Star-Studded Studios

     Old Hollywood studios operated in a much different way from those of today, one important difference being that stars were tightly attached to a certain studio. Major star vehicles were often the selling point for movies, so studios contracted as many big stars that they could (one example being MGM's advertisement of having "all the stars in heaven"), creating a "Dream Factory" that could churn out more movies in a shorter amount of time than any of today's studio could imagine, much like the concurrent development of car companies, namely Ford, to use a quick assembly line process to rapidly produce cars.
    Such a system of stars being deeply connected to a certain studio greatly affected the movies studios would produce. Stars often had a special talent or a genre they were best at acting in, so studios would cater to their talents and produce films accordingly. For example, someone like John Wayne who was generally associated with the Western genre would cause his studio to increase their production of Westerns. Similarly, those stars who could tap dance would find themselves in dancing scenes regardless of the movie and signing stars would be the main vehicles for studios' musicals.
    Studios also relied on intra-studio promotion. A great example of this lies in a scene in which a young Judy Garland, an MGM star in an MGM film, sings a love song to Clark Gable, another MGM star. In ways like this, studios kept their stars within a tight-knit family and promoted their stars and films in subtle ways.