- [Narrator] Actor, Charlton Heston would say... - I hope to see a resurgence or a renaissance in Hollywood.

Hollywood is turning into a ghost town, and the production outlook at the moment is very bleak.

- Hollywood, all throughout the '60s, really, was losing its financial infrastructure and losing its audience.

It was undergoing a major identity crisis.

There was no sense in this transitional period, where the audience was, why sometimes they would go see movie X and they wouldn't go see the movie that looked like X.

- [Narrator] The cost of epic-making is ruinous.

Armies of carpenters, scene designers, stage hands and technicians, and the monumental complexity of equipment are required.

Columbia Pictures has nevertheless survived by making big budget musicals.

Here, Barbara Streisand prepares to film a scene for "Funny Girl."

- Well, in the 1960s, Hollywood, much everyone's surprised, discovered that blockbuster musicals could be successful once again.

(bright music)