Radical Hollywood

by Buhle, Paul

• ISBN13: 9781565848191
• ISBN10: 1565848195
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: New Pr

Summary

A controversial and fascinating rewriting of the history of cinema's golden age. Radical Hollywood is the first comprehensive history of the Hollywood Left. From the dawn of sound movies to the early 1950s, Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner trace the political and personal lives of the screenwriters, actors, directors, and producers on the Left and the often decisive impact of their work upon American film's Golden Age. Full of rich anecdotes, biographical detail, and explorations of movies well-known, unjustly forgotten, and delightfully bizarre, the book is "an intelligent, well argued and absorbing examination of how politics and art can make startling and often strange bedfellows" (Publishers Weekly). Featuring an insert of rare film stillsRadical Hollywood relates the story-behind-the-story of films in such genres as crime, women's films, family cinema, war, animation, and, particularly, film noir.

Table of Contents

Introduction	v
1. The Screenwriter's Fate	1	(55)
2. The New Deal, the Rise of the Hollywood Left, and the Jewish Question	56	(55)
3. Genre Realized: The Radical World of the B Film	111	(43)
4. Success, but at Any Price? The New Deal Film and the Marketing of the Popular Front	154	(48)
5. War on Two (or Three) Fronts	202	(59)
6. Film Commentary and Theory in Midpassage	261	(60)
7. Politics and Mythology of Film Art-The Noir Era	321	(48)
8. To the Bitter End	369	(68)
Epilogue	437	(12)
Index	449