Hard, Fast, and Brokerage: Irving H. Levin, the Filmakers, and the Birth of Conglomerate Hollywood

ABSTRACT:This article examines the relationship between business and artistic innovation in shaping vertical integration practices in post-Paramount Hollywood. I examine the career of Irving H. Levin, who shaped Ida Lupino's independent film company by financing her films through guarantee contracts with exhibitors. Levin continually transformed exhibition companies, most notably National General Corporation, to finance and distribute independent films despite the antitrust limitations imposed by the Paramount consent decrees. By persuading the industry and courts to allow for antitrust exemptions based on economic precarity, he set a precedent for the return of vertical integration by the 1980s.