5.Pre-War Hollywood Classics
●The Jazz Singer (1927) / Director: Alan Crosland / Studio: Warner Brothers
This part-talkie is the first feature-length film to include a synchronized music score as well as lip-synched singing and several minutes of speech. The protagonist is portrayed by Al Jolson, a Jewish immigrant who became America’s highest-paid entertainer in the early 20th century for performing in blackface. Although blackface is now recognized as racist and offensive, the practice was popular during the 19th century and contributed greatly to the spread of racial stereotypes. (The Japanese doo-wop group Chanels (later known as Rats & Star), which rose to prominence in the 80s, was also known for performing in blackface, but later stopped). Some critics argue that the use of blackface in The Jazz Singer as more nuanced than in most films, as Jolson’s character—a Jewish immigrant—is himself an alien to American shores, looking for acceptance. Jolson is also credited with popularizing traditionally African-American music among white American audiences, and is recognized for his early support of Black civil rights and Black artists in theater and cinema.
●All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) / Director: Lewis Milestone / Studio: Universal Pictures
This film is a pre-Code adaptation of the 1929 Erich Maria Remarque novel about the stress and struggles of German soldiers during and after World War I. As such it is an anti-war film that depicts the horror of war from the side of Germany. It won the Academy Award for Outstanding Production and Best Director. In Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party opposed the film’s perceived anti-German messages, and it was ultimately outlawed in December 1930.
●King Kong (1933) / Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack / Studio: RKO
Regarded as one of the first monster films, King Kong made history for its special effects sequences and became a worldwide hit. Its box office success helped the struggling RKO get back on its feet. The scene where Kong rampages through New York City and scales the Empire State Building while Ann screams in his grip is one of the most iconic in all of Hollywood history. Many scholars and critics have argued that the film was a cautionary tale about interracial romance and responsible for further enforcing racist stereotypes; at the time Black people were commonly visually depicted as ape-like. Tellingly, the German title for the film at the time was King Kong und die weisse Frau, that is, “King Kong and the White Woman.”
●It Happened One Night (1934)
●Director: Frank Capra
●Studio: Columbia Pictures
While comedies during the silent era were, by nature of the medium, heavily reliant on slapstick, the advent of the talkie would lead to the development of comedies that were more about dialogue—witty, lightening-quick banter. It Happened One Night is a pre-Code comedy classic about a spoiled heiress who has eloped with a playboy pilot against the wishes of her wealthy father. When the father tries to force her to have the marriage annulled, she runs away and boards a Greyhound bus to New York City to reunite with her husband. On the bus she meets a down-on-his-luck newspaper reporter, and the pair go through a series of adventures as they are gradually drawn toward one another. Many of the elements in this film—two characters who are from different social classes, quick, engaging repartee, and a fast-moving plot involving farcical situations—would become hallmarks of the screwball comedy genre. The film won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay—a feat that has only been equaled a few times in Hollywood history, and which is only made rarer by the fact that the film is a comedy.
●The Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act from New York comprised of five brothers born to parents who were Jewish immigrants from Germany. The brothers dropped out of school due to financial hardship and instead fostered their musical talent, eventually touring the U.S. as a vaudeville act. Each of the brothers developed a distinct on-stage personality, but in general they were known for satirizing high society and human hypocrisy, as well as for their improvisational style of comedy. They greatly influenced later comedians, including Japanese acts like Crazy Cats and the Drifters.
In 1929 the brothers—now a four-person act—signed a contract with Paramount Pictures and began producing comedy films. Duck Soup (1933) is their last film with the studio, and is a brilliantly satirical portrayal of fascism that pokes fun at patriotism gone too far and the Hays Code. With the country still reeling from the Great Depression, the cynicism and general anarchy on display in the film was a bit too much for audiences, and it was originally met with a lukewarm reception.
A Night at the Opera (1935) is the brothers’ first film with MGM (they were now a three-person act). It is their most commercially successful film. In response to the reception of Duck Soup, the brothers’ antics are slightly toned down as they become supporting players in service of a love story. The difference between these two films reflects the changing social and political climate and Hollywood’s struggle to engage with the times in a meaningful way.
●Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
These two musical comedies are considered the most successful films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ partnership. Astaire and Rogers appeared in a total of 10 films together as dance partners, mostly in the 1930s. Astaire had originally made a name for himself as a Broadway performer—he was especially recognized for his tap dancing—but was struggling to find a way into films. RKO hired him for a minor role in their 1933 film Flying Down to Rio; Astaire chose Rogers, a fellow Broadway performer, as his dance partner. The duo’s scene became the highlight of the film, and RKO quickly saw that it would be in their interest to capitalize on their chemistry.
Under the Hays Code, films had to be very conservative in their depiction of marriage and love stories—even married couples couldn’t be depicted passionately kissing or engaged in sexual activity. Musicals could tell a passionate, physical love story through the language of dance. It is said that Astaire and Rodgers’ relationship was purely professional, but their chemistry is truly a sight to behold. Many of the dance numbers from Top Hat and Swing Time are considered among the greatest in musical history.
●Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) / Studio: Walt Disney Animation Studio (production) / RKO (distribution)
Loosely based on the German fairy tale of the same name by the Brothers Grimm, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is the world’s first feature-length animated film. Up until that time, Walt Disney had primarily made animated shorts featuring characters like Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney hoped to increase his studio’s prestige and revenues by getting into feature films, but those around him—including his wife—are said to have been against the idea; among those in the industry the film was referred to derisively as “Disney’s Folly". That may partly have to do with the fact society at the time held a conservative view of genetic conditions like dwarfism. Nonetheless, the film was a massive success and the box office receipts enabled Disney to build its headquarters in Burbank in Southern California. This film is also the first to put out a soundtrack album to coincide with its release.
●Bringing Up Baby (1938) / Director: Howard Hawks / Studio: RKO
This film starring Golden Age icons Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant is one of the all-time classic screwball comedies. A mild-mannered paleontologist’s life is thrown into disarray when a free-spirited, scatterbrained young lady and her pet leopard Baby suddenly come into his life. (The Japanese title of the film, humorously, is a literal translation of “Bringing Up Baby".) The film initially received a lukewarm response from American audiences; the director believed it was because all of the characters were screwballs and none were “normal". Conversely, the film’s comedy shares much in common with the zany antics prevalent in Japanese variety shows in the 70s and 80s.
●The Wizard of Oz (1939) / Director: Victor Fleming / Studio: MGM
1939 saw the release of so many enduring classics of American cinema that it is sometimes referred to as Hollywood’s greatest year. The industry was just starting to recover from the Great Depression, and the U.S. had yet to be pulled into the Second World War. As such, the major studios were creating many genre films backed with massive budgets. The Wizard of Oz was MGM’s response to the success of Disney’s Snow White. The film is seminal in its use of Technicolor; the Kansas sequences were filmed in black and white and given a sepia tone, while the Land of Oz is depicted in color. The film won two Academy Awards for Best Music: Original Score, and Original Song (the classic “Over the Rainbow”). In the second half of the 20th century, television airings and VHS rentals would turn the film into a generation-spanning classic now considered the most seen film in movie history.
●Gone With the Wind (1939) / Director: Victor Fleming / Studio: MGM
Gone With the Wind is the epic story following the life of Scarlett O’Hara, the daughter of a plantation owner, in Atlanta, Georgia during the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras. It is the film adaptation of a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell. The film was a worldwide hit, garnering Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Especially notable is the fact that Black actress Hattie McDaniel, who portrayed the house servant Mammy, became the first Black person to win an Oscar. That being said, many point to the role as having helped spread the “Mammy” archetype of the obedient black slave subservient to their white masters.
After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 sparked protests across America against racism and police brutality, the film was temporarily removed from the movie streaming service HBO Max; it has since returned to their lineup, albeit with an introductory note explaining the historical context and our modern understanding of what it represents. The title “Gone With the Wind” refers to the idea that the Civil War brought about the end of the Southern way of life—largely defined by Black subjugation—when the Confederacy lost to the Union.
●Stagecoach (1939) / Director: John Ford / Studio: United Artists
Stagecoach is generally considered John Wayne’s breakthrough film and a masterpiece of the Western genre. Director John Ford insisted on casting Wayne, then known primarily as a B movie actor, in a key role, and shot the film on location in Monument Valley. Both would become synonymous with the genre. Today the film is considered problematic for its romanticization of white settlers and their quest to expand west; the Apache tribe is depicted as cruel savages—something that would become a common portrayal is many Western films. That being said, what better metaphor is there for the precarious position white America finds itself in now under the Trump administration than the idea of a group of frightened men riding on a stagecoach through hostile territory? President Trump recently drew criticism for the divisive remarks he made in front of Mount Rushmore as part of Independence Day celebrations, but when you consider that Mount Rushmore is a monument to America’s white history, carved by a KKK sympathizer on sacred land stolen from the Lakota Sioux, the whole fiasco seems pretty par for the course—pun intended.
●Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) / Director: Frank Capra / Studio: Columbia Pictures
Frank Capra is one of the most important directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood, known for films like It Happened One Night and It’s a Wonderful Life. Capra was born in Sicily in Italy and immigrated to America with his family when he was five years old. He grew up in the “Sicilian ghetto” of Los Angeles, and his experiences as an immigrant would greatly shape his worldview and his aspirations. He believed unwaveringly in the American Dream and strived to prove himself—both qualities that are evident in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a film about political corruption. Its political content was criticized as being anti-American and pro-Communist by some, but at its heart it is the tale of a solitary man standing up for what he believes in, and achieving a moral victory over authority. In that regard, the film also hints at the path Capra would take just a couple of years later when the U.S. was pulled into World War II.
6.Epilogue
As we’ve seen in this article, many all-time classic films emerged from Hollywood during the pre-war era despite the fact—or perhaps because of the fact—that the studio system was churning out so many movies every year. Most of the films I’ve talked about fall clearly into a specific genre, be it musical, screwball comedy, or Western; when you revisit them they may seem cliched and tame by today’s standards, but it’s important to remember that they originated most of the tropes that generations of directors to come would imitate and build upon.
The other commonality between these films is that they are all unabashedly of Hollywood and undeniably American. This is largely due to the transformations Hollywood underwent with the shift from silent films to talkies.
Because silent films do not contain spoken dialogue, they have a certain statelessness—or to put it another way, universality—to them. Charlie Chaplin was an English actor who created the Tramp, an iconic American character. European immigrants could play roles without having to worry about their accent. Intertitles were translated into Italian, Russian, and various other languages to make the films accessible to all audiences. Overseas, in places where the literacy rate was low, people who could read would provide commentary aloud to help the members of their communities understand what was going on. A silent film did not necessarily mean a silent theater.
With the arrival of talkies and the rise of the studio system, nationality suddenly became glaringly apparent in films. Whether it was the way a character spoke, the visual language of how a film was constructed, or the plot, films became increasingly specific and distinctive in their depictions. Major Hollywood movie studios aggressively promoted their films to overseas markets. With larger European countries and Japan as the exception, the film industries of many smaller countries became unable to compete—so instead, they imported more and more Hollywood films. Meanwhile, the introduction of the Hays Code would further push Hollywood into formulaic commercial territory. The top executives, who were all chasing their own versions of the American Dream, were focused on increasing box office revenues and profits. The pre-war history of American cinema is the story of the globalization of Hollywood.
Then, as the 30s wore on, Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany. Its paramilitary wing carried out a pogrom against Jews in November 1938—Kristallnacht—which would be a prelude to World War II and the Nazi plan for the genocide of Jews. This put Hollywood executives in a tough spot, as the U.S. had yet to enter the war and they did not want to lose the German market. By the time the U.S. officially entered the war in 1941, however, Hollywood was ready to throw its full support behind America’s war effort.
