The death of vertical integration and the rise of television left the studios a ghost town: where 742 actors had been under contract to one of the studios in 1947, only 229 were in 1957, and where only 40 producers had possessed studio deals in 1947, 165 had one 10 years later. The power had drained from the centralized factory production of the studios, and toward individual producers and directors with the skill, and the financial wherewithal, to make their own films. But what to make, and how to make it?

UCLA professor Denise Mann's "Hollywood Independents" takes a fresh look at this intermediate era, the valley between classic Hollywood and the New Wave's peaks, and finds an industry simultaneously in turmoil and in the midst of impressive artistic ferment. Redirecting the historical attention away from the last wave of studio blockbusters toward the changing economic and creative structure of the industry, Mann captures an image of the movie business on the brink of reinventing itself.

If the studios were the big losers in the transition from the sound era to the TV era, the big winners were twofold: the MCA talent agency and the new wave of independent producer-directors like Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, and Burt Lancaster. MCA had hit the jackpot when Screen Actors Guild president Ronald Reagan had granted it a waiver from conflict-of-interest rules then on the books preventing corporations from simultaneously representing talent and producing films and television series. In one fell swoop, MCA boss Lew Wasserman became the most powerful man in Hollywood, and MCA the unchallenged kingmaker of the industry.

Meanwhile, studios were discovering, to their detriment, that independent productions could often be more artistically rigorous, and more profitable, than studio product. After the remarkable success of "Marty," which won best picture and turned a healthy profit, every producer in town began looking for the next "Marty" - the next movie that could pad both their artistic egos and their bank accounts. Studios were anxious to get involved in the prestige business, but never entirely understood what they were shooting for.