Grand design

"Celebrated as "Hollywood's greatest year," 1939 has often been considered the apex of the studio system and the movies it produced, including Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and so many other memorable pictures. It was a time when the studios exercised nearly absolute control over their product and won government sanction for the informal oligopoly that had sprung up in previous decades. In short, the film industry became a modern business enterprise - rationalized from planning through assembly-line manufacture to exhibition in studio-owned…