If 1939 was "Hollywood's Greatest Year," the beginning of the 1940s saw the film industry poised for an era of stability and dominance. Events turned out otherwise. At midnight on 31 December 1949 a "consent decree," resulting from the famous Paramount case, went into effect. The Hollywood studios agreed to begin divesting themselves of their theater chains. The end of an era was not inevitable. Boom and Bust traces the motion picture industry through the entire momentous decade, examining the social, political, and economic context of the forties; the development of the industry; changes in the structure of the studio system, including the steady shift to independent production; and the dominant stars. genres, and production trends of the period.

The three great divisions of Boom and Bust are the prewar era (1940-1941), when the future seemed simple; the war years (1942-1945), when government cooperation, turmoil in the international markets, and the rise of the documentary all brought unimaginable change into the industry; and the postwar era (1946-1949), when the government renewed its long-postponed antitrust activity and demographic shifts began to threaten downtown movie exhibition, while television loomed ominously on the horizon. The gathering storm of the antitrust campaign offers the crucial continuity during the decade. As previous volumes in the History of American Cinema have shown, the steady transformation of the studio system of production and exhibition was a process that stretched across most of the century.

Boom and Bust draws material form studio archives, trade papers, and other contemporary accounts. Combining a sweeping historical treatment with detailed case studies of films like AIR FORCE, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, and the Abbot and Costello series, the volume provides both a comprehensive overview of the decade and a detailed look at its key individuals, events, and films.

Documentary and avant-garde cinema, the Office of War Information, and the film industry's role in the long gestation of commercial television are among the topics addressed in special chapters by such scholars as Christopher Anderson, Thomas Doherty, Clayton Koppes, Lauren Rabinowitz, and Janet Staiger.