Film Historian Answers Old Hollywood Questions

WIRED

Film historian Tony Maietta joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about the old days of Hollywood and the U.S. film industry. When did the "golden age" of Hollywood begin and end? Why is the US film industry based mostly in Los Angeles? When were the first Oscars? Why was Marilyn Monroe such a transcendent star? What impact did Charlie Chaplin have on the art of film? Did silent film stars bother to learn their lines? Answers to these questions and plenty more await on Old Hollywood Support.  More with Tony Maietta at https://tony-maietta.com/  Director: Jackie Phillips Director of Photography: Grant Bell Editor: Alex Mechanik Expert: Tony Maietta Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi Associate Producer: Brandon White  Production Manager: Peter Brunette Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark Casting Producer: Nick Sawyer Camera Operator: Shay Eberle-Gunst Sound Mixer: Paul Cornett Production Assistant: Abigayle Devine Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo Additional Editor: Jason Malizia; Samantha DiVito Assistant Editor: Billy Ward

Transcript

00:00I'm Tony Maietta. I'm a Hollywood historian. Let's answer some questions from the internet.

00:04This is Old Hollywood Support.

00:10St. Francis asks,

00:13All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up. Where is this iconic line from?

00:18It is from a 1950 classic film called Sunset Boulevard,

00:23spoken by Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, and it's one of the great last lines in movie history.

00:29Directed by Billy Wilder, about an aging, silent film star who believes she is ready for a comeback.

00:37And Mr. DeMille is Cecil B. DeMille, who was a legendary director both in the silent era and throughout classic Hollywood,

00:44and he worked frequently with Gloria Swanson.

00:47So there's kind of meta moments here with this iconic line, which is probably one of the most famous last lines in cinema history.

00:54I hear it all the time.

00:55Our AskHistorians asks,

00:57How did the U.S. film industry come to be centered in Los Angeles when the film industry came here?

01:02It didn't start out in Los Angeles.

01:04It started out on the East Coast in a beautiful little town called West Orange, New Jersey,

01:09because that's where Thomas Edison was.

01:11Thomas Edison was not only the father of many, many inventions,

01:15such as the light bulb and the phonograph.

01:17He was also famously litigious, and he patented everything.

01:22Now, this wasn't a problem for the larger film companies in New York, such as Biograph.

01:27They created their own cameras, and they didn't have any need for Edison.

01:30But for the smaller independents, they found that they had to pay Edison every time they wanted to use one of his cameras.

01:37Well, this could be quite expensive, and they tried to get around it.

01:40But Edison had what we'd like to think of as the Patton's men.

01:44They were basically henchmen.

01:45And they would find these independents, and they would shoot up their cameras so they couldn't make the movie,

01:50or they would beat them up, or it was a real Wild West situation.

01:53The best thing to do was to get as far away from Edison as possible,

01:57so they went to the very edge of the United States, to California.

02:01But when they got to Southern California, they realized,

02:03wow, this is even better than East Orange, New Jersey.

02:06This is even better than Fort Lee, because we have about 260 days of sunshine.

02:11And within a day's travel, you have everything.

02:15You have the desert.

02:16You have the ocean.

02:17You have the mountains.

02:18You have the city.

02:19I mean, it was an incredible array of things at their disposal.

02:22So that's really why the film industry ended up in Los Angeles and in Hollywood.

02:27Colette at Burberry Skirt, I like that name, asks,

02:31What year do you guys consider to be the beginning of Hollywood's golden age?

02:35I was thinking either 1927, the arrival of sound, or 1934, the end of pre-code.

02:41Most people agree it's probably about the beginning of the advent of sound,

02:46although silent film certainly qualifies for some wonderful golden age films.

02:50Up until the end of the studio system, which is sometime in the late, mid to late 60s,

02:56is pretty much the golden age that we think of.

02:59But there was also a second golden age, not quite as famous, but just as interesting,

03:04that happened after that.

03:05From about 68, when the production code was gone,

03:09and these incredible filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola,

03:13like Alan Pakula, were making really groundbreaking films,

03:17like The Godfather Saga, like Rosemary's Baby,

03:20like What's Up Doc with Peter Bogdanovich,

03:22all the way up to about Chinatown with Polanski.

03:25So that was kind of the second golden age, which ended in about 75.

03:29You referenced the end of pre-codes.

03:30The pre-code era was about four or five years, from about 1929 to 1934,

03:38in which films were really crazy, lascivious, salacious,

03:42because there was a production code, which was basically a list of do's and don'ts

03:47that was created in order to prevent censorship.

03:50Hollywood was self-censoring at this time.

03:53They didn't want other people, the government certainly,

03:55to come in and censor their film.

03:56So pre-code really is a misnomer,

03:58because there was a code of do's and don'ts, and be carefuls,

04:01and don't do this, and don't do that,

04:03and make sure that kiss isn't longer than five seconds.

04:06It wasn't enforced until 1934, when the Catholic Church got involved.

04:10Priests would tell their congregations from the pulpit,

04:13you can go to hell if you watch this film.

04:15And that really scared filmmakers,

04:16so they finally started paying attention and said,

04:18okay, okay, okay, we'll follow the code.

04:21A Reddit user asks,

04:22do studios in Hollywood still own their actors the same way they did in the 20th century?

04:29They sure as hell don't.

04:30The studio system ended pretty much in the 60s.

04:34Universal held on to some of their contract players throughout the 60s.

04:37One of the great things about the studio system was that this was a great training ground for people.

04:41People like Lucille Ball, who came to Hollywood as a showgirl,

04:44and learned her craft while she was getting paid for a studio,

04:48and then became Lucille Ball.

04:49I mean, this was a wonderful, wonderful training ground for these actors and actresses.

04:54Yes, it was very constrictive,

04:56and yes, you could feel like you were being owned.

04:59However, many people kind of wish that system was still around,

05:04because it was guaranteed employment, if anything.

05:06PageTurner627 asks,

05:09was the Mid-Atlantic accent really just a made-up accent used by actors?

05:13Yes, it was.

05:15It wasn't made up by actors, but yeah, there's no such thing as a Mid-Atlantic accent.

05:19There had to be a standardization of speech in order for people, the audiences, to understand actors.

05:26And remember, sound was brand new.

05:28Talkies were brand new, so they needed every break they could get.

05:31Mid-Atlantic really is a mixture of East Coast upper class dialects, Atlantic Coast,

05:39that's where the Mid-Atlantic comes from, and stage talk, stage speech, if you will.

05:45It's kind of that blend.

05:46And that's why actors and actresses in films from the 30s and 40s and up until the 50s don't talk like anybody else.

05:52They don't talk like us.

05:54By the 50s, when films were becoming a little more real,

05:57there was a real realism movement after the war, mostly from foreign films.

06:02You didn't see that as much.

06:03The Mid-Atlantic accent kind of died away.

06:06AtBigThucka asks this.

06:09What is so legendary about Marilyn Monroe?

06:12Not even being funny.

06:15Was she really a good actress?

06:17Marilyn, one of the most iconic actresses in the history of cinema.

06:21Here's the thing about Marilyn.

06:22Marilyn had what one of her directors, Billy Wilder, called flesh impact.

06:27And what he meant by that was the effect of seeing Marilyn on screen to audiences was visceral.

06:33You could feel her.

06:35She had that kind of force.

06:37And all you got to do is watch some of her films.

06:39Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire.

06:42You get that.

06:43Your eye goes immediately to her.

06:44You cannot look at anybody else when Marilyn Monroe's on screen.

06:47Marilyn was a natural comedian.

06:49Watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

06:51Watch How to Marry a Millionaire.

06:52She's very funny.

06:53But it's not overdone.

06:55She's very subtle.

06:55When she was the biggest star in the world, she stopped for a year and went to New York

07:01and joined the Actors Studio and took classes on how to become a really good actress from

07:07Lee Strasberg.

07:08Now, this is unheard of.

07:10She was already a huge star, but she stopped because she wanted to get better.

07:14And she did.

07:15Some of her later performances, particularly in The Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Lawrence

07:20Olivier, who was no slouch, she pretty much wipes him off the screen.

07:25She was sublime.

07:26Unfortunately, she died at age 36.

07:29So we never really had the opportunity to find out what her later career would have been

07:34like.

07:35But I have no doubt that she would have been one of the greatest stars.

07:38At Ahagawa, okay, asks, my roommate told me she doesn't know who Elizabeth Taylor is, and

07:46I almost had a stroke.

07:47Elizabeth Taylor, the biggest star of the 50s and 60s.

07:52I mean, Taylor and Burton, not ringing a bell for you.

07:54Okay.

07:55They call Elizabeth Taylor the last movie star because she was one of the last of the

07:59generation that was completely, totally raised at a studio.

08:03She began working in films as a very young child all up until almost to her death.

08:08I mean, she was trained by the studio, mostly MGM.

08:10She was certainly one of the most beautiful women in the world.

08:13She famously had violet eyes.

08:16She and her husband, Richard Burton, who she married twice, were probably the very, they

08:20weren't the first celebrity couple, but they were one of the biggest celebrity couples in

08:25the 60s.

08:25They met on the set of Cleopatra when she was married to someone else, and there was

08:29a scandal.

08:29The Vatican condemned her.

08:32She was a brilliant actor.

08:32She won two Academy Awards.

08:34Download Elizabeth Taylor, because you're going to be stunned at some of the things she does

08:38and how beautiful this woman really was.

08:40And what a great humanitarian she was.

08:43Elizabeth Taylor said the word AIDS before anybody else would because she had so many friends

08:47who were dying.

08:48So we owe a great debt to Elizabeth Taylor for that alone.

08:51Istobri asks, what caused the decline of the classic Hollywood musical film?

08:571930s to 1940s era.

09:00Musicals were very expensive to make.

09:02You not only had to pay actors, you had to pay musicians.

09:05You had to pay songwriters.

09:07You had to pay choreographers.

09:09There were a lot of people on the musical payroll.

09:10Second of all, after the war, the mood in the country shifted.

09:15There was a sense of innocence about musicals, because you have to suspend your disbelief.

09:21Because, I mean, you know, when you think about it, how many times have you seen in your

09:24daily life somebody having a normal conversation and then suddenly bursting into song or suddenly

09:28dancing around the room?

09:29It doesn't happen that often.

09:31After the war, people got a lot more cynical.

09:33There was a great realism movement in films after the wars.

09:36But beyond that, in the 1950s, there was this little invention called television, which began

09:42peeling away movie audiences by the millions.

09:45Movie studios had to start divesting themselves of this great pool of talent that they had under

09:51contract.

09:51So they didn't have this pool of talent at the ready, cheaply, to make these musicals,

09:56which were incredibly expensive.

09:58At Himidosh14141 asks,

10:02So question for film oofies.

10:04Why is Gone with the Wind still considered a classic despite everything?

10:08They're talking about the attitude of the filmmakers towards a very shameful time in our history,

10:14slavery, and the Civil War.

10:15Here's the thing about Gone with the Wind.

10:17It's an incredibly made film.

10:19It was a technical feat when it came out.

10:22It stunned everyone and blew everyone away by its scope, by its size, by its grandeur,

10:27by its subject matter.

10:28It is difficult for audiences to watch today, but it is still a huge achievement in filmmaking.

10:35You have to put yourself in the mindset, perhaps, of 1939, 1940, when these attitudes were much

10:41different than they are today, and then hopefully you can enjoy the film for what it is.

10:45PreviousStick asks,

10:46Does anyone have any salacious, scandalous, shocking tea about old Hollywood stars?

10:52Let's see.

10:53Clark Gable was alleged to be a gay hustler in Los Angeles early in his career and actually

10:59hooked up with George Cukor, who later directed him for a time in Gone with the Wind.

11:03Oh, Loretta Young.

11:04Loretta Young's great.

11:05So, Loretta Young was a very, very famous actress in the Golden Age, and she was also

11:12very, very Catholic.

11:14Okay?

11:15But she was on a film opposite Clark Gable, her co-star, and they had an affair.

11:20The film was called Call of the Wild.

11:22And at the end of the affair, Loretta Young became very, very pregnant.

11:28Well, what are you going to do?

11:30Clark Gable was married.

11:32There was no possibility of getting married.

11:35So, Loretta Young left Hollywood for a few months, had her baby, put the baby in an orphanage,

11:42came back to Hollywood, waited a few more months, and then adopted that baby, named her Judy,

11:49and raised her as her adopted child for the rest of her life.

11:54As Judy got older, she started to look more and more like Clark Gable and Loretta Young,

12:01to the point where she had the Gable ears that her mother had to have pinned back.

12:07So, eventually, after hearing these rumors her entire life, Judy Lewis confronted her mother

12:11near the end of her mother's life and asked her if it was true.

12:15And finally, Loretta confessed, yes, it is true.

12:19You are a walking mortal sin, Loretta Young.

12:21Purple Leonora asks, when was the first Academy Award ceremony held?

12:26The first Academy Awards were held in May of 1929, and they were held at the Hollywood

12:32Roosevelt Hotel.

12:33The tickets cost $5, and the ceremony was 15 minutes long.

12:39The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences developed this award as kind of like, oh,

12:43and let's give this award out every year.

12:44They really started to gain steam in the late 30s, and into the 40s, once television came

12:50in and they started to be televised in the 50s, they truly became the, you know, the appointment

12:56television that we think of today.

12:58Why is this called an Oscar?

12:59It's one of these legends that no one's really sure what the real truth is.

13:03My favorite story, and the legend that I like the best, is that it was named by Bette Davis,

13:07because the backside of Oscar reminded Bette Davis of her first husband, Oscar Nelson, and

13:15she allegedly said, that's an Oscar.

13:18That may not be true, but it's my favorite story.

13:21Mac Mac 360 asks, what happened the night Natalie Wood died?

13:26There is a lot of speculation.

13:27It happened Thanksgiving weekend in 1981 on a boat called The Splendor, which was Natalie Wood

13:33in R.J. Wagner's boat, named after Splendor in the Grass, one of Natalie Wood's great films.

13:38She and R.J. Wagner, Robert Wagner, and Christopher Walken went out to Catalina for a very cold

13:45and very wet Thanksgiving weekend, and Natalie Wood ended up Sunday morning floating in Catalina

13:52Harbor.

13:52No one really knows what happened.

13:54The theory that is most accepted, and I think makes the most sense, is that the dinghy

13:59was attached to the side of the boat, and it was banging, and it was keeping her awake.

14:04And her husband and Christopher Walken were up above having drinks, and she was in the bedroom,

14:09so she went outside in her nightgown and parka and socks to retie the dinghy, slipped on the

14:16step, hit her head, and fell in the water.

14:19And unfortunately, because her parka filled with water and kept her weight down, she couldn't

14:24get back up into the boat.

14:25And that's usually what people cite as the cause of death, was the fact that she drowned.

14:31Dalmitz underscore Andy asks, were there gay bisexual stars in the 50s and 60s?

14:37Yes.

14:39There have always been gay and bisexual stars.

14:42The difference is, is that they weren't out.

14:44You couldn't be out in the 50s and 60s.

14:46You could be arrested for being gay or bisexual and acting on it in the 50s and 60s.

14:52You could be thrown into a mental hospital, you could get a lobotomy, lots of horrible

14:56things.

14:56Some of the ones who were a little more honest about who they were, were Farley Granger,

15:01to a certain extent Montgomery Clift.

15:03Certainly, he wasn't out, but we know now, certainly Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter.

15:08They were afraid that if the public knew that a star was gay, that suddenly he wouldn't have

15:13the romantic appeal.

15:14But if you watch some films of that era, such as Pillow Talk, there's some wonderful

15:18little sly allusions to the real sexuality of Rock Hudson, because everybody knew in the

15:23film industry.

15:24They just didn't know in Peoria.

15:26They just didn't know, you know, in Des Moines.

15:28It's a struggle.

15:29It's still a struggle.

15:30You know, there's a lot more gay actors in Hollywood than are out gay actors in Hollywood.

15:35But we're making progress.

15:37Slowly but surely.

15:38The Pixel Paint asks, why was it so hard for so many actors to make the transition from

15:43silent films to the talkies?

15:46Was it just a matter of voiced acting being more difficult, or were there other factors

15:51at play?

15:52Silent film is a completely different art than talking film.

15:57I think that's what people don't realize.

15:59They think silent films were just films without talking.

16:02No.

16:03They were an entirely different art form.

16:04A lot of actors in Hollywood, particularly big silent film stars, had very heavy accents.

16:11Didn't matter because you weren't talking.

16:13So there were some great silent film stars who just left.

16:16They weren't even going to try to learn how to speak this mangled, new, mid-Atlantic accent.

16:22Also a big factor was the fact that many silent film stars had their personas didn't match

16:29their voice.

16:30This happened primarily with an actor named John Gilbert, who was probably the most famous

16:34victim of talkies.

16:36He was the he-man.

16:37He was romantic.

16:38And he kind of had a light tenor voice.

16:40It didn't match.

16:41So that was really one of the big problems, was the persona didn't necessarily match the

16:46voice.

16:47There was also a shift in the culture at this time.

16:49Don't forget, just not only was there a shift in Hollywood with sound into talkies,

16:54but the depression happened.

16:56Wall Street fell.

16:57Suddenly, the kind of heroes that were in silent film were not really relevant in this

17:03tough new world we were in.

17:04Baron Destructo asks,

17:06How many cigarettes per day was 16-year-old Judy Garland encouraged to smoke in order to

17:12keep her weight down during the filming of The Wizard of Oz in 1939?

17:16Oh, I wish it was only cigarettes.

17:19Smoking was just what sophisticated adults did.

17:22So MGM had no hand in Judy Garland's cigarette habit.

17:26However, they had a big hand in her drug addiction.

17:29They did encourage her to take pills, amphetamines.

17:34An easy way to lose weight back in the day was to take amphetamines.

17:37The problem with amphetamines was that it hyped her up, you know, and so she couldn't sleep

17:42at night, so they then had to give her sleeping pills to get her to sleep because she had to

17:48be up at 5 a.m. and sparkle, Judy Sparkle.

17:50It became a very, very, very bad habit.

17:55One thing fed the other.

17:57Now, MGM and all the studios didn't just do this with Judy Garland.

18:00They did it with a lot of stars.

18:01At Kelbodan asks,

18:03Shirley Temple is a real person.

18:05Thought it was just a drink.

18:07Yes, Shirley Temple was a real person.

18:10She was the biggest box office star in the world for four years, beginning when she

18:15was six years old.

18:18She saved 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy because this was the Depression.

18:22So this little girl, all of six years old, held a studio on her back.

18:27She was later an ambassador in the 80s.

18:29So she had quite a career and the drink was indeed named after her because it has no alcohol

18:35and she was a child.

18:36Blue Jester 12 asks, when did the old Hollywood system go away?

18:41I would probably say in the late 60s because what happened was, was that the studios were

18:46forced by the Supreme Court to divest themselves of their theater chains.

18:51Now, back in the 20s and 30s and 40s, studios owned theaters.

18:56That was really the point for many of these moguls was they really were more in the real

19:01estate business.

19:01They had more theaters and then they created these studios to put product into these theaters.

19:07So there were Paramount theaters.

19:08There were Warner Brothers theaters.

19:10MGM had Lowe's.

19:11It was decided that this was a monopoly.

19:14It's called vertical integration.

19:16And the studios were forced to divest themselves of their theater chains.

19:21So they lost an outlet for their product.

19:24They had to drastically cut back on staff, drastically cut back on the number of films they could make.

19:29And there was this little thing happening about the same time called television, which was also eating away at their audience.

19:36And by the 60s, many studios just couldn't survive as they had during the golden age.

19:41So they had to let go of their contract players.

19:44They had to let go of their contract writers, all these people who were under contract.

19:47When the studio system really died down, I think is what most people think of as the end of old Hollywood, the end of the studio system.

19:55Brandon Ma I asks, worst thing about film school was having to sit through boring ass black and white movies.

20:01It's a knife in my heart.

20:03But no, I'm glad you asked this because all I can tell you is, is that watch a film from 1933 called Babyface, which is one of these pre-code films in black and white.

20:13And I guarantee you there ain't nothing boring ass about it.

20:16It is one of the most salacious, lascivious Barbara Stanwyck plays a woman who literally fucks her way to the top.

20:24It's unfortunate that because these films are not presented in a way that we're used to, that they get this reputation of being boring.

20:31You just have to realize it was a different time.

20:33And it might seem a little slow to us in our instant gratification world.

20:37But sit with it for a while, I guarantee you.

20:40It'll get interesting.

20:41A Reddit user asks, what movies were the first in their genres?

20:45The real trendsetters of filmmaking.

20:48When you think about screwball comedies, probably the first screwball comedy, one of the most famous is, it happened one night, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.

20:55They both won Oscars for it.

20:56That was definitely the first screwball comedy.

20:58It started the entire screwball comedy genre.

21:02Musicals have been around since talkies.

21:03The Broadway Melody of 1929 was not the first musical, but it's probably one of the very first and one of the most famous.

21:10It won the Academy Award.

21:11It was the first musical to do that.

21:13I mean, there were films in the silent era that you could term horror films.

21:17The big one, the one that really set the horror genre in motion was Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi.

21:23It was a tremendous hit in the early 30s and started this whole cycle of horror films from Universal Studios mostly, such as Frankenstein, such as The Bride of Frankenstein,

21:32such as The Invisible Man.

21:34So you can really point to Dracula as being probably the very first of those.

21:40There was a silent film star named Harold Lloyd, who was one of the big three.

21:43Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, the big three comic superstars in silent film.

21:49Harold Lloyd did romantic comedies.

21:51We don't think of romantic comedies necessarily in silent film, but he really was a romantic comedy star of his era.

21:58Gangster films were big in the 1930s because of the Depression, because of the fact that people were so desperate,

22:05and they wanted to see people, you know, giving the finger to this government and this society which put us in such dire straits.

22:12Someone from Quora asks,

22:14in what major ways did Charlie Chaplin impact cinema?

22:18Aside from the fact that he was probably the biggest star in the world during the silent era,

22:23his impact as a filmmaker can be felt.

22:26He was singular in the fact that for the majority of his great career was his own boss.

22:31He had his own studio.

22:33He financed his own films.

22:34He wrote his own scripts.

22:36He cast his films.

22:37Charlie Chaplin was a force in Hollywood.

22:39He was a force in filmmaking.

22:41And Charlie Chaplin was also the last star to leave silent film and go into talkies.

22:47When you're talking about titans of film history, Charlie Chaplin is right up there at the top.

22:51One of the amazing things about Chaplin, too, if you ever watch a Chaplin film,

22:55is Chaplin had such incredible control over his body.

22:57He was such an athlete.

22:58He did his own stunts.

23:00So did Douglas Fairbanks.

23:01These people did their own stunts.

23:02There was no CGI.

23:04There was no manipulation of the camera.

23:06What you see up there, he actually did.

23:09Same thing with Buster Keaton, another great athlete, silent comic, one of the big three.

23:14These people all did their own stunts.

23:17Many of them directed their own films, wrote their own films.

23:20They were true auteurs before the word auteur ever came to existence.

23:24At Radseed asks, did silent film stars really bother learning their lines?

23:29There weren't scripts in silent films.

23:31There were scenarios.

23:32And very frequently, especially when you're talking about some of the greats like Chaplin

23:37and like Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, they created as they went along.

23:41So when you see a silent film and you see actors mouthing words,

23:44yes, they're kind of getting the general idea of what the scene is trying to convey.

23:48But it's not like they had to memorize lines.

23:50There's a very famous story about a silent film star who would actually curse while they were filming

23:56because he didn't think anybody would notice.

23:57Well, there happened to be lip readers in the audience who could see exactly what he was saying.

24:02You'll see a stray son of a bitch.

24:03Or you'll see a stray.

24:04What the hell are you doing here?

24:05At Ori111 asks, why everyone's so obsessed with Citizen Kane?

24:10Why not Citizen Ori?

24:12Citizen Kane is kind of universally accepted as the greatest film of all time.

24:19It's kind of a David and Goliath situation between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst.

24:24Citizen Kane is remarkable for many reasons.

24:27The technology in particular.

24:28The cinematographer Greg Toland created something called Deep Focus, which had never been done before.

24:34And basically what that means is, is the foreground, the middle ground, and the background are all in sharp focus.

24:40You know, the fact that the moguls got together on the behest of William Randolph Hearst and tried to stop the film, tried to squash it.

24:48And so there's a real rebellious spirit behind Citizen Kane, which I think people admire.

24:53I think people certainly admire the genius that was Orson Welles.

24:56This film, though it's heralded as a great achievement, was not a big hit when it was released.

25:02Because it rarely played anywhere because there were so many people against it.

25:06So it's certainly grown in stature.

25:07And as I said, many people consider it the greatest film of all time.

25:10Those are all the questions.

25:11Thanks for watching.

25:12Old Hollywood support.

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