George Gallup in Hollywood

George Gallup in Hollywood PDF Author: Susan Ohmer
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231511280
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
George Gallup in Hollywood is a fascinating look at the film industry's use of opinion polling in the 1930s and '40s. George Gallup's polling techniques first achieved fame when he accurately predicted that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be reelected president in 1936. Gallup had devised an extremely effective sampling method that took households from all income brackets into account, and Hollywood studio executives quickly pounced on the value of Gallup's research. Soon he was gauging reactions to stars and scripts for RKO Pictures, David O. Selznick, and Walt Disney and taking the public's temperature on Orson Welles and Desi Arnaz, couples such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and films like Gone with the Wind, Dumbo, and Fantasia. Through interviews and extensive research, Susan Ohmer traces Gallup's groundbreaking intellectual and methodological developments, examining his comprehensive approach to market research from his early education in the advertising industry to his later work in Hollywood. The results of his opinion polls offer a fascinating glimpse at the class and gender differences of the time as well as popular sentiment toward social and political issues.

George Gallup in Hollywood

George Gallup in Hollywood PDF Author: Susan Ohmer
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231511280
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
George Gallup in Hollywood is a fascinating look at the film industry's use of opinion polling in the 1930s and '40s. George Gallup's polling techniques first achieved fame when he accurately predicted that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be reelected president in 1936. Gallup had devised an extremely effective sampling method that took households from all income brackets into account, and Hollywood studio executives quickly pounced on the value of Gallup's research. Soon he was gauging reactions to stars and scripts for RKO Pictures, David O. Selznick, and Walt Disney and taking the public's temperature on Orson Welles and Desi Arnaz, couples such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and films like Gone with the Wind, Dumbo, and Fantasia. Through interviews and extensive research, Susan Ohmer traces Gallup's groundbreaking intellectual and methodological developments, examining his comprehensive approach to market research from his early education in the advertising industry to his later work in Hollywood. The results of his opinion polls offer a fascinating glimpse at the class and gender differences of the time as well as popular sentiment toward social and political issues.

George Gallup in Hollywood

George Gallup in Hollywood PDF Author: Susan Ohmer
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231121330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Explores the use of George Gallup's opinion polling techniques by the film industry in the 1930's and '40's. Traces Gallup's intellectual and methodological developments, examining his comprehensive approach to market research from his early education in the advertising industry to his later work in Hollywood.

Hollywood Hype and Audiences

Hollywood Hype and Audiences PDF Author: Thomas Austin
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719057755
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This book traces the circulation in Britain of three Hollywood films--Basic Instinct, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Natural Born Killers --from marketing and critical reception to consumption in cinemas and on video. It draws on economic discursive contexts and original audience research to trace how meanings, pleasures, and uses are derived from popular film. A significant intervention into methodological debates in film studies and a timely investigation of film culture, it focuses on key questions about genre, taste, sexual pleasure and screen violence.

Lost in a Gallup

Lost in a Gallup PDF Author: W. Joseph Campbell
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520300963
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
A sweeping look at the messy and contentious past of US presidential pre-election polls and why they aren’t as reliable as we think. Polls in U.S. presidential elections can and do get it wrong—as surprising outcomes in 2020, in 2016, in 2012, in 2004, in 2000 all remind us. Lost in a Gallup captures in lively and unprecedented fashion the stories of polling flops, epic upsets, unforeseen landslides, and exit poll fiascoes in presidential elections since 1936. Polling’s checkered record in elections has rarely been considered in detail and, until now, has never been addressed collectively. Polling embarrassments are not all alike. Pollsters have anticipated tight elections when landslides occurred; they have indicated the wrong winner in closer elections; state polls have confounded expected national outcomes. Exit polling has thrown Election Day into confusion. The work of venerable pollsters has been singularly and memorably in error. It is a rare presidential election not to be marred by polling controversies. Lost in a Gallup casts a critical eye on major figures in election polling such as George Gallup, a prickly founding father of public opinion research. The book also considers the polling innovations of Warren Mitofsky, whose admonition rings true across generations: “There’s a lot of room for humility in polling. Every time you get cocky, you lose.” Lost in a Gallup examines how polling failure often equates to journalistic failure. Historically, poll-bashing was quite pronounced among prominent journalists, including well-known newspaper columnists such as Mike Royko in Chicago and Jimmy Breslin in New York. They and other journalists challenged the presumption that polls could accurately measure or interpret what the public was thinking. Even so, polls drive news media narratives about presidential elections, shaping conventional wisdom about how competitive those races are. As Lost in a Gallup makes clear, polls are not always in error. But when they fail, they can fail in surprising ways.

Pathways to Polling

Pathways to Polling PDF Author: Amy Fried
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136711694
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
In midcentury America, the public opinion polling enterprise faced a crisis of legitimacy. Every major polling firm predicted a win for Thomas Dewey over Harry Truman in the 1948 presidential election—and of course they all got it wrong. This failure generated considerable criticisms of polling and pollsters were forced to defend their craft, the quantitative analysis of public sentiment. Pathways to Polling argues that early political pollsters, market researchers, and academic and government survey researchers were entrepreneurial figures who interacted through a broad network that was critical to the growth of public opinion enterprises. This network helped polling pioneers gain and maintain concrete, financial support to further their discrete operations. After the Truman-Dewey debacle, such links helped political polling survive when it could have just as easily been totally discredited. Amy Fried demonstrates how interactions between ideas, organizations, and institutions produced changes in the technological, political, and organizational paths of public opinion polling, notably affecting later developments and practice. Public opinion enterprises have changed a good deal, in the intervening half century, even as today’s approaches have been deeply imprinted by these early efforts.

Hollywood and the Baby Boom

Hollywood and the Baby Boom PDF Author: James Russell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501331507
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Between 1946 and 1964 seventy-five million babies were born, dwarfing the generations that preceded and succeeded them. At each stage of its life-cycle, the baby boom's great size has dictated the terms of national policy and public debate. While aspects of this history are well-documented, the relationship between the baby boom and Hollywood has never been explored. And yet, for almost 40 years, baby boomers made up the majority of Hollywood's audience, and since the 1970s, boomers have dominated movie production. Hollywood and the Baby Boom weaves together interviews with leading filmmakers, archival research and the memories of hundreds of ordinary filmgoers to tell the full story of Hollywood's relationship with the boomers for the first time. The authors demonstrate the profound influence of the boomers on the ways that movies were made, seen and understood since the 1950s. The result is a compelling new account that draws upon an unprecedented range of sources, and offers new insights into the history of American movies.

The Averaged American

The Averaged American PDF Author: Sarah E. Igo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674023215
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Americans today “know” that a majority of the population supports the death penalty, that half of all marriages end in divorce, and that four out of five prefer a particular brand of toothpaste. Through statistics like these, we feel that we understand our fellow citizens. But remarkably, such data—now woven into our social fabric—became common currency only in the last century. Sarah Igo tells the story, for the first time, of how opinion polls, man-in-the-street interviews, sex surveys, community studies, and consumer research transformed the United States public. Igo argues that modern surveys, from the Middletown studies to the Gallup Poll and the Kinsey Reports, projected new visions of the nation: authoritative accounts of majorities and minorities, the mainstream and the marginal. They also infiltrated the lives of those who opened their doors to pollsters, or measured their habits and beliefs against statistics culled from strangers. Survey data underwrote categories as abstract as “the average American” and as intimate as the sexual self. With a bold and sophisticated analysis, Igo demonstrates the power of scientific surveys to shape Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals, members of communities, and citizens of a nation. Tracing how ordinary people argued about and adapted to a public awash in aggregate data, she reveals how survey techniques and findings became the vocabulary of mass society—and essential to understanding who we, as modern Americans, think we are.

Film Marketing into the Twenty-First Century

Film Marketing into the Twenty-First Century PDF Author: Nolwenn Mingant
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838715770
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
How do you sell British humour to a French audience? Could piracy actually be good for the film business? Why are The Hobbit's revolutionary technologies not mentioned in some adverts? Exploring these questions and many more, Film Marketing into the Twenty-First Century draws on insights from renowned film academics and leading industry professionals to chart the evolution of modern film marketing. The first part of the book focuses on geographical considerations, showing how marketers have to adapt their strategies locally as films travel across borders. The second covers new marketing possibilities offered by the Internet, as Vine, Facebook and other participative websites open new venues for big distributors and independents alike. Straddling practical and theoretical concerns and including case studies that take us from Nollywood to Peru, this book provides an accessible introduction to the key issues at stake for film marketing in a global era.

A Troubled Birth

A Troubled Birth PDF Author: Susan Herbst
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022681310X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Introduction: Birth of a Public -- President in the Maelstrom: FDR as Public Opinion Theorist -- Twisted Populism: Pollsters and Delusions of Citizenship -- A Consuming Public: The Strange and Magnificent New York World's Fair -- Radio Embraces Race and Immigration, Awkwardly -- Interlude: A Depression Needn't Be So Depressing -- Public Opinion and Its Problems: Some Ways Forward.

Hollywood Musicals You Missed

Hollywood Musicals You Missed PDF Author: Edwin M. Bradley
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476639930
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Pre-World War II Hollywood musicals weren't only about Astaire and Rogers, Mickey and Judy, Busby Berkeley, Bing Crosby, or Shirley Temple. The early musical developed through tangents that reflected larger trends in film and American culture at large. Here is a survey of select titles with a variety of influences: outsized songwriter personalities, hubbub over "hillbilly" and cowboy stereotypes, the emergence of swing, and the brief parade of opera stars to celluloid. Featured movies range from the smash hit Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), to obscurities such as Are You There? (1930) and Swing, Sister, Swing (1938), to the high-grossing but now forgotten Mountain Music (1937), and It's Great to Be Alive (1933), a zesty pre-Code musical/science-fiction/comedy mishmash. Also included are some of the not-so-memorable pictures made by some of the decade's greatest musical stars.