In the times of Classical Hollywood, there was a strong association between stars and genres. Studios at the time produced films at a fast rate, which gave actors the possibility of a quick rise to stardom. The defining of genres through actors in studio systems paved the way to the establishment of several popular genres that exist to this day.
The five major Classical Hollywood studios had several actors on contract that continuously appeared in several films. Because of their strong association with certain genres, studios were identifiable through the genre of the film. Warner Brothers produced crime films, MGM produced musicals, and Universal produced horror films. The actors that studios had on contract influenced the genre of the films produced by that studio.
An excellent example of this is Humphrey Bogart and his gangster roles with Warner Brothers. Bogart, who was featured in over 70 films in his lifetime, was ranked by the AFI as the greatest male star in the history of cinema. Bogart, often dressed in a raincoat and fedora, played the role of a gangster in most of the films in which he appeared, giving Warner Brothers the defining characteristic as the crime genre. Although gangster films were banned for a time, Warner Brothers merged Bogart’s role from a gangster to a detective, thus tweaking the standard genre of crime with gangsters as the tragic hero to detectives as the real hero.
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