The studio system of Hollywood’s Golden Age was defined by an oligopoly of major studios that used vertical integration to control the entire moviemaking process. In the same way, these studios contracted major stars, directors, and other key players to work specifically for them. As a result of this system, each studio cornered its own portion of the market by establishing itself in a certain genre.
The reliance on certain stars and certain filmmaking teams caused studios to specialize in a single genre. Each part of production, from writing to acting to sets, was recycled, making it easy to reuse them for similar films. For example, MGM’s employment of Judy Garland and other performers made it logical for them to make musical after musical.
MGM embraced Technicolor with movies such as Gone With the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939), and continued making films of musical spectacle after World War II. The harnessed their star power in musicals such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) with Judy Garland and Singin’ in the Rain (1952) with Gene Kelly. However, while MGM’s chosen genre proved profitable for a time, it had clearly lost much of its audience to television by the 1960s. In addition with the government’s ultimatum to cease concentration of ownership in 1948, the competition from television was enough to prevent studios such as MGM from making expensive movies on a regular basis. As MGM evolved to fit the changing demands for entertainment, its adherence to genre was lost.
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