Transforming the Screen, 1950-1959

by Lev, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780520249660
• ISBN10: 0520249666
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-06
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Completing the landmark, award-winning, ten-volume series on the first century of American film,The Fiftiescovers a particularly tumultuous period. Peter Lev explores the divorce of movie studios from their theater chains; the panic of the blacklist era; the explosive emergence of science fiction as the dominant genre (The Thing, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds); the rise of television and Hollywood's response to the new medium, as seen in widescreen spectacles (The Robe, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur) and mature Westerns (High Noon, Shane, The Searchers). The richly detailed text elucidates a number of emerging trends as Hollywood, with its familiar stars and genres, reached out as an industry to the newly acknowledged "teenage" generation with rock and roll films, and movies as diverse asRebel Without a Cause and Gidget.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Contributors	xiii
Introduction	1	(6)
The American Film Industry in the Early 1950s	7	(26)
Genres and Production Trends, 1950--1954	33	(32)
HUAC, the Blacklist, and the Decline of Social Cinema	65	(22)
Brian Neve
Censorship and Self-Regulation	87	(20)
Technology and Spectacle	107	(20)
Hollywood and Television in the 1950s: The Roots of Diversification	127	(20)
Janet Wasko
Hollywood International	147	(22)
Science Fiction Films and Cold War Anxiety	169	(28)
Victoria O'Donnell
The Film Industry in the Late 1950s	197	(20)
Genres and Production Trends, 1955--1959	217	(40)
American Documentary in the 1950s	257	(22)
Jack C. Ellis
``Unquiet Years'': Experimental Cinema in the 1950s	279	(36)
Greg S. Faller
Appendixes
Appendix 1 Number of Feature Films Released by the Eight Major Distribution Companies, 1950--1960	303	(1)
Appendix 2 Number of Motion Picture Theaters in the United States	304	(1)
Appendix 3 Motion Picture Box Office Receipts in the United States	304	(1)
Appendix 4 Average Price of a Movie Ticket in the United States, 1950--1960	305	(1)
Appendix 5 Widescreen and 3-D Releases, 1952--1960	305	(1)
Appendix 6 Top Ten Moneymakers Poll (Actors and Actresses), 1950--1960	306	(1)
Appendix 7 Academy Award Nominations and Winners for Best Picture, 1950--1960	307	(2)
Appendix 8 Other Major Academy Awards	309	(6)
Notes	315	(26)
Selected Bibliography	341	(6)
Picture Sources	347	(2)
General Index	349	(28)
Index of Films	377