One Summer: America, 1927

by Bill Bryson

By 1927, Hollywood was producing some eight hundred feature films a year, 80 percent of the world’s total output, plus some twenty thousand short features. Movies were America’s fourth-largest industry, employing more people than Ford and General Motors put together, and generating over $750 million for the economy—four times more than was earned by all sports and live entertainments combined. Twenty thousand movie theaters sold a hundred million tickets a week. On any given day, one-sixth of all Americans were at the pictures. It seemed crazy that such a huge and popular business could be struggling, but it was. The problem was that turnover was so rapid that few individual pictures made much profit. Programs were sometimes changed three or even four times a week, so there was a constant need for more product.

Hollywood