How Post-WWII Suburbanization and the Paramount Decree Reshaped Hollywood for Teen Audiences

Key facts

• The Paramount Decree of 1948 forced Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros. Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and RKO Pictures to divest theater chains and end block booking.
• The 1952 Miracle Decision granted First Amendment protection to films, weakening censorship and enabling juvenile delinquency and rebellion on screen.
• Theater audiences dropped by over 50 percent between 1949 and 1959 due to suburbanization and television.
• Richard Brooks’s 1955 Blackboard Jungle and Nicholas Ray’s 1955 Rebel Without a Cause portrayed youth as a social problem.
• Thousands of drive-in theaters appeared across the United States by the early 1950s, creating a market for low-budget horror, science fiction, and beach party films.
• The 1957 double feature of Gene Fowler Jr.’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Edward L. Cahn’s Invasion of the Saucer Men merged juvenile delinquency with horror and science fiction; I Was a Teenage Werewolf was the first horror movie to feature a rock ‘n’ roll song.
• Film Noir, shaped by Fritz Lang’s 1945 Scarlet Street and Billy Wilder’s 1944 Double Indemnity, expressed post-war cynicism and moral ambiguity.
• Arthur Penn’s 1967 Bonnie and Clyde and Dennis Hopper’s 1969 Easy Rider solidified New Hollywood’s targeted filmmaking by age, ideology, and lifestyle.