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Foster Hirsch

Foster Hirsch

American author

Oct 25, 2026

16:01
RKO, MGM, Warner Brothers, Fox, and Paramount.
16:08
And then there were the major minors, Columbia and Universal.
16:13
They did not have their own chain of theaters.
16:17
The most successful studio in the 50s and the studio that saved the industry was 20th Century Fox because Daryl Zanuck, who was the head of state at Fox, realized that in order for his business to survive, something new would have to be introduced, and he and his partners devised not devised, but bought Cinemascope.
16:46
And they had a monopoly on Cinemascope, which is a huge widescreen process, not as wide as Cinerama, which was sort of unmanageable, but extremely wide.
16:57
And the first film they presented in the new process was called The Robe.

8 MINS LATER

24:58
What stories Hollywood was willing to tell or maybe which ones they were afraid to tell.
23:27
Truly.
23:28
Which is extraordinary.
23:31
There are dozens of shots in that film that could be e- e- extracted from the film and shown in a photo show at a museum.
23:41
Museum-quality chiaroscuro images of high contrast between light and shadow.
23:46
That film is an example of Hollywood's version of German expressionism.
23:52
Interesting that we talked about neorealism, Italian neorealism.
23:56
In He Walked by Night, there are two visual streams that go into the making of that film.

32 MINS LATER

56:14
Yeah.

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