Shakespeare Movies and the 1930s Studios

PATRICIA KING HANSON: I do think that there were many attempts of studio heads, especially in the 30s, to elevate the audiences. Now, we have an impression of studio bosses, which may or may not be 100 percent accurate. But in addition to looking for the bottom line, I think a lot of the studio heads, and a lot of the production heads—remember, sometimes the production head and the studio head would be at odds over what should be presented, so it's not just one person in charge of everything—but they did have a feeling in the 30s that, as people were going and watching all these musicals and comedies and so forth, that they should have some intellectually and emotionally inspiring films, that they should kind of elevate their audiences.

So you see a lot of films in the 30s and 40s, but particularly 30s, in which they have concert music, in which operas are presented, Shakespearean plays, Eugene O'Neill plays. When you look at those kind of things now, it's hard to believe that they thought these were going to be great money-makers. In most cases they were not, and I think in most cases they knew they wouldn't be, but they felt that among the maybe 30 to 50 films a year they might be releasing, they could have a few showpiece films that would show people, "Hey, we do some pretty great things here, and we're really trying to elevate our audiences."

So, I don't know what exactly their interior motivation was, but it's definitely true that they had a certain number of films which they considered films that were uplifting, high-class if you will, and would show an artistic side to Hollywood filmmaking that perhaps people wouldn't otherwise find.