Hollywood 1938 - Motion Pictures′ Greatest Year

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-520-27180-7
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 284 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 224 mm, Gewicht: 376 g

In Hollywood 1938, Catherine Jurca brings to light a tumultuous year of crisis that has been neglected in histories of the studio era. With attendance in decline, negative publicity about stars that were “poison at the box office,” and a spate of bad films, industry executives decided that the public was fed up with the movies. Jurca describes their desperate attempt to win back audiences by launching Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year, a massive, and unsuccessful, public relations campaign conducted in theaters and newspapers across North America. Drawing on the records of studio personnel, independent exhibitors, moviegoers, and the motion pictures themselves, she analyzes what was wrong—and right—with Hollywood at the end of a heralded decade, and how the industry’s troubles changed the making and marketing of films in 1938 and beyond.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jurca, Catherine

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Hollywood Looks at Its Audience

Part One: The Campaign

1. Annus Horribilis

Goldwyn’s Folly

Such a Thing as Bad Publicity

The Moviegoing Habit

2. Exhibitors, the Movie Quiz Contest, and a Divided Industry

The Minds of Exhibitors

The Carrot and the Stick

The Quiz Contest on the Ground

What the Contest Did for Me

Independents Rebel

3. The Campaign and the Press

The Film Industry Speaks Its Mind

Marginal Moviegoers

The Gossip Columnists

The Dailies Have Their Say

Part Two: The Films

4. “The Finest Array of Productions”

Ninety-Four Films

The Death of Glamour

Human Films

The Human Side of Screwball

You Can’t Take It with You

Four Daughters

Boys Town

Marie Antoinette

That’s Entertainment

The Fourth Estate

Conclusion: Motion Pictures’ Worst Year

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Notes

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Catherine Jurca is Professor of English at California Institute of Technology. She is the author of White Diaspora: The Suburb and the Twentieth Century American Novel.