Zukor’s Paramount Pictures, Mayer’s Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the brothers Warner’s Warner Brothers Pictures and (former Warner Brothers production head) Daryl Zanuck’s 20th Century Fox shaped the studio system. At the end of the war, Hollywood motion pictures were America’s fifth largest industry. Although German and Russian filmmakers remained active, their offerings never went farther west than the trenches and the Allies naval blockade of Germany. Meanwhile, Hollywood benefited from the Great War, which put the film industries of England and France on hold.
No one was more enthusiastic than the industry’s many Jews, whose religion-“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”-discouraged if not prohibited sculpture and even painting. "When the human race got the gift of cinema, they just went mad," he said. As director and producer Francis Ford Coppola theorized, leading writers of the 19th Century envisioned and longed for filmmaking capability. Freedom finally to make the most of filmmaking technology was one reason. The film industry boomed in America during World I. Finally, the nearby and eclectic terrains-ranches, mountains, forest, desert and seashore-could pass for most locales in the world, particularly in black and white. Hollywood was even optimal within the Los Angeles basin being 15 miles inland, it was little affected by marine fog. Skies were not only sunny but cloudless, providing the consistent light needed for continuity. Second, Southern California weather accommodated filming year round. The distance made it impractical if not impossible for the litigious inventor to sue filmmakers for patent infringements. First, this enclave of Los Angeles was as far away as possible in the United States from the New Jersey home of Thomas Edison. The reasons were literally location, location, location. In the years before World War I, America’s leading filmmakers had settled in and around Hollywood. The problem was supply, which is why the moguls-to-be were drawn to Hollywood. These theaters primarily catered to urban working people, many of whom were Jewish, Italian and Slavic immigrants or first generation Americans. Their owners had discovered that showing films in their theaters was more profitable than staging live acts. They came to Hollywood from America’s Northeast where they owned theaters that were or had been venues for vaudeville and burlesque. Mayer, and the brothers Jack, Harry and Sam Warner-were all Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. History: The men who founded the studio system-Adolph Zukor, Louis B. Definition: A business model adopted by five Hollywood studios-Paramount Pictures, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Warner Brothers Pictures, 20th Century Fox and RKO-that combined all facets of film production with studio-owned distribution chains.