American Cinema of the 1930s

American Cinema of the 1930s
Author: Ina Rae Hark
Publsiher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2007
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780813540825

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Abstract:

American Cinema of the 1930s

American Cinema of the 1930s
Author: Ina Rae Hark
Publsiher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2007-06-21
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780813543031

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Probably no decade saw as many changes in the Hollywood film industry and its product as the 1930s did. At the beginning of the decade, the industry was still struggling with the transition to talking pictures. Gangster films and naughty comedies starring Mae West were popular in urban areas, but aroused threats of censorship in the heartland. Whether the film business could survive the economic effects of the Crash was up in the air. By 1939, popularly called "Hollywood's Greatest Year," films like Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz used both color and sound to spectacular effect, and remain American icons today. The "mature oligopoly" that was the studio system had not only weathered the Depression and become part of mainstream culture through the establishment and enforcement of the Production Code, it was a well-oiled, vertically integrated industrial powerhouse. The ten original essays in American Cinema of the 1930s focus on sixty diverse films of the decade, including Dracula, The Public Enemy, Trouble in Paradise, 42nd Street, King Kong, Imitation of Life, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Swing Time, Angels with Dirty Faces, Nothing Sacred, Jezebel, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Stagecoach .

Guide to American Cinema 1930 1965

Guide to American Cinema  1930 1965
Author: Thomas R. Whissen
Publsiher: Greenwood
Total Pages: 416
Release: 1998
Genre: Motion pictures
ISBN: UOM:39015043118358

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These thorough bibliographic entries serve as a guide for those who wish to do further research into the first 35 years of talking pictures. A brief history of this era of films, the studio system, and the society of which they were a by-product adds context to the entries and accents their significance. The author has chosen 1965 as the cutoff date because it marked the end of the studio system and the beginning of the independent filmmaking era. This guide highlights the people and the art of the glamorous days of filmmaking in which actors and actresses set the standards by which all actors have been measured since. The abundance of data collected in this guide reflects the exhaustive wealth of films and personalities associated with the golden age of moviemaking. Based on certain criteria such as the amount and availability of bibliographical material, notoriety, critical acclaim, and the number and quality of awards, the author has carefully selected the works and people included in this reference. Current and comprehensive, this reference tool includes bibliographical information that provides both positive and negative criticism and appendices, including an extensive general bibliography, lists of film festivals around the world, schools offering advanced degrees in film, and film museums and archives in the United States.

Hollywood and the Great Depression

Hollywood and the Great Depression
Author: Iwan Morgan
Publsiher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2016-10-31
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781474414029

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Examines how Hollywood responded to and reflected the political and social changes that America experienced during the 1930sIn the popular imagination, 1930s Hollywood was a dream factory producing escapist movies to distract the American people from the greatest economic crisis in their nations history. But while many films of the period conform to this stereotype, there were a significant number that promoted a message, either explicitly or implicitly, in support of the political, social and economic change broadly associated with President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal programme. At the same time, Hollywood was in the forefront of challenging traditional gender roles, both in terms of movie representations of women and the role of women within the studio system. With case studies of actors like Shirley Temple, Cary Grant and Fred Astaire, as well as a selection of films that reflect politics and society in the Depression decade, this fascinating book examines how the challenges of the Great Depression impacted on Hollywood and how it responded to them.Topics covered include:How Hollywood offered positive representations of working womenCongressional investigations of big-studio monopolization over movie distributionHow three different types of musical genres related in different ways to the Great Depression the Warner Bros Great Depression Musicals of 1933, the Astaire/Rogers movies, and the MGM akids musicals of the late 1930sThe problems of independent production exemplified in King Vidors Our Daily BreadCary Grants success in developing a debonair screen persona amid Depression conditionsContributors Harvey G. Cohen, King's College LondonPhilip John Davies, British LibraryDavid Eldridge, University of HullPeter William Evans, Queen Mary, University of LondonMark Glancy, Queen Mary University of LondonIna Rae Hark, University of South CarolinaIwan Morgan, University College LondonBrian Neve, University of BathIan Scott, University of ManchesterAnna Siomopoulos, Bentley UniversityJ. E. Smyth, University of WarwickMelvyn Stokes, University College LondonMark Wheeler, London Metropolitan University

American Cinema of the 1940s

American Cinema of the 1940s
Author: Wheeler W. Dixon
Publsiher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813537009

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The 1940s was a watershed decade for American cinema and the nation. Shaking off the grim legacy of the Depression, Hollywood launched an unprecedented wave of production, generating some of its most memorable classics. Featuring essays by a group of respected film scholars and historians, American Cinema of the 1940s brings this dynamic and turbulent decade to life with such films as Citizen Kane, Rebecca, The Lady Eve, Sergeant York, How Green Was My Valley, Casablanca, Mrs. Miniver, The Road to Morocco, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Kiss of Death, Force of Evil, Caught, and Apology for Murder. Illustrated with many rare stills and filled with provocative insights, the volume will appeal to students, teachers, and to all those interested in cultural history and American film of the twentieth century.

American Cinema of the 1920s

American Cinema of the 1920s
Author: Lucy Fischer
Publsiher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2009-04-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780813547152

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During the 1920s, sound revolutionized the motion picture industry and cinema continued as one of the most significant and popular forms of mass entertainment in the world. Film studios were transformed into major corporations, hiring a host of craftsmen and technicians including cinematographers, editors, screenwriters, and set designers. The birth of the star system supported the meteoric rise and celebrity status of actors including Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and Rudolph Valentino while black performers (relegated to "race films") appeared infrequently in mainstream movies. The classic Hollywood film style was perfected and significant film genres were established: the melodrama, western, historical epic, and romantic comedy, along with slapstick, science fiction, and fantasy. In ten original essays, American Cinema of the 1920s examines the film industry's continued growth and prosperity while focusing on important themes of the era.

Glamour in a Golden Age

Glamour in a Golden Age
Author: Adrienne L. McLean
Publsiher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2011
Genre: Motion picture actors and actresses
ISBN: 9780813549040

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Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, William Powell and Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, and Gary Cooper-Glamour in a Golden Age presents original essays from eminent film scholars that analyze movie stars of the 1930s against the background of contemporary American cultural history. Stardom is approached as an effect of, and influence on, the particular historical and industrial contexts that enabled these actors and actresses to be discovered, featured in films, publicized, and to become recognized and admired-sometimes even notorious-parts of the cultural landscape. Using archival and popular material, including fan and mass market magazines, other promotional and publicity material, and of course films themselves, contributors also discuss other artists who were incredibly popular at the time, among them Ann Harding, Ruth Chatterton, Nancy Carroll, Kay Francis, and Constance Bennett.

Pre Code Hollywood

Pre Code Hollywood
Author: Thomas Doherty
Publsiher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 450
Release: 1999-08-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0231500122

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Pre-Code Hollywood explores the fascinating period in American motion picture history from 1930 to 1934 when the commandments of the Production Code Administration were violated with impunity in a series of wildly unconventional films—a time when censorship was lax and Hollywood made the most of it. Though more unbridled, salacious, subversive, and just plain bizarre than what came afterwards, the films of the period do indeed have the look of Hollywood cinema—but the moral terrain is so off-kilter that they seem imported from a parallel universe. In a sense, Doherty avers, the films of pre-Code Hollywood are from another universe. They lay bare what Hollywood under the Production Code attempted to cover up and push offscreen: sexual liaisons unsanctified by the laws of God or man, marriage ridiculed and redefined, ethnic lines crossed and racial barriers ignored, economic injustice exposed and political corruption assumed, vice unpunished and virtue unrewarded—in sum, pretty much the raw stuff of American culture, unvarnished and unveiled. No other book has yet sought to interpret the films and film-related meanings of the pre-Code era—what defined the period, why it ended, and what its relationship was to the country as a whole during the darkest years of the Great Depression... and afterward.