The Hollywood golden age movie studios

I had gone back to New York for a while after sound came in, so when I came back, I looked over all the studios to sort of see what each one was like and where I might want to work. Paramount had impressed me always as having a staid, conservative atmosphere. RKO, which had been a financial football for its promoters, had an air of reckless excitement. Everyone who worked there had the feeling that it might close down right after the picture was finished. MGM posed as the aristocrat of the industry, undoubtedly stemming from its reputation for extravagance.... Warner Bros. was a rough-and-ready place, willing to try any idea for a picture as long as [Jack] Warner felt that it would make money. They paid no more than they had to. 20th Century-Fox was a big, sprawling lot on Pico Boulevard, and it suggested the opportunistic. Headed by Darryl F. Zanuck, a disappointed screenwriter - he never outlived it - it emphasized the obvious. While shunning sensitive material, the studio kept one standard of taste and discrimination to which they might point with pride when challenged. Otherwise it was very much the factory. Universal was a happy-go-lucky place, seldom getting top-budget pictures. But they were pretty unconcerned about it. Everyone was completely relaxed and enjoying themselves. At United Artists, not a studio in the same way, one felt relaxed and free. Most of the productions were independent, which usually removed distribution pressures. The schedules were apt to be more generous. Every department was smaller and seemed to be more efficient. I always regretted that I made only one picture there.

- Director John Cromwell (1886-1979), in J Basinger & S Wasson, Hollywood: The Oral History, New York, 2022, p183-4.

See also:
Movies: Dan Duryea's fetishistic on-screen forte, 29 November 2023
Movies: Louise Brooks on working with Pabst, 18 October 2023
Movies: The meticulousness of Cary Grant, 29 July 2022