1970s Hollywood 

When the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) became a permanent part of the US House of Representatives in 1945, its mandate was to protect “the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitution.” When teaching this era in American history class, I typically emphasized HUAC’s attack on a media landscape dominated by liberal ideology best illustrated by the persecution of the Hollywood Ten: a group of prominent directors, actors, screenwriters, and other artists accused of disseminating communist propaganda.

As in our own day, attacking the media for promoting left-leaning ideology was rife with ulterior motives.

I think of this now after reading The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema (2026) by Paul Fischer. The Introduction begins: “Hollywood’s biggest year ever turned out to be the same year it lost its head.” By 1947, the major studios, including Paramount, Warner Bros., MGM and more “had directors, stars and crew under binding long-term agreements,” as Fischer writes. As some of the more prominent personalities “went on strike for better conditions,” the studios “hired strikebreakers and violent security – and lost.”

Famously, movie star Olivia de Havilland sued Jack Warner to get out of her long-term contract. After losing, Warner put the word out to the other studios that de Havilland was nothing but trouble. “Other stars,” as Fischer writes, “followed [de Havilland’s] lead and broke for freedom.

Rather than relinquishing a bit of their power to artists, studio moguls like Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer, along with “B-movie actor and FBI informant Ronald Reagan,” decided to testify before HUAC. Many studio executives then “put their names to a joint statement… blacklisting the writers and directors, collectively known as the Hollywood Ten.”

“The studio system,” as Fischer writes, “whereby a handful of big studios controlled the entire pipeline of screen entertainment, was dead—torn down, in less than two years, by the cruelty and hubris of the men who had made it.”

While exploring this McCarthy Era within my history class, what I failed to realize is that, while on the surface these wild and overblown accusations amounted to a political witch hunt targeting communist sympathizers, another underlying aspect of these personal attacks was the manner in which the chaos of the day also served as cover for discrediting adversaries. In other words, simply suggesting that someone had communist tendencies was met with a harsh and widespread social reaction. Such was the environment of fear that defined the early years of the Cold War (and such is us, perhaps).

Following record profits in 1947, Hollywood entered “a decade of paranoia, division and recrimination” in which hundreds of studio employees were blacklisted. Under pressure to produce only pro-American movies, without many of the industry’s most talented people, and during the decade when televisions arrived in living rooms across the country, Hollywood suffered.

And the whole tawdry affair was all about money. Now, why on earth am I surprised about that?

As the Red Scare faded and the Baby Boom generation began coming of age, Hollywood film makers came to the realization that in an age when young people were exerting their influence – over civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the counterculture movement – the movie industry had to adapt.

By 1968, a young director named Francis Ford Coppola had received three Academy Award nominations for two different films. He also had developed a reputation as a big risk taker, unafraid to ruffle feathers, and inspired to pursue the art of film-making. This, of course, clashed with studio executives more interested in the art of money-making.

Two equally inspired film-making hopefuls—George Lucas and Steven Spielberg—would befriend Coppola and quickly establish themselves as successful feature film directors.

Much of Fischer’s book revolves around Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg trying to parlay their success into establishing their independence from the big studios. And while I write about books, I’m no critic. Indeed, I never hesitate to quit a book that doesn’t resonate after 50 pages or so. Suffice to say that The Last Kings of Hollywood is most entertaining when describing the making of the movies that permeated the cultural landscape of my youth.

Spielberg got his start in TV. He directed several different shows including episodes of Night Gallery and one of the early episodes of Columbo in 1971. His big break came in the form of an ABC Movie of the Week about a businessman travelling through the desert while being terrorized by an unseen trucker in a massive Peterbilt semi-tractor trailer. I was 11 years-old when Duel was first broadcast and it terrified me. As much as I enjoyed Duel, it took me more than half-a-century to learn that it was directed by Steven Spielberg. This would be the first of many references to old movies in Fischer’s fun book that had me reflecting upon my formative years.

George Lucas made his mark with a popular movie released in 1973 and I’ll venture to say that you have seen it. I’ll also guess that you may not know that American Graffiti was directed by George Lucas. Or, did I just miss this one?

Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Coppola, Spielberg, and Lucas would establish themselves as some of the finest film makers in American history. Fischer points out how often happenstance played a part. For instance, it was fascinating to discover that Coppola had no real interest in directing the movie that would make his household name. As it turns out, his effort to establish a creative community of film makers in San Francisco was not exactly a commercial success. So, after Coppola hung up the phone one day, he asked Lucas, “They’ve just offered me this Italian gangster movie… It’s like a $3 million potboiler based on a bestseller. Should I do it?” And George tells him, “I don’t think you have any choice… We’re in debt.”

Of course, The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather II (1974) each won Oscars for Best Picture. In the sequel, Coppola also took home the statue for Best Director and the two films earned nine Oscars in total. Coppola also directed and produced Apocalypse Now (1979). And while Coppola didn’t originally see it in the pitch for “this Italian gangster movie,” we all know that The Godfather is an absolute work of art.

Steven Spielberg famously directed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) with an assist from George Lucas who came up with the story. This franchise still thrives into the twenty-first century. Not sure how this would have done, though, had they stuck with the original Indiana Smith.

Two different stories took place while Steven Spielberg directed Jaws (1975) and they illustrate Paul Fischer’s style and insight. Spielberg was present at a sneak preview of Jaws in 1975 to observe and record the audience reaction. 

“Sixteen minutes into the film,” Fischer relates, “the shark kills a little boy at the beach, tearing him off his inflatable raft in an eruption of thick, red blood. A man in the audience rose out of his seat, ran past Steven to the lobby, and vomited all over the floor. Oh my God, what have I done? thought Steven. A man has just barfed because of my film.  But then the man wiped his mouth clean—and returned as quickly as he could to his seat.”

In another instance, Spielberg, while listening to the audience recording later, “noticed a gap in the symphony of shrieks and gasps” from the sneak preview audience. Spielberg then added in one of the film’s most “memorable moments.” The scene we all saw “shows [Matt] Hooper, [played by Richard Dreyfuss], in a diving suit, exploring underwater at night… Hooper finds the hull of Gardner’s sunk boat, a shark tooth planted in the wood. As he approaches to recover it, Gardner’s decapitated, bloated head floats out at him from inside the hull of the wrecked vessel, a [jump-scare] that causes Hooper to drop the shark tooth—and film audiences everywhere to throw their popcorn in the air.”

However, this scene was not in the sneak preview of the “completed” film; the search for the lost fisherman scene was the “gap” that Spielberg noticed. He had one last touch to add to the epic film. “After Universal refused to pay for a reshoot,” Fischer writes, “Steven spent $3,000 of his own money to have the prop head driven from storage to [a friend’s] house, and a replica of the boat hull built at the bottom of [her] humble backyard swimming pool. It was like being a kid in Arizona again. He put a black tarp up to block out the sun. He pulled a gallon bottle of milk from [the] fridge and emptied it into the pool to turn the water thick and murky as the Cape Cod seabed. It took a few takes but Steven got his shot.” Doesn’t that make you want to go check out that scene again?

Following American Graffiti (1973), George Lucas made his indelible mark on Hollywood and American culture by producing and directing Star Wars (1977), a franchise that would also thrive well into the twenty-first century. Like Indiana Smith, I wonder if this would have been so successful had they chosen another title under consideration: The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as Taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga 1 of the Star Wars.

While Fischer’s title The Last Kings of Hollywood is a bit misleading, it’s safe to say that the battle over artistic independence and money making has almost always tipped in favor of the bottom line. Even some of Fischer’s heroes succumbed to this.

As Fischer writes, “Michael Eisner-—he architect of the kind of filmmaking Francis loathed above all—was announced as the new head of the Walt Disney Company and said, ‘We have no obligation to make history…We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.’”

Beyond the 1970s, as Fischer laments, studio executives and movie makers of many stripes “would spend the next decade pulling the film industry further away from art and ever closer to fairground entertainment —prioritizing ‘franchiseable’ intellectual property, acquiring production companies and television networks for vertical integration, green-lighting pictures as much for their merchandising implications and the potential of integrating them with theme park rides as anything else.”

As we look at recent developments involving Paramount, Warner Bros., Netflix, and more, it’s hard to argue that a lot of people are making whole lotta money out there. I have to say though, that there is some pretty fascinating television available right now; so much so, that it’s really difficult to watch it all.

Despite all the money-grabbing that has characterized modern entertainment, it felt pretty good while enjoying Fischer’s story to reminisce about some of the most celebrated films of the era with a refreshing, almost innocent, nostalgia.