| 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 amusing 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 array of men and women anxious to spend their hard earned dollars in the pursuit of fun and relaxation. Yet of all these new cultural endeavors, 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. Taking root in urban working-class and immigrant neighborhoods, cinemas soon spread to middle-class districts of cities and into small communities throughout the nation. "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 'Bijou Dreams'." By 1910, the appeal of film was so great that nearly one-third of the nation flocked to the cinema each week; ten years later, weekly attendance equaled 50 per cent 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 polities were also portrayed on the serene. "Between 1990 and 1917," observes Kevin Brownlow, "literally thousands of films dealt with the most pressing problems of the day--white slavery, political corruptions, gangsterism, loansharking: slum landlords, capital vs. labor, racial prejudice, etc." While most of these films were produced by studios and independent companies, a significant nmnber 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 organizations that recognized the medium's enormous potential for disseminating propaganda to millions of viewers. |