Library Catalog

Hollywood and the Great Depression : American Film, Politics and Society in the 1930s /

Morgan, Iwan

Hollywood and the Great Depression : American Film, Politics and Society in the 1930s / Iwan Morgan, Philip John Davies. - 1 online resource (296 p.) : 35 B/W illustrations

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Hollywood and the Great Depression -- Part I Hollywood Politics and Values -- Chapter 1 The Political History of Classical Hollywood: Moguls, Liberals and Radicals in the 1930s -- Chapter 2 Columbia Pictures and the Great Depression: A Case Study of Political Writers in Hollywood -- Chapter 3 Organisation Women and Belle Rebels: Hollywood's Working Women in the 1930s -- Chapter 4 The Congressional Battle over Motion Picture Distribution, 1936-40 -- Part II Stars -- Chapter 5 Shirley Temple and Hollywood's Colonialist Ideology -- Chapter 6 Astaire and Rogers: Carefree in Roberta -- Chapter 7 The 'Awful Truth' about Cary Grant -- Part III Movies -- Chapter 8 Footlight Parade: The New Deal on Screen -- Chapter 9 Our Daily Bread: 'Cooperation', 'Independence' and Politics in Mid-1930s Cinema -- Chapter 10 Embodying the State: Federal Architecture and Masculine Transformation in Hollywood Films of the New Deal Era -- Chapter 11 'We're Only Kids Now, But Someday . . .': Hollywood Musicals and the Great Depression 'Youth Crisis' -- Chapter 12 Chaplin's Modern Times and the Great Depression: The Reception of the Film in the US, France and Britain -- Chapter 13 John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln: A Popular Front Hero for the Late 1930s -- Notes on the Contributors -- Index

restricted access http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

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 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: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 'kids' musicals of the late 1930sThe problems of independent production exemplified in King Vidor's Our Daily BreadCary Grant's 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




Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.


In English.

9780748699926 9780748699933

10.1515/9780748699933 doi

2016478939


Depressions--1929--United States.
Depressions--United States.--1929
Motion pictures--History--20th century--United States.
Motion pictures--History--United States--20th century.
Nineteen thirties.
Politics in motion pictures.
Film, Media & Cultural Studies.
PERFORMING ARTS / Film & Video / Direction & Production.

PN1993.5.U65 / H572 2016