Modern Hollywood is dominated by a handful of studios: Columbia, Disney, Fox, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros. Threatened by independents in the 1970s, they returned to power in the 1980s, ruled unquestioned in the 1990s, and in the new millennium are again beseiged. But in the heyday of this new classical era, the major studios movies — their stories and styles — were astonishingly precise biographies of the studios that made them. Movies became product placements for their studios, advertising them to the industry, to their employees, and to the public at large. If we want to know how studios work—how studios think—we need to watch their films closely. How closely? Maniacally so. In a wide range of examples, The Studios after the Studios explores the gaps between story and backstory in order to excavate the hidden history of Hollywood's second great studio era.

Modern Hollywood is dominated by a handful of studios: Columbia, Disney, Fox, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros. Threatened by independents in the 1970s, they returned to power in the 1980s, ruled unquestioned in the 1990s, and in the new millennium are again beseiged. But in the heyday of this new classical era, the major studios movies — their stories and styles — were astonishingly precise biographies of the studios that made them. Movies became product placements for their studios, advertising them to the industry, to their employees, and to the public at large. If we want to know how studios work—how studios think—we need to watch their films closely. How closely? Maniacally so. In a wide range of examples, The Studios after the Studios explores the gaps between story and backstory in order to excavate the hidden history of Hollywood's second great studio era.

Contrary to theories of single person authorship, America's Corporate Art argues that the corporate studio is the author of Hollywood motion pictures, both during the classical era of the studio system and beyond, when studios became players in global dramas staged by massive entertainment conglomerates. Hollywood movies are examples of a commodity that, until the digital age, was rare: a self-advertising artifact that markets the studio's brand in the very act of consumption. The book covers the history of corporate authorship through the antithetical visions of two of the most dominant Hollywood studios, Warner Bros. and MGM. During the classical era, these studios promoted their brands as competing social visions in strategically significant pictures such as MGM's Singin' in the Rain and Warner's The Fountainhead. Christensen follows the studios' divergent fates as MGM declined into a valuable and portable logo, while Warner Bros. employed Batman, JFK, and You've Got Mail to seal deals that made it the biggest entertainment corporation in the world. The book concludes with an analysis of the Disney-Pixar merger and the first two Toy Story movies in light of the recent judicial extension of constitutional rights of the corporate person.

By 1915, Hollywood had become the epicenter of American filmmaking, with studio "dream factories" structuring its vast production. Filmmakers designed Hollywood studios with a distinct artistic and industrial mission in mind, which in turn influenced the form, content, and business of the films that were made and the impressions of the people who viewed them. The first book to retell the history of film studio architecture, Studios Before the System expands the social and cultural footprint of cinema's virtual worlds and their contribution to wider developments in global technology and urban modernism. Focusing on six significant early film corporations in the United States and France—the Edison Manufacturing Company, American Mutoscope and Biograph, American Vitagraph, Georges Méliès's Star Films, Gaumont, and Pathé Frères—as well as smaller producers and film companies, Studios Before the System describes how filmmakers first envisioned the space they needed and then sourced modern materials to create novel film worlds. Artificially reproducing the natural environment, film studios helped usher in the world's Second Industrial Revolution and what Lewis Mumford would later call the "specific art of the machine." From housing workshops for set, prop, and costume design to dressing rooms and writing departments, studio architecture was always present though rarely visible to the average spectator in the twentieth century, providing the scaffolding under which culture, film aesthetics, and our relation to lived space took shape.

Revealing the facts rather than the myths behind Orson Welles's Hollywood career, this groundbreaking history fills in the gaps behind the drama of one of the most well-known American filmmakers.

What do Franklin Roosevelt, Dr. Seuss, the U.S. Navy, and Mr. Magoo have in common? They are all part of the surprising story of the pioneering cartoon studio UPA (United Productions of America). Throughout the 1950s, a group of artists ran a business that broke all the rules, pushing animated films beyond the fluffy fantasy of the Walt Disney Studio and the crash-bang anarchy of Warner Bros. Instead, UPA’s films were innovative and graphically bold—the cartoon equivalent to modern art. When Magoo Flew is the first book-length study to chronicle the complete story of this unique American enterprise. The book features cameo appearances by Aldous Huxley, James Thurber, Orson Welles, Judy Garland, Robert Goulet, Jim Backus, Eddie Albert, and Woody Allen, as well as a select filmography of the best of UPA. Ebook Edition Note: The ebook has three images redacted: figures 1, 2, and 51.

In 1923, two enterprising brothers named Walt and Roy Disney decided to go into the movie business together, establishing the Disney Brothers Studio in Los Angeles, California. Since then, Walt Disney Studios has released hundreds of groundbreaking and entertaining shorts and full-length feature films in both animation and live-action, garnering countless awards, accolades, and aficionados the world over. But just as Walt was never a man to rest on his laurels, the Disney Studio continues to surpass itself, innovating new technology, pioneering new techniques, and gleaning higher box-office returns with every passing decade. Abundantly illustrated with behind-the-scenes photographs and artwork from the studio's ninety-plus years of productions, The History of the Walt Disney Studio celebrates Walt Disney's dream factory, which has always been and continues to be the heart of the Walt Disney Company. From Pinocchio and Fantasia, World War II propaganda films to the Disneyland TV show, Bedknobs and Broomsticks to Pirates of the Caribbean, some of the company's most monumental and iconic creations have been brought to life at the Studio. So park your car in the Zorro lot, take a stroll down Mickey Avenue, and get ready for an insider tour . . . this is the Walt Disney Studios like it's never been seen before.