Author: Ina Rae Hark Publisher: Rutgers University Press ISBN: 0813543037 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
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 .
Author: James L. Neibaur Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476680442 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 206
Book Description
The 1930s represented the strongest and most significant decade in Clark Gable's career. Later known as The King of Hollywood, Gable started out as a journeyman actor who quickly rose to the level of star, and then icon. With his ruggedly attractive looks and effortless charisma, Gable was the sort of manly romantic lead that bolstered features alongside the likes of Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, and Spencer Tracy. The decade culminated with Gable's most noted movie, Gone With the Wind. This book traces Gable's early career, film-by-film, offering background information and a critical assessment of each of his movies released during the 1930s.
Author: Iwan Morgan Publisher: Edinburgh University Press ISBN: 1474414028 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
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
Author: Maria DiBattista Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300099034 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 388
Book Description
In this acclaimed book, DiBattista paints vivid portraits of the grandest fast-talking dames of the 1930s and 1940s movie era including Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, and Barbara Stanwyck. 39 illustrations.
Author: Adrienne L. McLean Publisher: Rutgers University Press ISBN: 0813549043 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 310
Book Description
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.
Author: Tim Bergfelder Publisher: Amsterdam University Press ISBN: 9053569804 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Summary: "Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination presents for the first time a comparative study of European film set design in the late 1920s and 1930s; based on a wealth of designers ʼ drawings, film stills and archival documents, the book offers a new insight into the development and significance of trans-national artistic collaboration during this period. European cinema from the late 1920s to the late 1930s is famous for its attention to detail in terms of set design and visual effect. Focusing on developments in Britain, France, and Germany, Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema provides a comprehensive analysis of the practices, styles, and function of cinematic production design during this period, and its influence on subsequent filmmaking patterns."--Publisher description.
Author: Daniel Kothenschulte Publisher: ISBN: 9783836544986 Category : Design Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
ln this award-winning book, illustrator Robert Nippoldt and film critic Daniel Kothenschulte team up to pay homage to the golden era of Tinseltown, when silent films became talking pictures, stars got even more glamorous, directors more megalomaniac, and politicians and the mob hankered after a piece of the dazzling action.
Author: Robert K. Elder Publisher: Chicago Review Press ISBN: 1569768285 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
The movie that inspired filmmakers to direct is like the atomic bomb that went off before their eyes. The Film That Changed My Life captures that epiphany. It explores 30 directors' love of a film they saw at a particularly formative moment, how it influenced their own works, and how it made them think differently. Rebel Without a Cause inspired John Woo to comb his hair and talk like James Dean. For Richard Linklater, “something was simmering in me, but Raging Bull brought it to a boil.” Apocalypse Now inspired Danny Boyle to make larger-than-life films. A single line from The Wizard of Oz--“Who could ever have thought a good little girl like you could destroy all my beautiful wickedness?”--had a direct impact on John Waters. “That line inspired my life,” Waters says. “I sometimes say it to myself before I go to sleep, like a prayer.” In this volume, directors as diverse as John Woo, Peter Bogdanovich, Michel Gondry, and Kevin Smith examine classic movies that inspired them to tell stories. Here are 30 inspired and inspiring discussions of classic films that shaped the careers of today's directors and, in turn, cinema history.
Author: James L. Neibaur Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1442242205 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 229
Book Description
One of the biggest stars of the golden age of Hollywood, James Cagney appeared in more than sixty films throughout his career. In addition to starring in the classics White Heat, Mister Roberts, and One, Two, Three, Cagney received the Academy Award for his performance as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. From his debut in Sinner’s Holiday to one of his many gangster portrayals in The Roaring Twenties, the actor appeared in more than thirty films of the 1930s. Though he started out in supporting roles, Cagney quickly became a leading man and by the end of the decade, he was a box-office star. In James Cagney Films of the 1930s, James L. Neibaur reviews the first decade of the great actor’s work. A film-by-film look at Cagney’s movies during this pivotal period, this book traces the actor’s transition from a song-and-dance man on stage to a tough guy on screen. Although Cagney occasionally was able to deviate from studio typecasting—in such films as Footlight Parade and A Midsummer Night’s Dream—his most notable roles were in gangster dramas like The Public Enemy and Angels with Dirty Faces. Throughout this book, Neibaur provides readers with plot summaries, production details, and critical and commercial reception of each film. For fans of the actor’s work, James Cagney Films of the 1930s is an invaluable resource that will also appeal to anyone interested in movie-making during one of Hollywood’s greatest eras.
Author: Susan Kollin Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1316033465 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 662
Book Description
The American West is a complex region that has inspired generations of writers and artists. Often portrayed as a quintessential landscape that symbolizes promise and progress for a developing nation, the American West is also a diverse space that has experienced conflicting and competing hopes and expectations. While it is frequently imagined as a place enabling dreams of new beginnings for settler communities, it is likewise home to long-standing indigenous populations as well as many other ethnic and racial groups who have often produced different visions of the land. This History encompasses the intricacy of Western American literature by exploring myriad genres and cultural movements, from ecocriticism, settler colonial studies and transnational theory, to race, ethnic, gender and sexuality studies. Written by a host of leading historians and literary critics, this book offers readers insight into the West as a site that sustains canonical and emerging authors alike, and as a region that exceeds national boundaries in addressing long-standing global concerns and developments.
Author: Ina Rae Hark
Author: James L. Neibaur
Author: Iwan Morgan
Author: Maria DiBattista
Author: Adrienne L. McLean
Author: Tim Bergfelder
Author: Daniel Kothenschulte
Author: Robert K. Elder
Author: James L. Neibaur
Author: Susan Kollin