Cinema in America (1940)

Movies have been an integral part of American culture throughout the twentieth century.

In 1908 a group of people from Chicago came to Los Angeles to shoot a film. Since that time a lot of directors, producers, actors and thousands of other workers have been coming to Los Angeles. In 1911 the first studio appeared in Hollywood, a part of Los Angeles.

The 1920’s were the great era of the silent film with stars like Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. Some famous movies of the 20's were "The Gold Rush", "City Lights". Hollywood made 80 per cent of the world's films. Silent and black-and-white films of those early years were forced out by sound films in the middle of the 1920's. Full-length films came up to take place of short films.

There appeared a lot of studios that grew very quickly and combined in large corporations. A U.S. film production and distribution company, Paramount Pictures, founded in 1912, was a major studio from the silent days of the cinema. Warner Bros, a U.S. film production company became one of the major Hollywood studios after releasing the first talking film, "The Jazz Singer" in 1927. Columbia Pictures, founded in 1924, grew out of a smaller company founded by Harry Corn.

Walter Disney, a U.S. film maker and animator, a pioneer of family entertainment, established his own studio in Hollywood, and his first Mickey Mouse cartoons appeared in 1928. In addition to short cartoons, the studio made feature length animated films, including "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "Pinocchio", and "Dumbo". Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, one of the most powerful Hollywood film-production companies of the 1930s-1950s produced such prestige films as "David Copperfield" and "The Wizard of Oz". Twentieth Century Fox, formed in 1935, made high quality films and is still a major film-production studio. Recent successes include the "Star Wars" trilogy. Major American writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner did screen plays for many films.

The first genres of American films were melodrama; western and comedy, later appeared adventure and historical films. But now the range of genres is much richer. Hollywood got the name of the factory of dreams. It is associated with wealth and paradise of sun and palm trees.

Check your comprehension.

1. When did the first film studio appear in America? 2. Where is Hollywood situated? 3. Who were the first film stars in American silent films? 4. What were the first famous movies in the U.S. 5. When did the sound film appear in America? 6. What was the earliest U.S. film production and distribution company? 7. What famous American film studios are known all over the world? 8. What kind of studio did Walt Disney establish? 9. What Disney's cartoons heroes became known in many countries? 10. What are the main genres of American films?

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