“The Big Eight,” note historians Clayton Koppes and Gregory Black, “reaped 95 percent of all motion picture rentals in the United States in the late 1930s” and controlled “80 percent of the metropolitan first-run houses, and all exhibitions in cities of more than 1,000,000 population.” However, as time passed, the independents began to nip at the heels of Paramount, Fox, MGM, RKO, Warner Bros., Columbia, Universal, and United Artists.30 The latter three, which were less integrated vertically than the “Big Five,” faced even greater jeopardy.

In 1945 there “were about 40 independent producers, 70 the following year, 90 in 1947 and about 165 a decade later.” Hollywood had, in effect, anticipated a widespread business trend of the 1990s: the sacking of needed employees and the rehiring of them as independent contractors, but sans benefits. This massive shift in Hollywood employment patterns had the side effect of eroding the distinctive signature and “look” that had helped to distinguish the work of one studio from another.31