| When we think of Hollywood—a term I use
loosely to describe American movie production in general, not simply films made
in Los Angeles — we think of films aimed at musing audiences and making money
for producers. During the early years of the new century, as workers won their demands for higher wages and a shorter working week, leisure assumed an increasingly important role in everyday life. Amusement parks, professional baseball games, nickelodeons, and dance halls attracted a wide army of men and woman anxious to spend their hard-earned dollars in the pursuit of fun and relaxation. Yet of all these new cultural endeavours, films were the most important and widely attended source of amusement. For a mere five or ten cents, even the poorest worker could afford to take himself and his family to the local nickelodeon or storefront theatre "Every little town that has never been able to afford and maintain an opera house," observed one journalist in 1908,"now boasts one or two '{{U}}Bijou Dreams{{/U}}' "By 1910 the appeal of films was so great that nearly one-third of the nation flocked to the cinema each week; ten years later, weekly attendance equaled 50 percent of the nation's population. Early films were primarily aimed at entertaining audiences, but entertainment did not always come in the form of escapist fantasies. Many of the issues that dominated Progressive-era politics were also portrayed on the screen. "Between 1900 and 1917," observes Kevin Brownlow, "literally thousands of films dealt with the most pressing problems of the day — white slavery, political corruption, gangsterism, loansharking, slum landlords, capital vs labour, racial prejudice, etc." While most of these films were produced by studios and independent cornpanies, a significant number were made by what we might call today "special interest groups". As films quickly emerged as the nation's most popular form of mass entertainment, they attracted the attention of a wide range of organizations that recognized the medium's enormous potential for disseminating propaganda to millions of viewers. |