After World War II, a new Hollywood was inevitable. The way that filmmakers did business prior to the war would soon change (Lewis, 2008). This essay will discuss how the Paramount decision and the Hollywood blacklist altered the direction of filmmaking business in America. During the 1940’s Hollywood was dominated by monopolizing studio systems. These studio systems monopolized Hollywood by having control over the workforce, production, and distribution (Lewis, 2008). The Supreme Court case “accused the studios of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act in their total control over movie distribution and exhibition. At the time, the seven studios controlled almost all the country’s movie theaters, either through ownership of their own theater chains or through a process known as “block booking,” in which independent theater owners signed contracts with the studios that required them to show a given number (or “block”) of films” (“U.S.,” 2014, para 3).The Paramount Decision put an end to this type of monopolizing. Paramount studio was the first studio named in the suit against the Supreme Court. At the time of the suit, Paramount studios owned almost 1000 theaters. The court ruled for “divestiture of the lucrative theater chains” because the studio had “conspired to restrain free and fair trade and to monopolize the distribution and exhibition of films” (Lewis, …show more content…
195). The Paramount decision outlawed “price fixing, run clearances (that exclusively gave access of big studio films to first-run theater houses), pooling agreements (competing exhibitors would share profits of a film’s run),