you're coming to this seven part series expecting something like Brownlow's encyclopedic work "Hollywood" you'll be disappointed. This history really limits itself to the joint story of Hollywood and the moguls that formed and sustained the industry from the 1890's until the 1960's. The end of this period is marked by the retirement of Jack Warner, the last of the founding fathers of the industry and the last movie mogul.What may confuse some people is that the first episode of the series really concentrates on the beginning of the movies and what led up to the invention of the motion picture. The early moguls are mentioned but not stressed in this first episode as they are in all the others. Movie stars are mentioned throughout the series as are important directors, but ultimately it is the story of the men who founded the first motion picture studios and how they navigated an industry through the changing times and the first 80 years of film history.
boblipton This series of documentary shows which has been running on the Turner Classic Movies cable station in the United States, gives a very good if standard view of the history of motion pictures -- anyone who has read a lot on the subject will find many 'facts' offered which he or she 'knows' to be false.Nonetheless, this is a very good introduction to the history of the movies and will give people just discovering old films a good idea of the general thrust of their evolution. Filled with sound bites from experts as well as clips and images, it shows, first that movies did no arise from nowhere, but grew out of half a millennium of technical evolution and the peculiar combination of events that led diverse people to become the leaders in what was the major entertainment industry for a good part of the 20th century.