The studio system is an arrangement of film production and distribution dominated by a small number of “major” studios in Hollywood. Although the term is still used today to refer to the organization and output of the major Hollywood studios, historically the term refers to the practice of large motion picture studios, between the 1920s and 1960s, of producing movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under often long-term contract, and which dominated exhibition through vertical integration, i.e., the ownership or effective control of distributors and exhibition, guaranteeing additional sales of films through manipulative booking techniques. The studio system was challenged under the anti-trust laws in the 1948 United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. Supreme Court ruling which sought to separate production from distribution and exhibition, and ended such practices, thereby hastening the end of the studio system. By 1954, with television competing for audiences and the last of the operational links between a major production studio and theater chain broken, the historic era of the studio system came to an end. Some film historians refer to the period stretching from the introduction of sound to the court ruling and the beginning of the studio breakups, 1927/29–1948/49, as the Golden Age of Hollywood. During the so-called Golden Age, eight companies constituted the so-called major studios that created the Hollywood studio system. Of these eight, five were fully integrated conglomerates, combining ownership of a production studio, distribution division, substantial theater chain, and contracting with performers and filmmaking personnel: Fox Film Corporation (later 20th Century-Fox), Loew’s Incorporated (owner of the largest theater circuit in the United States and parent company to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Paramount Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, and Warner Bros. Two majors—Universal Pictures and Columbia Pictures—were similarly organized, though they never owned more than small theater circuits. The eighth of the Golden Age majors, United Artists, owned a few theaters and had access to two production facilities owned by members of its controlling partnership group, but it functioned primarily as a backer-distributor, lending money to independent producers and releasing their films.