Throughout the 1930s, movie studios seemed focused on churning out entertaining, yet shallow ‘escapist’ movies, but there were people in the film industry who longed to see Hollywood use its creative talents to produce films with more substance to them. They advocated for more socially conscious and meaningful filmmaking. For a time, their comments fell…
Category: Golden Hollywood
Technicolor Dreams: Hollywood’s Quest for Color
Early in cinematic history, when filmmakers and audiences clamored for color movies, scientists and innovators behind the scenes were working on a way to make movies in living color. The answer came in the catchy, modern-sounding new filming process called Technicolor. Technicolor was the first color motion picture process that was extensively used in Hollywood….
The Star-Studded Cast of “The Greatest Show on Earth”
During the Golden Age of Hollywood, director Cecil B. DeMille had a reputation for large-scale film productions with grand sets, elaborate costumes, impressive visual effects, and massive casts. For his 1952 film, The Greatest Show on Earth, DeMille pulled out all the stops to bring the dazzling and eye-popping spectacle of the traveling circus to…
Brains and Beauty Battle It Out in 1957’s “Funny Face”
Funny Face, the 1957 romantic musical comedy written by Leonard Gershe and Stanley Donen, stars the unlikely couple of Audrey Hepburn, a 28-year-old fresh-faced beauty, opposite Fred Astaire, a 58-year-old former Vaudeville dancer. An age gap like this might seem creepy today, but in the Golden Age of Hollywood, moviegoers were used to seeing on-screen…
The Innovative Special Effects of “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad”
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, a fantasy adventure film, was produced by Charles H. Schneer and directed by Nathan H. Juran. It was made by Columbia Pictures, released in 1958, and starred Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant, and Richard Eyer. But it wasn’t the actors, the director, or the studio that made the fantasy adventure movie…