Description
Book SynopsisExamines depictions of and by Catholics in American popular culture during the critical period between the Great Depression and the height of the Cold War. Anthony Burke Smith surveys the popular films, television, and photojournalism of the era that reimagined Catholicism as an important, even attractive, element of American life.
Trade ReviewSmith’s ambitious and exemplary work demonstrates decisively for all time that Catholics were not only integral players in the formation of modern American popular culture, but that the role of Catholicism itself in the national popular culture was a major issue in the production of that same culture. . . . A wonderfully exciting book that will be widely hailed as a landmark achievement, confirm the author’s stature as the leading scholar of Catholic popular culture, and be consulted by scholars and their students for decades to come." - James T. Fisher, author of
Communion of Immigrants: A History of Catholics in AmericaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Priests, Gangsters, and Cowboys: Catholic Outsiders, American Insiders, and the Struggle over National Community
1. The Catholic Front: Religion, Reform, and Culture in Depression-Era America
2. A New Deal in Movie Religion: The Public Sphere of Catholic Films
3. Cool Catholics in the Hot American Melting Pot: Going My Way, Bing Crosby, and Hollywood’s New Faith in Consensus
4. Pro-Life Catholics: The Representation of Catholicism in Life Magazine, 1936-1960
5. Performing Catholicism in an Age of Consensus: Fulton J. Sheen, Television, and Postwar America
6. From Public Dilemmas to Private Virtues: Leo McCarey, Hollywood Comedy, and the Household of Americanization
7. John Ford’s Irish American Century: Ethnicity, Catholicism, and the Borderlands of National Identity
Epilogue: Catholics and the American Community at the Turn of a New Century
Notes
Bibliography
Index
