Hollywood's America

Steven Mintz is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin and Executive director of the University of Texas System’s Institute for Transformational Learning. He is the author and editor of fourteen books, including The Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, and Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. He is the editor of African American Voices (4th edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), Mexican American Voices (2nd edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), and Native American Voices (2nd edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2000).Randy Roberts is Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University. His publications include John Wayne American (with James S. Olson, 1995), A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory (with James S. Olson,2000), Joe Louis: Hard Times Man (2010), A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game That Rallied a Nation (2011) and Rising Tide: Bear Bryant, Joe Namath and Dixie’s Last Quarter (with Ed Krzemienski, 2014). Roberts has served frequently as a consultant and on-camera commentator for PBS, HBO, and the History Channel. David Welky is a Professor of History at the University of Central Arkansas. Among his most recent publications are The Moguls and the Dictators: Hollywood and the Coming of World War II (2008), Everything was Better in America: Mainstream Print Culture and the Great Depression (2008), The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937 (2011), America Between the Wars, 1919–1941: A Documentary Reader (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), John Wayne (with Randy Roberts, 2012), and Marching Across the Color Line: A. Philip Randolph and Civil Rights in the World War II Era (2013).

• List of Illustrations ixPreface xiIntroduction: The Social and Cultural History of American Film 1Part I The Silent Era 31Introduction: Intolerance and the Rise of the Feature Film 311 Workers in Early Film 33Michael Shull, “Silent Agitators: Militant Labor in the Movies, 1909–1919”2 Silent Cinema as Historical Mythmaker 42Eric Niderost, “The Birth of a Nation”3 The Revolt Against Victorianism 51Lary May, “Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and the New Personality”4 Primary Sources 63Edison v. American Mutoscope Company 63“The Nickel Madness” 65Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio 68Fighting a Vicious Film: Protest Against The Birth of a Nation 69Boston Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1915 69Analysis by Francis Hackett 69“Seeing Our Boys ‘Over There’” 71Part II Hollywood’s Golden Age 75Introduction: Backstage During the Great Depression: 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade 755 Depression America and its Films 79Maury Klein, “Laughing Through Tears”6 The Depression’s Human Toll 86Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, “Gangsters and Fallen Women”7 Depression Allegories 95Thomas H. Pauly, “Gone with the Wind and The Grapes of Wrath as Hollywood Histories of the Great Depression”8 African Americans on the Silver Screen 104Thomas R. Cripps, “The Evolution of Black Film”9 Primary Sources 116The Introduction of Sound 116“Pictures That Talk” 116Review of Don Juan 117“Silence is Golden” 118Film Censorship 120The Sins of Hollywood, 1922 120“The Don’ts and Be Carefuls” 122The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 123The State Department on Hollywood in Germany, 1934 133The State Department on Hollywood in Latin America, 1934 134Part III Hollywood in the World War II Era 137Introduction: Hollywood’s World War II Combat Films 13710 Movies and Great Britain 141Michael Todd Bennett, “Anglophilia on Film: Creating an Atmosphere for Alliance, 1935–1941”11 Blockbuster as Propaganda 156Randy Roberts, “You Must Remember This: The Case of Hal Wallis’s Casablanca”12 John Wayne and Wartime Hollywood 166Randy Roberts, “John Wayne Goes to War”13 The Woman’s Film 184Jeanine Basinger, “When Women Wept”14 Primary Sources 191Sumner Welles to Franklin Roosevelt, 1941 191The 1941 Academy Awards: Hollywood and the President 192Correspondence between Walter Wanger and Stephen Early 192Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Academy Awards Dinner 195Walter Wanger to Stephen Early 196Madeleine Carroll to Franklin Roosevelt 196U.S. Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Motion Picture and Radio Propaganda, 1941 196Excerpts from The Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry, 1942 200Bureau of Motion Pictures Report: Casablanca 204Part IV Postwar Hollywood 207Introduction: Double Indemnity and Film Noir 20715 The Red Scare in Hollywood 211Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, “HUAC and the End of an Era”16 Movies Grow Up 219Jennifer Holt, “Hollywood and Politics Caught in the Cold War Crossfire”17 The Morality of Informing 229Kenneth R. Hey, “Ambivalence and On the Waterfront”18 Science Fiction as Social Commentary 240Stuart Samuels, “The Age of Conspiracy and Conformity: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)”19 Primary Sources 250United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1947) 250Hearings Regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry 251U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1947 251U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1951 251The Waldorf Statement, 1947 254Part V Hollywood in an Age of Turmoil 257Introduction: Bonnie and Clyde 25720 The Dark Side of the 1960s 259Charles Bane, “Worrying about the Bomb: Stanley Kubrick and the Nuclear War Film”21 Films of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s 270Michael Ryan and Douglas Kelner, “From Counterculture to Counterrevolution, 1967–1971”22 Film Capital and National Capital 279Kathryn Cramer Brownell, “‘Politics is Show Business’: Hollywood and the New Politics”23 Reaffirming Traditional Values 288Daniel J. Leab, “The Blue Collar Ethnic in Bicentennial America: Rocky”24 Presenting African Americans on Film 297Aram Goudsouzian, “The Rise and Fall of Sidney Poitier”25 Coming to Terms with the Vietnam War 306Randy Roberts and David Welky, “A Sacred Mission: Oliver Stone and Vietnam”26 Primary Sources 324Raymond Caldiero to Herbert L. Porter, 1972Part VI Hollywood in the Post-studio Era 329Introduction: A Changing Hollywood 32927 Feminism and Recent American Film 331Aspasia Kotsopoulos, “Gendering Expectations: Genre and Allegory in Readings of Thelma and Louise”28 The Screen and the Cross 349Donna Bowman, “Christianity, Hollywood, and the Culture Wars”29 Social Revolution on Screen 357Thomas Piontek, “Tears for Queers: Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, Hollywood, and American Attitudes toward Homosexuality”30 Encountering Distant Lands 369Mark Graham, “The New Great Game: Rambo III, The Beast, and Charlie Wilson’s War”31 Superheroes for the Twenty-First Century 384Noel Murray, “Assembling Joss Whedon’s Avengers: The Modern Business of Blockbusters”32 Movies and the Construction of Historical Memory 392Steven Mintz, “Movies, History, and the Disneyfication of the Past: The Case of Pocahontas”Bibliography of Recent Books in American Film History 399Index 425