The studios lose their grip
Hollywood entered the 1960s still run, on paper, by the same handful of studios that had ruled it since the 1920s. In practice their power was draining away. The 1948 Paramount antitrust decision had forced them to sell their theater chains, the long-term contracts that once tied stars to a single lot were disappearing, and more films were being shot overseas, where costs were lower.
By the middle of the decade, the studios themselves were changing hands. MCA took over Universal in 1962. Gulf+Western bought Paramount in 1966. In 1967 Seven Arts bought Warner Bros. and Transamerica bought United Artists. Companies that made car parts and sold insurance now owned the dream factories.
Television moves in
The audience that once went to the movies every week was now home watching television, and much of that television was made in Hollywood. Studios that had resisted the new medium in the 1950s turned their sound stages over to TV series. Old lots like the Vitagraph studio on Prospect Avenue, by then ABC's West Coast home, filled up with game shows, variety hours and sitcoms.
The audience moved to the living room, and Hollywood followed it there.
For working actors, writers and crews, television became the steady job. For the studios, it became the business that kept the lights on between big pictures.
The age of the epic
To give people a reason to leave the house, studios bet on spectacle: widescreen, color and length. The biggest bet of all was Cleopatra in 1963, the most expensive film made up to that time. Its runaway budget nearly sank 20th Century-Fox.
The same year, the Cinerama Dome opened on Sunset Boulevard, a geodesic theater built for the deeply curved screens of the era. Two years later, Fox recovered with The Sound of Music, which became the highest-grossing film of its time. Its success set off a wave of costly musicals, and most of them lost money.
The Sunset Strip turns up the volume
While the studios struggled, a new scene grew up a few miles west. The Whisky a Go Go opened on the Sunset Strip in 1964, and clubs along the Strip became stages for The Doors, The Byrds, Love and Buffalo Springfield. Down the road at Sunset Sound, The Doors cut their first album and the Beach Boys worked on Pet Sounds. You'll find both in Music & nightlife.
The Beatles played the Hollywood Bowl in 1964. In 1966, A&M Records moved into Charlie Chaplin's old studio on La Brea. That same November, young people clashed with police on the Strip over a curfew in what became known as the Sunset Strip curfew riots. Music, not movies, was now setting the tone for young Hollywood.
The Code falls
Since the 1930s, every major studio film had to pass the Production Code, often called the Hays Code, a list of rules about sex, violence, crime and language. Through the 1960s, filmmakers and foreign films kept pushing past it, and enforcement grew weaker every year.
On November 1, 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America dropped the Code and introduced a ratings system based on age. Films no longer had to be suitable for everyone. They only had to be labeled.
New Hollywood arrives
The change opened the door for a younger group of directors and actors raised on European cinema and television. Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, both from 1967, showed that frank, personal films could pull in big audiences. In 1969, the low-budget Easy Rider became a hit, and the X-rated Midnight Cowboy won Best Picture.
The Hollywood of 1960 had belonged to studio chiefs and contract stars. By 1969 it belonged, at least for a while, to the directors. The town Joseph Cotten toured in 1963 was about to disappear, and the era now called New Hollywood had begun.