Hollywood and the Great Depression : American film, politics and society in the 1930s /

Hollywood and the Great Depression : American film, politics and society in the 1930s / edited by Iwan Morgan and Philip John Davies. - Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, (c)2016. - 1 online resource (vi, 288 pages) : illustrations

Includes bibliographies and index.

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

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.



9780748699933


Motion pictures--History--United States--20th century.
Nineteen thirties.
Depressions--United States.--1929


Electronic Books.

PN1993 / .H655 2016