Der Brucer, I refer you to Rudy Behlmer's two fine books MEMO and Warners Bros Presents. In Memo look at how Selznick rode herd on Hitchcock during REBECCA. In the Warners Bros. book reading the memoes you can see if a director did not shoot scene 54A, some producer was down on on his butt...or even if he shot it badly. Look at how many directors GONE WITH THE WIND had? Even a great film like ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD had two directors. Directors in the thirties and forties (my definition of the Golden Age...the strong studio-controlled contract days) were rarely in on the development of the script or the prep of a film, nor were they involved in the post-production process they way they are now...The film went to the editing department and was put together there; the director went on to his next "directing" gig. Directors, just like writers, went from assignment to assignment and didn't oversee a film from genesis to opening night. Producers were the force then and rode herd on the film.
It wasn't until the fifties and the break-up of the studio system (oddly enough, concurrent with the "auteur myth" from Europe. I always say the directors embraced the auteur myth and fooled the businessmen taking over the studios who didn't know any better that it was the natural order of things...Jack Warner or Sam Goldwyn or Louis Mayer would've just laugh at them) that directors and actors started becoming the engines of films.
In the thirties and forties, if a director wanted to be a force, he also produced (like Capra did, I believe). And if they wanted to edit their film, they learned to "cut in the camera" like Ford, so that there was only one viable way to put the thing together.
I would also refer you to Views from a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal, Edited by Robert J. Stanton and Gore Vidal, Lyle Stuart books, 1980. Check out the section entitled Artists and Barbarians and read Mr. Vidal's trenchent and true remarks (as well as vastly amusing) remarks about the film industry and directors in particular and what frauds he finds them. He calls them plagarists.
