During the Christmas season they frequently show a lot of old movies so I thought it might be interesting to reflect on how warped our idea of Hollywood movies is. The table below lists a tabulation of the top 10 box office stars from 1932 to 1944 by the studios for which they worked.
| Year | MGM | Fox | Paramount | RKO | Warners | Columbia | Universal | Republic |
| 1932 | 6 | 3 | 1 | |||||
| 1933 | 6 | 2 | 1 | |||||
| 1934 | 5 | 3 | 2 | |||||
| 1935 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | |||
| 1936 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | |||
| 1937 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | ||||
| 1938 | 5 | 5 | ||||||
| 1939 | 3 | 4 | 3 | |||||
| 1940 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| 1941 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||
| 1942 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| 1943 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | |||
| 1944 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
A couple of observations. That MGM would lead the pack with the most stars year after year is not surprising—that was their brand. “More stars than in the heavens” was their advertising slogan for years. Note, too, that Universal had some top box office stars for a couple of years during World War II. That was the Abbott & Costello effect. And even lowly Republic had one big star: Gene Autry.
But here’s my point. You probably don’t think of Fox or Paramount when you think of the top studios. You probably think of MGM or Warners and that’s easily explained: MGM and Warners movies were shown for years on television. If all you know of old movies is what’s shown on television you probably think of The Wizard of Oz (MGM) and Casablanca (Warners). You probably don’t think of Shirley Temple, Tyrone Power, or Alice Faye as being big stars but they were tops from 1934 into the early war years and they were all Fox contract players.
The Wizard of Oz was basically a flop at the box office and Casablanca just did okay. It took television to give them the iconic status they hold today. It’s a Wonderful Life is the same story. It was a flop at the box office but it gained momentum through being shown again and again and again on television.
Television distribution rights have conditioned what we think of old movies and the people who made them. Another factor was that in the 1960s and 1970s black and white modern dress dramas were rarely shown on television. Big budget Technicolor costume movies (MGM) or genre pictures (Warners) were shown frequently.
Dave: I saw how you suggested in a previous post comment that Moby Dick be read in the Senate for the impeachment trial. Like many of the movies you mentioned above, Moby Dick was a commercial failure when originally published. It was only through the efforts of obsessed dedicated academics who for decades forced every g*damned student in the USA (including myself) to buy and read the thing that it later became a ‘success’. And of course it came as a bonus that the publishers didn’t have to pay Melville any royalties.
I’d guess in 80 years the movies we’ll remember were those that had distribution rights in China.