Paramount, one of Hollywood's big five studios, controlled the largest number of theaters in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. This meant they had an advantage when the economy in the United States recovered after the Great Depression. That said, many other factors come into play when defining the extent to which the studio is a typical representation of a major Hollywood studio company in the 1930s and 1940s. In this essay I will delve into the extent to which Paramount is a representation of other key Hollywood studios in the 1930s and 1940s. I will discuss Paramount's methods as a company such as exposure, distribution, star system, and genre to see what a typical representative of a Hollywood studio company is like. I will use material such as The Golden Age of Cinema, Hollywood 1929 – 1945 by Richard B. Jewel to go into detail in explaining my points. Paragraph 1 – Show Many of Hollywood's film studios owned their own theaters, in fact the big five, MGM, Paramount, RKO, Warner Bros' and Twentieth Century Fox owned 80% of all first run theaters in the United States, with complete control of them in 78 of the 95 major cities. This meant that studios had a lot of say in what images they wanted to show to their audiences. During the 1930s and early 1940s the Great Depression affected many American industries, including the film industry. Theater attendance plummeted from an average of 90 million before the Depression to an average of 60 million per week during it. This caused 34% of movie theaters nationwide to close. The studios introduced strategies to counter the depression such as location planning, building theaters in commercial areas where attendance is guaranteed, and making... middle of paper......and eventually signed up for the Twentieth Century Fox where her career began to flourish. Given that Grable was bankrupted by both RKO and Paramount, it's clear that both studios share similar methods on how to develop an actor/actress career. All three saw potential in Grable that still shows similarities within the studio corporation. Works Cited Pasquallo, M. (2007). The Great Depression and its effects on the movie theaters of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Available: http://courses.wcupa.edu/jones/his480/reports/dep-movi.htm. Last accessed 11/03/2014.Jewel, R. B (2007). The Golden Age of Cinema, Hollywood 1929-1940. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. P86: Figure 2.6Jewel, R. B (2007). The Golden Age of Cinema, Hollywood 1929-1940. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. P77Jewel, R.B. (2007). The Golden Age of Cinema, Hollywood 1929-1940. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. P255.