The Revolution split Hollywood in almost the same way it did the Army. Much of the ground talent (directors, set designers, writers, actors, cameramen, etc.) stayed behind because of the more beneficial nature of the new regime, and the strongly anti-union, anti-Communist studio heads fled after the Reds victory.
However, their journeys were far spread out. Adolf Zukor used the Paramount owned theaters in Canada to comfortably re-establish Paramount there out of Ottawa. Louis B. Mayer took MGM to Britain, creating a home within Alexander Korda’s Denham Film Studio. The rest of the big studios, including Universal, RKO, Warner Brothers and Columbia settled in MacArthurist Cuba. Eventually, Warner Bros and Columbia would dominate the Cuban film scene, with respective studio heads Jack Warner and Harry Cohn becoming parts of MacArthur’s inner circle and their sponsored brand of propaganda (most notably wartime “Macaco” films) becoming big hits. Universal, however, managed to survive by merging with Fox Films[1], and RKO would largely compete in the periphery with other low-budget studios.
This new studio system, the norm for the post-Revolution and war periods, is often regarded as beginning its unravelling in the late 1950’s. Jack Warner and Harry Cohn, who had defined the Studio System through their state subsidized blockbusters, often co-productions between their studios, had an increasingly contentious relationship, as they secretly jockeyed for more power and influence (meaning generally more profits). Due to his direct, authoritarian nature and opposition to encroaching Franco-British films (Cohn had spearheaded the Cinema Act to combat this), Cohn was generally preferred amongst the Cuban elite. However, Cohn’s health took a turn for the worse with a severe heart attack in 1957 with another following in 1958. As Cohn lay dying, Jack Warner seized the opportunity and secretly organized a syndicate to purchase more and more stock in Columbia, right under Cohn’s nose (a popular legend said his death was prompted by the revelation of Warner’s activities)[2]. Eventually, after Cohn’s death, Warner seized complete control of Columbia, and merged it to form Warner-Columbia.
The studio became overstretched, and the subsidies offered by the Department of Communciations gradually petered out under Robert Kennedy. Just as well, television slowly made its way into Cuba, meaning more competitions for films. Once their big budget war epic The Fires of Venezuela and Arthurian adaptation The Ill-Made Knight flopped at the box office, Warner-Columbia collapsed under its own weight, and would declare bankrupcy. Its film library, theaters, and studios sold off.
While W-C’s collapse is regarded as the end of the first Cuban Studio System, the beginnings of the Second actually had its roots before even the merger, with various new players coming into prominence to replace Jack Warner.
In 1947, Universal was bought out by the Rank Organization. Now restructured as “Universal World Pictures,” it would largely become the Cuban subsidiary to J. Arthur Rank’s film company, becoming one of the first to utilize the “quota quickies” enacted under the Cinema Act. However, the backing of Rank meant that they also could make “exotic” pictures, filmed in places across the FBU colonial empire. This allowed them to ride out the end of subsidies and come out as W-C devolved into bankruptcy. Universal would utilize both quota quickies and big British productions to replace its output. In 1969, Oliver!, the adaptation of the popular West End version of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, would become a major success, prompting Universal to go hard into the genre. Eventually, they acquired the rights to “East End Story”, a British musical centering on a star-crossed lovers tale set among London gangs in the East End. However, to appeal to the newly liberated native Cuban consumers, the setting was changed to Havana, with the gangs being low-class, immigrant whites and Cuban. Havana Story is largely regarded as a classic.
The need to appeal to the new middle class Cubans was also a major part of the next player’s appeal. In 1952, ex-Warner executive Frank McCarthy would start Santiago Pictures, and grow it by purchasing the increasingly bankrupt Poverty Row Studios. Frank McCarthy would start mostly with documentaries and educational films, going through slow growth. In 1958, McCarthy would hire a young Cuban filmmaker named Manuel Trujillo, who would begin to make specifically Cuban flavored B-Films, tailored more towards a Cuban audience. These features would define the “Mambo film” aesthetic, and keep Santiago afloat with cult successes up until the late 60’s. Trujillo would leave Santiago, and go onto a prolific career, both as a producer of schlocky Mambo films for Franco-British audiences and as a pioneering director and mentor for Cuban filmmakers. McCarthy, in the meantime, would purchase its studio in Havana (and some of its film library), and embarked on directly replacing W-C whilst utilizing Trujillo’s more Cuban oriented approach to adapt to the times. Thus, with his war film A Long Night, McCarthy would embark on making high budget action and thriller films, mostly with a focus towards Cuban audiences while maintaining a largely pro-American stance. This included 1973 spy thriller The Bureau Man and Attack on the USS Freedom, a 1975 thriller involving the communist seizure of a Cuban warship and the resulting war of wills.
The man who would topple Jack Warner as the leading exec of the period was Howard Hughes. A minor producer notable for winning the first Academy Award for The Racket, Hughes reentered the market with his success in real estate and airplanes,in 1948 by purchasing RKO outright, and building it as a company gradually, with what is regarded as the first “Mambo Film”, the Western Deliverance. In the 60’s, Hughes expanded both RKO’s slate of films, and the growing television empire that he built under its name, using its own library, both key to a larger media empire. The eclipse of W-C was the breakthrough needed. Hughes purchased the rest of the Warner-Columbia catalogue and even the use of the old WB name and symbol from the almost destitute Jack Warner, and added them into RKO-TV catalogue. Hughes would use the Warner name in “the Warner Bros. Grand Casino and Resort”, a large casino in Monaco utilizing the famous Warner water tower and iconography from Warner Bros films.
Hughes biggest advantage was his growing TV empire. Along with right-wing news programs, he used RKO as a means of both filmmaking and TV, making series like Scotland Yard and Holmes, both British set police procedurals (the latter a modernization of the Sherlock Holmes stories). The combination of this and building a minor media empire with the RKO name allowed Hughes to surpass his rivals.
The 70’s saw two spheres of Cuban filmmaking arise. One, the three studios that had taken over the former Warner-Columbia, two of which owned by British or British based companies, making larger budget films, with the underground “Mambo Film” scene with low budget films by those like Trujillo. This balance would survive into the 80’s.
However, cracks would begin to show, as more studios formed and Franco-British orgs began a larger push into the market. Santiago’s penchant for high budget blockbusters would make it increasingly unsustainable as Franco-British blockbusters of generally higher quality would make their way into Cuba. McCarthy attempted to pre-empt this, much as he did for Macaco films with A Long Night. To seize on the success of Alien, he would try to produce his own SF creature feature with Night of the Crawlers, an invasion film with radiated worms causing a large plague. While regarded as a cult classic, it was not as big a success as Santiago needed, and as they tried to chase trends, they would sink lower and lower into debt due to multiple failures.
As the late 80’s approached, with Santiago’s decline, a major blow occurred with the repeal of the Cinema Act in 1988. With films now more expensive to make, the studio system would rapidly collapse much as it did after Fires of Venezuela. Santiago was dealt a fatal blow with this and the death of Frank McCarthy in 1990, causing their eventually bankruptcy and purchase by mogul Ted Kennedy.
Universal World would survive, but downgraded, with operations largely transferred to Britain. Hughes’ death in 1976 would see his properties more consolidated, and priority was given to television over film. Eventually, RKO Films (renamed RKO-Warner in 1994) would be relocated to France, with the studio transferred to Spain.
The fall of Santiago would see the end of a formal studio system, but new native studios, mostly encouraged by the new quota system, have arisen to become the new Cuban industry, though the problem remains the preeminence of Franco-British films over native ones.
[1] Later 20th Century Fox OTL
[2] OTL, Jack Warner did a similar thing to buy out his brothers after taking WB public. Once it was revealed, Harry Warner purportedly died of shock.