Post-War Hollywood

In the immediate post-war period there were those on the left who saw the prospect of independent production opening up the possibility of greater co-operation between writer and director, and of reduced front office involvement in the production process. It was true that the Breen Office, administering the Production Code, still acted as a check on the filmmakers’ efforts to reflect even the surfaces of American society more accurately, while falling box office returns after 1947 discouraged innovation. Adrian Scott referred in 1946 to industry censorship as ‘a dreadful burden on the creators of films’. The year 1946 had been the peak year for admissions, following the wartime boom, but after that a decade-long decline set in, reflecting new educational and leisure pursuits, the post-war baby boom, and ultimately the spread of television. Yet from the perspective of the 1950s onwards the late 1940s seem to have provided considerable opportunities for more critical film styles and themes. Thomas Cripps has commented on post-war changes in Hollywood by suggesting that the congressional committees that investigated alleged communism in the industry ‘may have constituted a conservative response to fears that the old virtues of Middle America were being subverted by liberals who seemed to have engineered a coup d’etat in the media of mass communication’. ¹