IGCSE History

• Home
• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
    • The Depression
    • The policies of Hoover
    • Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

Hollywood

The cinema and the movie industry had developed before the First World War. At first the films were about twenty minutes long, but during the war the first 'epics' were made. These were feature films with massive sets and complex stories. they paved the way for the big boom in the cinema industry in the 1920s.

The 1920s, and to a lesser extent the 1930s, was the 'Golden Age of Hollywood'. Movie companies were founded and the first real film stars emerged and nearly 100,000,000 people went to see a movie each week. The movie industry came to be based in Hollywood. This was largely by chance. At first films were made in New York, but because early films were made in the open air, Hollywood was a better location. The climate was much warmer, the days were much longer and so it was much easier to make films. By the 1920s Hollywood was the unchallenged centre of the film industry.

The grown thin the number of people going to the cinema every week was a real sign of prosperity. If people could afford the price of a ticket and had the time to spend three or four hours in a cinema, they had to be better off. Sales of cinema tickets became a very effective way of judging the success of the American economy.

The main reason for the success of the cinema was escapism. It could open up whole new worlds for just a few cents. The big hollywood studios such as MGM, Warner Brothers and Paramount began to compete to produce the most ambitious films. At the same time they developed the star system. They publicised their actors and actresses so that they became famous faces. In fact film stars became the most famous people in the world at a time when there was no television.

Throughout the 1920s most films were silent. The industry had not worked out how to synchronise sound and pictures. But in 1927 the first talkie was produced, 'The Jazz Singer'. In fact only about ten minutes of the film actually had sound, but it made all the difference. While some studios continued to produce silent films, it soon became obvious that talkies were the future. The change spelt the end of some of the most famous stars of the 'silent screen'. Actors and actresses who looked good, but who had strange sounding voices, or who just could not speak clearly, suddenly found their careers came to an abrupt end.

There were soon concerns that the cinema might lead to immorality. In 1922 the Hays Office was set up to establish rules about what could and could not be shown on the screen. For example, in love scenes in a bedroom, actors always had to keep one foot on the floor. This was just another example of the double standards that were common in the USA in the 1920s. But despite the attempts to control what was shown on the screen, the cinema could only be a force for change. People saw new images and new ideas and found themselves transported into new lands during their weekly trips to the movies.

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