Hollywood's America : Twentieth-Century America Through Film

by Mintz, Steven; Roberts, Randy W.

• ISBN13: 9781405190039
• ISBN10: 1405190035
• Edition: 4th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-03-01
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Fully revised, updated, and extended, this compilation of interpretive essays and primary documents teaches 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 Ten new articles which consider recently released films, as well as issues of gender and ethnicity Well-organized within a chronological framework with thematic treatments to provide a valuable resource for students of the history of American film Fourth edition includes completely new images throughout

Author Biography

Steven Mintz is Director of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center at Columbia University. He is the author and editor of thirteen books, including Hack's Raft: A History of American Childhood (2004), which received the Association of American Publishers R. R. Hawkins Award for the Outstanding Scholarly Book of 2004, and the Organization of American Historians 2004 Merle Curti Award for the best book in social history. He is the editor of African American Voices (4th edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), Mexican American Voices (2nd edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), and Native American Voices (2nd edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2000). Randy W. Roberts is Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, and specializes in recent US history, US sports history, and the history of popular culture. He is the author of Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam (5th edition, with James S. Olson, Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), Charles A. Lindbergh: The Power and Peril of Celebrity 1927-1941. (with David Welky, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), Jack Dempsey. The Manassa Mauler (2003), A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory (with James S. Olson, 2001), But They Can't Beat Us: Oscar Robertson and the Crispus Attucks Tigers (1999), My Lai: A Brief History with Documents (with James S. Olson, 1998), John Wayne American (with James S. Olson, 1996), and Winning is the Only Thing: Sports in America since 1945 (with James S. Olson, 1991).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. x
Introduction: The Social and Cultural History of American Film	p. 1
The Silent Era	p. 29
Introduction: Intolerance and the Rise of the Feature Film	p. 29
Silent Cinema as Social Criticism: “Front Page Movies”	p. 31
Silent Cinema as Historical Mythmaker: “The Birth of a Nation”	p. 43
The Revolt Against Victorianism: “Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and the New Personality”	p. 52
Primary Sources	p. 63
Edison v. American Mutoscope Company	p. 63
“The Nickel Madness”	p. 63
Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio	p. 67
Fighting a Vicious Film: Protest Against The Birth of a Nation	p. 69
Boston Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1915	p. 69
Analysis	p. 39
Hollywood's Golden Age	p. 71
Introduction: Backstage During the Great Depression: 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade	p. 71
Depression America and its Films: “Laughing Through Tears”	p. 75
The Depression's Human Toll: “Gangsters and Fallen Women”	p. 82
Depression Allegories: “Gone with the Wind and The Grapes of Wrath as Hollywood Histories of the Great Depression”	p. 91
African Americans on the Silver Screen: “The Evolution of Black Film”	p. 100
Primary Sources	p. 112
The Introduction of Sound	p. 112
“Pictures That Talk”	p. 112
Review of Don Juan	p. 113
“Silence is Golden”	p. 113
Film Censorship	p. 116
The Sins of Hollywood, 1922	p. 116
“The Don'ts and Be Carefuls”	p. 118
The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930	p. 119
Wartime Hollywood	p. 129
Introduction: Hollywood's World War II Combat Films	p. 129
Casablanca as Propaganda: “You Must Remember This: The Case of Hal Wallis' Casablanca”	p. 133
Bureau of Motion Pictures Report: Casablanca	p. 142
John Wayne and Wartime Hollywood: “John Wayne Goes to War”	p. 144
The Woman's Film: “When Women Wept”	p. 163
Primary Sources: US Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Motion Picture and Radio Propaganda, 1941	p. 170
Postwar Hollywood
Introduction: Double Indemnity and Film Noir	p. 175
The Red Scare in Hollywood: “HUAC and the End of an Era”	p. 179
The Morality of Informing: “Ambivalence and On the Waterfront”	p. 187
Science Fiction as Social Commentary: “The Age of Conspiracy and Conformity: Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956)	p. 198
The Western as Cold War Film: “Gunfighters and Green Berets: The Magnificent Seven and the Myth of Counter-Insurgency”	p. 207
Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: “Film Noir, Disneyland, and the Cold War (Sub) Urban Imaginary”	p. 219
Primary Sources	p. 234
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1947)	p. 234
Hearings Regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry	p. 235
US House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1947	p. 235
US House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1951	p. 235
The Miracle Decision	p. 238
Inc. v. Wilson, Commissioner of Education of New York, et al. (1952)	p. 238
Hollywood and the Tumultuous 1960s	p. 241
Introduction: Bonnie and Clyde	p. 241
A Shifting Sensibility: “Dr. Strangelove: Nightmare Comedy and the Ideology of Liberal Consensus”	p. 243
Films of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s: “From Counterculture to Counterrevolution, 1967-1971”	p. 255
Reaffirming Traditional Values: “The Blue Collar Ethnic in Bicentennial America: Rocky”	p. 264
Presenting African Americans on Film: “The Rise and Fall of Sidney Poitier”	p. 272
Coming to Terms with the Vietnam War: “A Sacred Mission: Oliver Stone and Vietnam”	p. 281
Primary Sources: The Hollywood Rating System, 1968	p. 301
Hollywood in Our Time	p. 305
Introduction: A Changing Hollywood	p. 305
Feminism and Recent American Film: “Gendering Expectations: Genre and Allegory in Readings of Thelma and Louise”	p. 309
Hollywood Remembers World War II: “Saving Private Ryan and Postwar Memory in America”	p. 329
East Meets West: “The Asian Invasion (of Multiculturalism) in Hollywood”	p. 340
Immigration at the Movies: “The Immigrant in Film: Evolution of an Illuminating Icon”	p. 354
Movies and the Construction of Historical Memory: “Movies, History, and the Disneyfication of the Past: The Case of Pocahontas”	p. 364
Bibliography of Recent Books in American Film History	p. 371
Index	p. 395
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.