Odets was a left-wing New Yorker eventually transplanted to Hollywood, where he churned out scripts within the Hollywood studio system.

WSJ: Review: Fame cuts both ways in 'The Big Knife'

Directors like Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas come here to make movies that are outside the Hollywood studio system.

BBC: The road to Hollywood, California

Out On the Coast, that wonderful novel about the Hollywood studio system in its prime, seen through a prism of humor and pain, has not been matched to this day.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Gone Tomorrow'

However, the emerging pattern is something akin to the Hollywood studio system, with the big companies still responsible for some of their own creative output, but acting mainly as banker-distributors for smaller companies' ideas.

ECONOMIST: Can't stop starting businesses

But what made her "fascinating" life accessible to millions of readers and viewers was in part the break-up of the old Hollywood studio system in the 1950s.

BBC: How Elizabeth Taylor redefined celebrity

The squeeze on agency margins that we have witnessed on Madison Avenue in recent years will lead to something resembling the demise of the studio system in Hollywood.

FORBES: Honey, I Shrunk The Agency

They either adapt, as some in Hollywood did, or go the way of the old studio system.

FORBES: Will There Be A Hollywood Ending For Madison Avenue?

Celebrity bugged him in every aspect: the studio contract system, from which he rapidly escaped, the Hollywood gossip mill, from which he fled into long-term marriage, motor-racing and Connecticut, the loveless pressure for Oscars and nominations.

ECONOMIST: Paul Newman

In late 2007, with Hollywood on the verge of a writers' strike, Whedon decided to step outside the studio system and produce a Web series about an inept villain.

FORBES: Magazine Article