Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 (History of the American Cinema) [Paperback]

Tino Balio (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520203348 | ISBN-13: 978-0520203341 | Publication Date: January 29, 1996

The advent of color, big musicals, the studio system, and the beginning of institutionalized censorship made the thirties the defining decade for Hollywood. The year 1939, celebrated as "Hollywood's greatest year," saw the release of such memorable films as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Stagecoach. It was a time when the studios exercised nearly absolute control over their product as well as over such stars as Bette Davis, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart. In this fifth volume of the award-winning series History of the American Cinema, Tino Balio examines every aspect of the filmmaking and film exhibition system as it matured during the Depression era.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A work of major importance for the serious study of American film." -- Dana Polan, Film Quarterly

"Fascinating. . . . Grand Design gives the most convincing picture yet of how the Hollywood system operated in the 1930s, and was to continue to operate until social changes and the belated introduction of antitrust legislation in the post-war period brought the system to a lingering end in the 1950s." -- Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Tino Balio is Program Director of the Arts Institute and Professor of Communication Arts and Academics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he also served as Director of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research from 1966 to 1982. He is the author of Hollywood in the Age of Television (1990), among other titles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 483 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (January 29, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520203348
• ISBN-13: 978-0520203341
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #455,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly Dull, March 26, 2003

By 

Michael Samerdyke (Big Stone Gap, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 (History of the American Cinema) (Paperback)

I had high hopes for this book. The volumes in this series on the origins of cinema, the Twenties and the Forties are very good. This book, however, proved a chore to get through.

The big problem for me was that Balio seemed more interested in the movie companies as organizations and less interested in the films themselves. Compounding this was the fact that he sees the Thirties as a unit, and believes that the division of the decade's films into pre-Code and post-Code, with 1934 as the turning point, is a myth. Thus, to him, the "fallen women" films, Mae West comedies, classic gangster films, and horror films all died out because the public was tired, not because of censorship problems.

Balio sees filmmaking in the Thirties as dominated by the studios and with directors being hired guns. Hence there is no real discussion of any directors. Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Capra and Josef von Sternberg are barely mentioned, except when Balio complains that their films didn't make enough money.

Indeed, he seems to have no view of his own about the films. Instead, he views FILM DAILY and VARIETY as the voice of God. If they put the film on their 10 best list, it is good, and if they didn't, it isn't worth talking about. The idea that some films popular in the Thirties are no longer highly regarded or that some films despised at the time have become viewed as classics seems not to interest him at all.

If someone who had no idea about the history of American film read this book, he would come away thinking that the "Golden Age of Hollywood" was a myth and these films were artifacts not worth seeing.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great volume among all 10 of the Series now published., September 23, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 (History of the American Cinema) (Paperback)

Balio et al. assemble a fine addition to the Ten Volume Series of the History of American Cinema, conceived and edited by Charles Harpole, foremost film scholar and documentarian. No library, large or small, should be without all ten volumes in the Series because this is the definitive work on the subject.
The Series is published by Scribner-Thomson-Gale company and by the University of California Press. You may have to order direct because these are not discounted trade books.