Description
Book SynopsisFully revised, updated, and extended, the fifth edition of Hollywood's America provides an important compilation of interpretive essays and primary documents that allows students to read films as cultural artifacts within the contexts of actual past events.
- A new edition of this classic textbook, which ties movies into the broader narrative of US and film history
- This fifth edition contains nine new chapters, with a greater overall emphasis on recent film history, and new primary source documents which are unavailable online
- Entries range from the first experiments with motion pictures all the way to the present day
- Well-organized within a chronological framework with thematic treatments to provide a valuable resource for students of the history of American film
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix
Preface xi
Introduction: The Social and Cultural History of American Film 1
Part I The Silent Era 31
Introduction: Intolerance and the Rise of the Feature Film 31
1 Workers in Early Film 33
Michael Shull, “Silent Agitators: Militant Labor in the Movies, 1909–1919”
2 Silent Cinema as Historical Mythmaker 42
Eric Niderost, “The Birth of a Nation”
3 The Revolt Against Victorianism 51
Lary May, “Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and the New Personality”
4 Primary Sources 63
Edison v. American Mutoscope Company 63
“The Nickel Madness” 65
Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio 68
Fighting a Vicious Film: Protest Against The Birth of a Nation 69
Boston Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1915 69
Analysis by Francis Hackett 69
“Seeing Our Boys ‘Over There’” 71
Part II Hollywood’s Golden Age 75
Introduction: Backstage During the Great Depression: 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade 75
5 Depression America and its Films 79
Maury Klein, “Laughing Through Tears”
6 The Depression’s Human Toll 86
Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, “Gangsters and Fallen Women”
7 Depression Allegories 95
Thomas H. Pauly, “Gone with the Wind and The Grapes of Wrath as Hollywood Histories of the Great Depression”
8 African Americans on the Silver Screen 104
Thomas R. Cripps, “The Evolution of Black Film”
9 Primary Sources 116
The Introduction of Sound 116
“Pictures That Talk” 116
Review of Don Juan 117
“Silence is Golden” 118
Film Censorship 120
The Sins of Hollywood, 1922 120
“The Don’ts and Be Carefuls” 122
The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 123
The State Department on Hollywood in Germany, 1934 133
The State Department on Hollywood in Latin America, 1934 134
Part III Hollywood in the World War II Era 137
Introduction: Hollywood’s World War II Combat Films 137
10 Movies and Great Britain 141
Michael Todd Bennett, “Anglophilia on Film: Creating an Atmosphere for Alliance, 1935–1941”
11 Blockbuster as Propaganda 156
Randy Roberts, “You Must Remember This: The Case of Hal Wallis’s Casablanca”
12 John Wayne and Wartime Hollywood 166
Randy Roberts, “John Wayne Goes to War”
13 The Woman’s Film 184
Jeanine Basinger, “When Women Wept”
14 Primary Sources 191
Sumner Welles to Franklin Roosevelt, 1941 191
The 1941 Academy Awards: Hollywood and the President 192
Correspondence between Walter Wanger and Stephen Early 192
Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Academy Awards Dinner 195
Walter Wanger to Stephen Early 196
Madeleine Carroll to Franklin Roosevelt 196
U.S. Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Motion Picture and Radio Propaganda, 1941 196
Excerpts from The Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry, 1942 200
Bureau of Motion Pictures Report: Casablanca 204
Part IV Postwar Hollywood 207
Introduction: Double Indemnity and Film Noir 207
15 The Red Scare in Hollywood 211
Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, “HUAC and the End of an Era”
16 Movies Grow Up 219
Jennifer Holt, “Hollywood and Politics Caught in the Cold War Crossfire”
17 The Morality of Informing 229
Kenneth R. Hey, “Ambivalence and On the Waterfront”
18 Science Fiction as Social Commentary 240
Stuart Samuels, “The Age of Conspiracy and Conformity: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)”
19 Primary Sources 250
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1947) 250
Hearings Regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry 251
U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1947 251
U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1951 251
The Waldorf Statement, 1947 254
Part V Hollywood in an Age of Turmoil 257
Introduction: Bonnie and Clyde 257
20 The Dark Side of the 1960s 259
Charles Bane, “Worrying about the Bomb: Stanley Kubrick and the Nuclear War Film”
21 Films of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s 270
Michael Ryan and Douglas Kelner, “From Counterculture to Counterrevolution, 1967–1971”
22 Film Capital and National Capital 279
Kathryn Cramer Brownell, “‘Politics is Show Business’: Hollywood and the New Politics”
23 Reaffirming Traditional Values 288
Daniel J. Leab, “The Blue Collar Ethnic in Bicentennial America: Rocky”
24 Presenting African Americans on Film 297
Aram Goudsouzian, “The Rise and Fall of Sidney Poitier”
25 Coming to Terms with the Vietnam War 306
Randy Roberts and David Welky, “A Sacred Mission: Oliver Stone and Vietnam”
26 Primary Sources 324
Raymond Caldiero to Herbert L. Porter, 1972
Part VI Hollywood in the Post-studio Era 329
Introduction: A Changing Hollywood 329
27 Feminism and Recent American Film 331
Aspasia Kotsopoulos, “Gendering Expectations: Genre and Allegory in Readings of Thelma and Louise”
28 The Screen and the Cross 349
Donna Bowman, “Christianity, Hollywood, and the Culture Wars”
29 Social Revolution on Screen 357
Thomas Piontek, “Tears for Queers: Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, Hollywood, and American Attitudes toward Homosexuality”
30 Encountering Distant Lands 369
Mark Graham, “The New Great Game: Rambo III, The Beast, and Charlie Wilson’s War”
31 Superheroes for the Twenty-First Century 384
Noel Murray, “Assembling Joss Whedon’s Avengers: The Modern Business of Blockbusters”
32 Movies and the Construction of Historical Memory 392
Steven Mintz, “Movies, History, and the Disneyfication of the Past: The Case of Pocahontas”
Bibliography of Recent Books in American Film History 399
Index 425
