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HOLLYWOOD is a place of ritual, a place where the secrets of power are of magical significance, a place where superstition, sex and money mingle, where human values are distorted and sometimes lost. It is, in short, a part of that modern cultural continent we all inhabit, a place where in exaggerated form we can see our own communities. The readymade daydreams at the neighborhood movie do not spring from thin air they are made by the natives of Hollywood, and they in turn wield great power over us. What Dr. Powdermaker gives us is a reliable, sharp-eyed guide to that system of power. Here are some samples of her hard-hitting observations:

"In Hollywood primitive magical thinking exists side by side with the most advanced technology."

"Almost no one trusts anyone else, and the executives, particularly, trust no one, not even themselves."

"Hollywood people seem more at home with the inanimate, with property which can be measured in dollars and which can be manipulated to increase itself .... human values have to struggle hard to exist at all."

"Hollywood represents totalitarianism .... In Hollywood, the concept of man as a passive creature to be manipulated extends to those who work for the studios, to personal and social relationships, to the audiences in the theaters and to the characters in the movies."

"Escape, per se, is neither good nor bad .... The real question is the quality of what one escapes into .... Hollywood provides ready-made fantasies or day dreams, and the problem is whether .these are productive or nonproductive, whether the audience is psychologically enriched or impoverished by them."

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COPYRIGHT 1950, BY HORTENSE POWDERMAKER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK IN EXCESS OF FIVE
HUNDRED WORDS MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT
PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH LITTLE , BROWN AND COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

page v

TO DR. PAUL FEJOS

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Acknowledgments

AN ANTHROPOLOCIST incurs so many obligations in the field, and in the course of writing, that it is impossible to list all those to whom he is indebted. However, I do want to express my deep gratitude to the literally hundreds of people in Hollywood who so generously gave me of their time and interest, and without whose cooperation the field study could not have been made.
Many scholars have contributed to my intellectual orientation, through personal contact or writings, or both. Among these, I should like to particularly mention the late Bronislaw Malinowski and Edward Sapir; Ralph Linton, Alfred Kroeber, Theodor Reik, Erich Fromm, and the late Harry Stack Sullivan. I am much indebted, likewise, to friends and colleagues in Los Angeles and New York for stimulating and helpful discussions and special thanks are due to Carl Withers, Geraldine Emily Smith, Paolo Milano and Ian Watt.

The project was sponsored by the Viking Fund. I am exceedingly grateful to the Board of Directors for making it possible and for their generous support. The dedication to Dr. Paul Fejos does not adequately express my appreciation for his contributions of time and critical interest and for his unique qualities of insight.

HORTENSE POWDERMAKER
New York, 1950

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Introduction: Why an Anthropologist Studied Hollywood 3

I Habitat and People, Mythical and Real 16

II Mass Production of Dreams 39

III Taboos 54

IV Front Office 82

V Men Who Play God Ioo

VI Lesser Gods, but Colossal III

VII The Scribes 131

VIII Assembling the Script 150

IX The Answers 170

X Directors 185

XI Acting, in Hollywood 205

XII Stars 228

XIII Actors Are People 254

XIV Emerging from Magic 281

XV Hollywood and the U.S.A. 307

Index 333

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3

I SPENT A YEAR in Hollywood, from July 1946 to August 1947, a more normal year than those which followed. I went there to understand better the nature of our movies. My hypothesis was that the social system in which they are made significantly influences their content and meaning. A social system is a complex coordinated network of mutually adapted patterns and ideas which control or influence the activities of its members. My hypothesis is hardly original, although it has not been applied before to movies. All art, whether popular, folk or fine, is conditioned by its particular history and system of production. This is true for Pueblo Indian pottery, Renaissance painting, modern literature and jazz as well as for movies. These are a popular art concerned with telling a story. They differ from folk art in that while consumed by the folk, they are not made by them; and they are unlike the fine arts, since they are never the creation of one person. But although movies are made by many people in the setting of a big industry, certain individuals have power to strongly influence them, while others are relatively powerless.

My field techniques had some similarities to and some differences from those I had used on an island in the Southwest Pacific and elsewhere. As in other communities, I had to establish and maintain the same role: that of a detached scientist. While in Hollywood I was a part-time visiting professor of anthropology at the University of California in Los Angeles, a useful local sanction for this role. More important, however, was the absence of any desire on my part to find a job in the movie industry or to become a part

of it. This was unique for anyone living in Hollywood for a year. Then, too, I had no ax to grind in a situation where everyone was very busy grinding his own; instead, I was trying to understand the complicated system in which they worked and lived. I saw people neither as villains nor heroes, but as playing certain roles in this system.

I took the inhabitants in Hollywood and in the South Seas seriously, and this was pleasing to both. To me the handsome stars with their swimming-pool homes were no more glamorous than were the South Sea aborigines exotic. All, whether ex-cannibal chiefs, magicians, front-office executives, or directors, were human beings working and living in a certain way, which I was interested in analyzing.

In Hollywood there were the great advantages of a well-documented history and of not having to learn a new language or work through an interpreter. The matter of a "sample" selection of people to study was more difficult. That problem had hardly existed in the South Seas, since there I lived in a village of about two hundred and fifty people and knew them all well. In Hollywood this was obviously impossible.

I arrived there with a few letters of introduction, and during the first month I met everyone I could. Gradually I became better acquainted with key people who were helpful in making necessary contacts as well as giving me data. My sample was approximately three hundred people, and was representative of the various functional groups such as producers, writers, directors, actors and so on, and included the very successful, the medium successful and the unsuccessful. Since political opinions may influence attitudes, the sample also cut across left, right and center groups. It was not the ideal random sample of the statistician, which while theoretically perfect would have been impossible to use in this type of field work. Taking every nth name in a directory would simply not have worked. But I endeavored to make the sample as representative and as complete a picture of working relationships as possible. A producer would tell me how he worked with his writers, and this would be supplemented by interviews with five or six writers who had worked with him. A director would talk about his

5

relationships with actors; later I would interview a number of actors with whom he had worked.

Some people I saw once, many others two, three, or a half-dozen times. There were some sufficiently interested in the study whom I could see almost any time I wished. The number of interviews were approximately nine hundred.

The first interview with anyone was "set up" - that is, I came by appointment after an introduction which both explained what I was doing and more or less vouched for me. The place for the interview varied and studios, restaurants, and homes were all used. Leisurely luncheons and evening or weekend visits in homes were the best and most frequent settings and were always used for interviewing actors. It was the custom for successful actors to be interviewed on the set by representatives of magazines and newspapers, with a publicity man present, but this would have been an impossible interviewing situation for me. Executives, producers and directors could be interviewed in their offices without anyone else present. Some of these I saw also outside the studio. Writers were interviewed in their homes or at lunch.

Everyone knew the purpose of my study, and that the names of those called on would be held in confidence. I usually began by getting the interviewee to talk about whatever picture he was working on, or the last one he had finished. This enabled me to get specific data on one situation. From there we could go on to his experiences since coming to Hollywood, to his background before that, and to a discussion of other problems. Sometimes the interview would go off on tangents, depending on the particular interests of the respondent. I had a detailed outline of problems, but it was left at home; the conversation was directed in a seemingly casual manner. However, it was never completely directed, because it was important to encourage spontaneity. Many times I was given data on problems which I would not have known existed if I had hewed too closely to a certain line of interviewing.

I took no notes during the interview except when I was given statistical data which I asked permission to write down. Among a primitive people who had no writing, I could write continuously in front of them. Thave experimented on this point in contemporary

6

field studies in other places as well as in Hollywood, and have found that when I want fairly intimate data, I get more by not writing during the interview, even at the risk of forgetting some details. In Hollywood, as soon as the interview was over I drove around the corner and, sitting in my car, wrote it up roughly. Then, as soon as possible, usually within twenty-four hours, each interview became part of a dictaphone record, which was later transcribed by a secretary.

Hollywood people made excellent interviewees for a number of reasons. The level of frustration was high, and frustrated people love to talk. There were also a small but appreciable number who were helpful because they saw Hollywood in comparison with other societies. A few were Europeans; others had come recently from Broadway. Some people were good for exactly the opposite reason. They knew only Hollywood and, unaware of other standards, made excellent respondents because of their naivete. There were also the reflective people, who had long been disturbed by the chaotic complexity of Hollywood and who enjoyed serious discussions about it. But the most important reason for being able to get data is one that underlies success in any field work, whether in primitive or modern societies: all human beings love to talk about themselves and are flattered at having their opinions taken seriously.

One afternoon I had a particularly fruitful interview with a producer, who had given me very generously of his time. The interview lasted about two hours, and he had told his secretary that he was in conference and not to be interrupted by phone calls. He did practically all the talking with only an occasional question from me. When I finally got up to go he said, "You know, this has been simply fascinating. You must come again."

While much of the data came from interviews, there were other important sources. Motion Picture Association of America made available to me its complete files on the implementation of its Production Code, which I have called "Taboos." The Screen Writers' Guild permitted me to read its files on the arbitration of screen credits. Both sources were invaluable for factual data. Executive secretaries of the Writers' Guild, Actors' Guild and various

other guilds were all most helpful in giving statistical and other data.

During the year in Hollywood, I read most all of the trade papers. But long before that, I had become acquainted with the weekly Variety, which was the most important single source of printed information. Its frank, detailed news was and continues to be an invaluable source of data; and its colorful language of "pix's" and "nix's" is a pleasure.

As in any field trip, my role was that of participant-observer. In the beginning, I went on the sets a number of times and watched the directors, actors and others while a picture was being shot, primarily to familiarize myself with this process. I went to a number of guild meetings and listened to the members discuss their problems.

Just as I sat around campfires in the evening with my native friends in the South Seas and participated in their feasts, so in Hollywood I had leisurely evenings with friends, and went to some of their parties. As in other field trips, this was my life for the time being and I was completely immersed in it. I was always taking notes, mentally or otherwise. I continuously thought about and lived with the problems of the study, and I was constantly getting new ideas, reformulating hypotheses on the basis of new data, and clarifying ideas through discussion. This is the background of any intensive research.

The data are not all of the same order. A large part of the material is a factual account of the mores and the way they work. An equally important part is concerned with attitudes to the mores. While I tried to get the norm for each of the major patterns, whether of behavior or attitude, I was equally interested in the exceptions often clarify the norm. In a changing situation, the exceptions may also represent new trends. For most of the material here is strong documentation, while-as in all field studies-there is some based on impressions only, which I have so labeled. The emphasis was always on the relationships between the data, just collecting it. The study as a whole may be regarded as an example of applied anthropology, that is, using an anthropo-

8

logical point of view to observe and understand a contemporary institution.

The anthropologist has a measure of objectivity from having lived in and studied cultures other than his own. But he cannot escape completely from his own society and its values. As Gunnar Myrdal writes:

Full objectivity, however, is an ideal toward which we are constantly striving, but which we can never reach. The social scientist, too, is part of the culture in which he lives, and he never succeeds in freeing himself entirely from dependence on the dominant preconceptions and biases of his environment.

The value premises are themselves subject to study, and, again as Myrdal writes, they "should be selected by the criterion of relevance and significance to the culture under study." The choice of the social scientist is between being aware of his values and making them explicit, or being unaware and letting the reader get them by inference. It seems more scientific openly to present the values, which can then be rejected by a reader if he chooses, than to have them hidden and implicit.

The very selection of a problem indicates a value. Underlying much of the scientific work of biology is the concept that health is better than sickness. The fact that among one primitive tribe epilepsy is a necessary condition for the prestige position of shaman does not negate the validity of our goal of health. Just as most of us think that health is better than sickness, so we consider maturity better than immaturity. It is good to grow up psychologically as well as physiologically. Maturity is, of course, a very large concept with many characteristics. Among them is the ability of the individual to face life, to make decisions, to be flexible and able to adapt to changing situations, and to utilize a considerable number of his potentialities. The human species is relatively very young, a million years or so in more than a billion years of life on earth. Indi-

viduals and groups are in different stages of growing, and I know of none who could be considered really mature. To me a democratic society represents a more grown-up way of living and one more likely to encourage maturity in its members than does a
totalitarian society.

My interest in American society is both as an anthropologist and as a citizen. The interpretation in this book is based on a way of thinking conditioned by twenty years of anthropological training and experience and the particular orientation of my personality. Other interpretations are possible. It is, however, the anthropologist's job not only to describe but to say also what he thinks his data mean.

But while values influence, as they always do, the choice of problem and interpretation of data, they do not affect its collection or choice. This, whether from interviews, written, or printed sources, is recorded as objectively and accurately as possible.

The book tries to explain in nontechnical language how the social system underlying the production of movies influences them. This, of course, does not preclude the existence of other conditioning factors, such as financing, exhibition and distribution, and still others. It is, however, part of the nature of all scientific work to limit a problem and to work intensively on certain aspects selected for study. Much was learned in the writing of the book, which was combined with college teaching, mostly part-time.

In my thinking and in the book I have asked more questions than I could answer. There are some fairly definite answers, and others hypotheses. The emphasis has been on trying to understand the complexities of the Hollywood social system rather than on reducing it to an oversimplified formula and, likewise, to see the relationship between Hollywood and the society in which we live.

I did not try to do a complete study of Hollywood as a community or to analyze all aspects of movie production. Neither would have been possible in the time at my disposal or necessary in terms of my problem. My questions were concerned with what aspects of the system of production and which individuals most influenced movies. The answers were found in a study of the locus of power and its exercise, in the taboos which circumscribe all

10

production, in the values as represented in goals, in historical and economic factors, and in the introduction of new technology and new ideas with resulting conflicts between old and new.

As in any society, the myths, folk tales and gossip were all relevant to understanding it. Since no social system can be understood without a knowledge of the people through whom it functions, the personalities of those who sit in the front office, of producers, directors, actors, writers, and others, were observed. Their backgrounds, goals, ways of thinking, frustrations and compensations were all significant. Equally important were their relationships with each other, and among the key ones were those of producer-writer, director-actor, and of all with the front office. All influence the creative aspects of movie production and leave their imprint on the movies. Although no movie could be made without cameramen, set designers, musicians, costume and makeup departments, carpenters, electricians and many others, these have relatively little influence on the content and meaning, and so were not studied in any detail. Related problems of distribution and exhibition are discussed only incidentally, since the study was focused on production in Hollywood.

In analyzing the data, the most important criteria were, first, the degree to which the Hollywood system of production was oriented to maintain and strengthen the qualities essential to its product, which is storytelling, and, secondly, how well the system utilized its resources. This kind of analysis is necessary from the point of view of movies both as a big industry, and as a popular art form.

Obviously, no anthropologist could study Hollywood as an isolated phenomenon. It is part of the United States. But Hollywood is no mirrorlike reflection of our society, which is characterized by a large number of conflicting patterns of behavior and values. Hollywood has emphasized some, to the exclusion of others. It is the particular elaboration and underplay which is important for this study.

Although an expedition to Hollywood has some resemblance to other field trips, it is not quite the same as studying a tribe of headhunters in New Guinea, who have never before been observed. Much is known about Hollywood and much has been written about it. But no anthropological lens had been focused on it. This brings a

11

certain frame of reference namely, the social system as well as the knowledge, techniques and insights gained from comparative studies of the human species from the Stone Age until today. The purpose of the study is to understand and interpret Hollywood, its relationship to the dreams it manufactures, and to our society.

I am concerned with opening up the general problem of movies as an important institution in our society. A unique trait of modern life is the manipulation of people through mass communications. People can be impelled to buy certain articles and brands of merchandise through advertising. Columnists and radio commentators influence political opinions. Movies manipulate emotions and values. just as advertising can and does promote anxieties to increase consumption, movies may increase certain emotional needs which can then only be satisfied by more movies. In a time of change and conflict such as we experience today, movies and other mass communications emphasize and reinforce one set of values rather than another, present models for human relations through their portrayal by glamorous stars, and show life, truly or falsely, beyond the average individual's everyday experiences. The influence of the movies touches the lives of 85,ooo,ooo American men, women and children who sit in the audience and likewise extends into remote corners of the earth. The inventions of printing press, radio, and movies have probably been as revolutionary in their effect upon human behavior as were those of the wheel and the coming of steam.

Opinions on the influence of movies range from viewing them as the hope for a better world to the fear of their degrading mankind. Some critics hold them responsible for practically everything they disapprove of, from juvenile delinquency to drunkenness and divorce. These problems, however, have a long and involved history in the life of individuals and society, and the causal factors are complex and not completely known. More important are the millions of people who weekly and monthly go to movies and who do not become delinquents, criminals, or drunkards. These more or less normal everyday people may over a period of time be

12

influenced subtly, but deeply, in their ideas of human relations, and in their values.

Movies are successful largely because they meet some of modern man's deepest needs. He has long known increasing insecurity. He is filled with apprehension about the present and the future. The atomic bomb brings fear of destruction, and the struggle between democracy and totalitarianism throughout the world is truly frightening. Even before these two epochal happenings, the anxieties of modern man had increased because of his growing feeling of isolation and consequent loneliness. This feeling occurs not only in big cities with their intensive concentration of people and industry; it has spread even to agricultural areas, where the traditional rural attitudes have been replaced by those usually associated with the city. Anxieties are further deepened by difficulties in understanding national rivalries, the conflicts in ideology, the complex theories of psychoanalysis and of relativity and so on, which about the average man's head. The popularity of any book which attempts to relieve this situation gives further evidence. Joshua Liebman's book, Peace of Mind, was on the bestselling list of fiction books continuously for several years after its publication and so also was the latest Dale Carnegie volume, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. But the book-buying public represents only a small fraction of the population; for the masses of people the reading of books is not the way out of their confusion and apprehension.

In this age of technology and the assembly line, many people wish to escape from their anxieties into movies, collective daydreams themselves manufactured on the assembly line. To some people, the word "escape" connotes a virtue; for others it is derogatory. But escape, per se, is neither good nor bad. All forms of art offer some kind of escape, and it may well be that escape is a necessary part of living. The real question is the quality of which one escapes into. One can escape into a world of imagination and come from it refreshed and with new understanding. One can expand limited experiences into broad ones. One can escape into saccharine

13

sentimentality or into fantasies which exaggerate existing fears. Hollywood provides ready-made fantasies or daydreams; the problem is whether these are productive or nonproductive, whether the audience is psychologically enriched or impoverished.

Like all drama and literature, movies extend the experiences of the audience vicariously, and translate problems which are common to mankind into specific and personal situations, with which identification is easy. Results from some preliminary research with audience reactions provide the hypothesis that audiences tend to accept as true that part of a movie story which is beyond their experience. A low-income group of workers, for instance, were very critical of part of one movie which touched their own experiences, saying, "That's just Hollywood!" but in the same movie they accepted as completely true the portrayals of a successful girl artist and her two wealthy boy friends, the counterparts of whom they had never met. Those whose associations are restricted to law-abiding respectable members of a community will get their picture of gangsters, thieves, and "bad" women from their movies. This happens even to quite sophisticated people. In a graduate school seminar on case work, a social worker reporting on the case of an unmarried mother said that the mother spoke very casually of being pregnant again. The instructor asked what she had expected, and the student replied: "Well, I thought she'd act more like the way they do in the movies!" For people who have never traveled, the movies give them their ideas of what foreigners are like; and the latter may get their pictures of Americans in the same way. The ideas of young people with relatively limited experience about love and marriage may be influenced by what they see in the movies: a young girl in a small Mississippi town complained about the local beaus as compared to the movie heroes.

Almost every movie, even a farce, deals with some problem of human relations, and the manner in which glamorous movie stars solve these problems may affect the thinking of people about their own problems. A middle-aged woman whose husband had recently left her changed her mind three times about how to handle the situation, after seeing three movies in which she could identify her own problem.

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Movies have a surface realism which tends to disguise fantasy and makes it seem true. This surface realism has steadily grown from the old days of the silent flickers to the modem technicolor talkies, with their increasing use of the documentary approach. If the setting is a New York street, the tendency today is to film an actual New York street. There is, of course, no necessary correlation between surface reality and inner truth of meaning. But if one is true,
the other is more likely to be accepted. On the stage, often the inner meaning is accepted and the obviously false settings lose some of their pseudo quality. In the movies, it is frequently the reverse: since the people on the screen seem real and "natural" and the backgrounds and settings honest, the human relationships portrayed must, the spectator feels, be likewise true. It is this quality of realness which makes the escape into the world of movies so powerful, bringing with it conscious and unconscious absorption of the screen play's values and ideas.

The statement that the primary function of movies is entertainment is clearly not the end of the question. All entertainment is education in some way, many times more effective than schools because of the appeal to the emotions rather than to the intellect. "Precisely because they wear the warmth and color of the senses, the arts are probably the strongest and deepest of all educative forces." Any consistent patterning in the mass communications of human relations, of attitudes, of values and goals, is education in the broader sense of the term.

South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, "kiss-kiss" and "bang-bang." Love and violence are two major themes not only in the motion picture but in all drama and literature. The significant question is: How are love and violence portrayed? According to the movies, love is the be-all and end-all of existence. The triumph of love against all obstacles and contrary to normal expectations is an ancient fantasy (but unknown to primitive man), and its use as an anodyne against unsatisfying reality - which was a prevailing theme in the medieval

tales of chivalry - is a motif in many movies. Murder and suspense have long been an essential part of tragedy; but they are present in movies which are devoid of tragedy. In both the kiss-kiss and bang-bang movies, the roles are played with little emotional impact. Only the exceptional movie conveys any deep emotion underlying either a love relationship or a murder. Love is usually limited to an immediate infatuation, and murder is committed by automaton-like actors.

The importance of the motion picture in our society is not confined to the darkened cathedral-like theaters: movies have given us new heroes who are tending to replace those of the quite recent past. The folk tradition that any American boy could be president of the country or become a Henry Ford was once often projected in the ambitions of parents for their sons. Today these ambitions tend to take a different form: "I'm going to bring up my boy to be a Bing Crosby. . . . All he'll have to do is open his mouth and sing, and he'll become a millionaire and support me in my old age!" represents a contemporary trend. Who would want to be president of a country in these troubled times, or to become a great industrialist or a successful inventor which usually means a lifetime of hard work if, instead, he could have a glamorous life of wealth and ease in Hollywood, merely by opening his mouth and singing or passing before a camera and acting?

These are some of the many ramifications of the motion picture in our society. Movies meet, wisely or unwisely, man's need for escape from his anxieties; they help assuage his loneliness, they give him vicarious experiences beyond his own activities, they portray solutions to problems; they provide models for human relationships, a set of values and new folk heroes.

It would be difficult to underestimate the social and psychological significance of movies. Like all institutions, they both reflect and influence society. It is hoped that a future project will be concerned with learning about this two-way process, including both an analysis of culture patterns in movies and detailed field studies of audience reactions. The present study of Hollywood and the system in which movies are made is the first step in the larger project.

1. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, Vol. II, App. 2, p. 1035. New York: Harper and Brothers.

2. Ibid., p. 1045.

3. Cf. Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Field. Boston: Little, Brown. Also Walter Goldschmidt, As You Sow. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

4. General Education in a Free Society, Report of the Harvard Committee, with an Introduction by James Bryant Conant, p. 30. Cambridge, Mass.: the Harvard Univ. Press.

Link to Chapter 1