From Reverence to Rape by Molly Haskell

Author:Molly Haskell [Haskell, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE FIFTIES

In 1950, Margaret Sullavan made her last film, No Sad Songs for Me. In the same year, Mitzi Gaynor and Piper Laurie made their first films. A year later, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly would make their screen debuts; a year earlier, Nicholas Ray had made his as a director. In 1950, Gloria Swanson made Sunset Boulevard, her first film in nine years, and also her last. And in 1950, All About Eve, with Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, and Celeste Holm as the triumvirate of theater women, won the Academy Award as best picture. (The same film offered a very young Marilyn Monroe in a small part.) Judy Holliday won the Best Actress Award for Born Yesterday. And the eleven films of 1950 considered worthy of inclusion in The New York Times’ collected reviews were: Born Yesterday, Father of the Bride, Destination Moon, The Titan—Story of Michelangelo, The Men, 12 O’Clock High, Trio, Ways of Love, Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, and The Asphalt Jungle. The eleven top films of 1950 listed by Andrew Sarris in The American Cinema included the last three plus Wagonmaster, The Third Man, In a Lonely Place, The Lawless, Winchester ’73, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Panic in the Streets, and Stage Fright.

The two lists have in common only a heavy preponderance of male films: the liberal, urban, and big-production type favored by the Times’ critic, Bosley Crowther, and the Western and action genres favored by the auteurist critic, Sarris.

Meanwhile, there were a lot of films that made no lists. In 1950, Doris Day and Natalie Wood made four films apiece; Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor each made three. June Allyson, Teresa Wright, Jane Wyman, Dorothy Malone, Esther Williams, Deborah Kerr, Hedy Lamarr, Jeanne Crain, and Joan Crawford all made two films apiece. And this was a normal year, not distinguished by any more or less activity than others. Actresses would be averaging about the same the next year, and the following year. But then the effect of television would begin to be felt. The defection of mass audiences would take its toll, removing the cornerstone of the studio system and initiating its collapse. By the late sixties there would be nothing left but a vacant lot here, a partially occupied office building there, and some second- and third-generation moguls, with producers, directors, writers, actors, and actresses jockeying for first position and all negotiating separate “packages” and contracts.

The disintegration of Hollywood in the traditional sense came from within as well as without. Thematically as well as technologically, the death of Hollywood was an idea whose time had come, and the sense of alienation from a destructive system formed the basis of such films as The Goddess, The Big Knife, The Barefoot Contessa, and Sunset Boulevard.

These films could hardly be called radical critiques of the system: They were made within the industry, with movie stars, and grossed enough to soften the sting. A movie with real sting was likely to have to bypass the industry completely,

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