Record Nr.

UNINA9910792834903321

Autore

Morgan Iwan

Titolo

Hollywood and the Great Depression : American film, politics and society in the 1930s / / edited by Iwan Morgan and Philip John Davies [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa


Edinburgh : , : Edinburgh University Press, , 2016

ISBN

1-4744-2674-3

1-4744-1402-8

0-7486-9993-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (vi, 288 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Classificazione

AP 44984

Disciplina

791.430979494

Soggetti

Motion pictures - United States - History - 20th century

Nineteen thirties

Depressions - 1929 - United States

History

United States Social life and customs 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 10 May 2017).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

; 1 : The political history of classical Hollywood : moguls, liberals and radicals in the 1930s/ Mark Wheeler -- ; 2 : Columbia Pictures and the Great Depression : a case study of political writers in Hollywood / Ian Scott -- ; 3 : Organization women and belle rebels : Hollywood's working women in the 1930s / J.E. Smyth -- ; 4 : The congressional battle over motion picture distribution, 1936-1940 / Catherine Jurca -- ; 5 : Shirley Temple and Hollywood's colonialist ideology / Ina Rae Hark -- ; 6 : Astaire and Rogers : carefree in Roberta / Peter William Evans -- ; 7 : The 'awful truth' about Cary Grant / Mark Glancy -- ; 8 : Footlight parade : the New Deal on screen / Harvey G. Cohen -- ; 9 : Our daily bread : 'cooperation', 'independence', and politics in mid-1930s cinema / Brian Neve -- ; 10 : Embodying the state : masculine transformation in Hollywood films of the New Deal era / Anna Siomopoulos -- ; 11 : 'We're only kids now, but someday... : Hollywood musicals and the Great Depression 'youth crisis / David Eldridge -- ; 12 : Chaplin's Modern Times : the reception of the film in the US, France, and Britain /

Melvyn Stokes -- ; 13 : John Ford's Young Mr Lincoln : a popular front hero for the late 1930s / Iwan Morgan.

Sommario/riassunto

Examines how Hollywood responded to and reflected the political and social changes that America experienced during the 1930s.In the popular imagination, 1930s Hollywood was a dream factory producing escapist movies to distract the American people from the greatest economic crisis in their nation's 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. Roosevelt's 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:<ul><li>How Hollywood offered positive representations of working women</li><li>Congressional investigations of big-studio monopolization over movie distribution</li><li>How 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 'kids' musicals of the late 1930s</li><li>The problems of independent production exemplified in King Vidor's Our Daily Bread</li><li>Cary Grant's success in developing a debonair screen persona amid Depression conditions</li></ul>Contributors <ul><li>Harvey G. Cohen, King's College London</li><li>Philip John Davies, British Library</li><li>David Eldridge, University of Hull</li><li>Peter William Evans, Queen Mary, University of London</li><li>Mark Glancy, Queen Mary University of London</li><li>Ina Rae Hark, University of South Carolina</li><li>Iwan Morgan, University College London</li><li>Brian Neve, University of Bath</li><li>Ian Scott, University of Manchester</li><li>Anna Siomopoulos, Bentley University</li><li>J. E. Smyth, University of Warwick</li><li>Melvyn Stokes, University College London</li><li>Mark Wheeler, London Metropolitan University</li></ul>