Because of Hollywood’s involvement with major financial interests, the strike and lockout assumed dramatic importance. Filmmaking was notoriously labor intensive, but it also involved substantial financial outlays; the studios spent $50 million to build sound stages in 1929, while production cost per film averaged about $300,000 at Warner Bros. and $500,000 at MGM during the Depression. Banks particularly had been active investors; though much has been made—understandably—about directors as “auteurs” of films and the different film styles of various studios, banks with their ability to “review … scripts and production projects” had an “awesome potential for control” of the industry. Their “lending policies” could “validate or disapprove a company’s plan for future operation.” The California-based Bank of America was known as the “movie bank”: its board membership over the years even included, e.g., Will Rogers, Wallace Beery, Harry Cohn of Columbia, Jack Warner, Daryl Zanuck, et al.