Golden Age Hollywood

From the arrival of sound to the collapse of the studio system, a handful of Hollywood studios made most of the films the world watched, with stars, writers and directors kept under long contracts. This section is about how that machine worked and what it produced: the genres, the craft, the censorship and the faces.

The Golden Age of Hollywood explained is the overview, covering the studio system, the Production Code and the reasons the era ended. Pre-Code Hollywood looks at the brief stretch before the Code was strictly enforced in 1934, and screwball comedy at the fast-talking genre that flourished under it.

For the look of the era, old Hollywood glamour credits the costume designers, cinematographers and lighting crews who created it. Every credit and date is checked against published sources before it appears here.