Hollywood in the world market – evidence from Australia in the mid-1930s

Abstract

By the mid-1930s the major Hollywood studios had developed extensive networks of distribution subsidiaries across five continents. This paper focuses on the operation of American film distributors in Australia-one of Hollywood's largest foreign markets. Drawing on two unique primary datasets, the paper compares and investigates film distribution in Sydney's first-run and suburban-run markets. It finds that the subsidiaries of US film companies faced a greater liability of foreignness in the city centre market than in the suburban one. Our data support the argument that film audiences in local or suburban cinema markets were more receptive to Hollywood entertainment than those in metropolitan centres.

The economics of movies (revisited): A survey of recent literature

“…At the local market level, spatial competition and ownership structures have been studied with respect to inter‐cinema programming decisions (Chisholm et al., 2010; Chisholm & Norman, 2012; Elizalde, 2013). Entry and exit decisions, as well as competition between city, suburban, and regional cinemas, have also provided research topics in both historical and contemporary contexts (Collins et al., 2009b; Gil & Marion, 2018; Orhun et al., 2016; Sedgwick et al., 2014; Takahashi, 2015). At the cinema level, applied and theoretical research examines the profit implications from common uniform ticket pricing practices of the industry (Chen, 2009; Choi et al., 2015; Courty & Nasiry, 2018; De Roos & McKenzie, 2014; Ho et al., 2018), as well as the relationships between geographic concentration of cinemas and ticket prices (Bohme & Muller, 2011).…”

Contextual analysis and newspaper archives in management history research

“…Mollan andTennent (2015, p. 1058) note that the "trade press typically operated to supply practitioners with valuable information affecting their behaviour, giving us an insight into industry structure and practices". Sedgwick et al (2014) relied upon the Australian film industry's weekly trade journal Everyones to provide extensive qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate competition in international film distribution in the 1930s.…”

Identifying Cinema Cultures and Audience Preferences

“…3 Finally, Sedgwick has co-authored investigations into the American, Australian and British markets concerning the distribution of films and film popularity during this decade. 4 Taken as a whole, the research suggests that while the shape and function of cinema markets can be explained through economic principles, audience preferences as manifest in the listings of the most popular films is very much a cultural phenomenon.…”