Hollywood Left and Right

Hollywood Left and Right PDF Author: Steven J. Ross
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195181727
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
In Hollywood Left and Right, Steven J. Ross tells a story that has escaped public attention: the emergence of Hollywood as a vital center of political life and the important role that movie stars have played in shaping the course of American politics.Ever since the film industry relocated to Hollywood early in the twentieth century, it has had an outsized influence on American politics. Through compelling larger-than-life figures in American cinema--Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Edward G. Robinson, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty, and Arnold Schwarzenegger--Hollywood Left and Right reveals how the film industry's engagement in politics has been longer, deeper, and more varied than most people would imagine. As shown in alternating chapters, the Left and the Right each gained ascendancy in Tinseltown at different times. From Chaplin, whose movies almost always displayed his leftist convictions, to Schwarzenegger's nearly seamless transition from action blockbusters to the California governor's mansion, Steven J. Ross traces the intersection of Hollywood and political activism from the early twentieth century to the present.Hollywood Left and Right challenges the commonly held belief that Hollywood has always been a bastion of liberalism. The real story, as Ross shows in this passionate and entertaining work, is far more complicated. First, Hollywood has a longer history of conservatism than liberalism. Second, and most surprising, while the Hollywood Left was usually more vocal and visible, the Right had a greater impact on American political life, capturing a senate seat (Murphy), a governorship (Schwarzenegger), and the ultimate achievement, the Presidency (Reagan).

Hollywood Left and Right

Hollywood Left and Right PDF Author: Steven J. Ross
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195181727
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Hollywood Left and Right, Steven J. Ross tells a story that has escaped public attention: the emergence of Hollywood as a vital center of political life and the important role that movie stars have played in shaping the course of American politics.Ever since the film industry relocated to Hollywood early in the twentieth century, it has had an outsized influence on American politics. Through compelling larger-than-life figures in American cinema--Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Edward G. Robinson, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty, and Arnold Schwarzenegger--Hollywood Left and Right reveals how the film industry's engagement in politics has been longer, deeper, and more varied than most people would imagine. As shown in alternating chapters, the Left and the Right each gained ascendancy in Tinseltown at different times. From Chaplin, whose movies almost always displayed his leftist convictions, to Schwarzenegger's nearly seamless transition from action blockbusters to the California governor's mansion, Steven J. Ross traces the intersection of Hollywood and political activism from the early twentieth century to the present.Hollywood Left and Right challenges the commonly held belief that Hollywood has always been a bastion of liberalism. The real story, as Ross shows in this passionate and entertaining work, is far more complicated. First, Hollywood has a longer history of conservatism than liberalism. Second, and most surprising, while the Hollywood Left was usually more vocal and visible, the Right had a greater impact on American political life, capturing a senate seat (Murphy), a governorship (Schwarzenegger), and the ultimate achievement, the Presidency (Reagan).

Left of Hollywood

Left of Hollywood PDF Author: Chris Robé
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029273753X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
In the 1930s as the capitalist system faltered, many in the United States turned to the political Left. Hollywood, so deeply embedded in capitalism, was not immune to this shift. Left of Hollywood offers the first book-length study of Depression-era Left film theory and criticism in the United States. Robé studies the development of this theory and criticism over the course of the 1930s, as artists and intellectuals formed alliances in order to establish an engaged political film movement that aspired toward a popular cinema of social change. Combining extensive archival research with careful close analysis of films, Robé explores the origins of this radical social formation of U.S. Left film culture. Grounding his arguments in the surrounding contexts and aesthetics of a few films in particular—Sergei Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico!, Fritz Lang's Fury, William Dieterle's Juarez, and Jean Renoir's La Marseillaise—Robé focuses on how film theorists and critics sought to foster audiences who might push both film culture and larger social practices in more progressive directions. Turning at one point to anti-lynching films, Robé discusses how these movies united black and white film critics, forging an alliance of writers who championed not only critical spectatorship but also the public support of racial equality. Yet, despite a stated interest in forging more egalitarian social relations, gender bias was endemic in Left criticism of the era, and female-centered films were regularly discounted. Thus Robé provides an in-depth examination of this overlooked shortcoming of U.S. Left film criticism and theory.

Hollywood Nation

Hollywood Nation PDF Author: James L. Hirsen
Publisher: Crown Forum
ISBN: 1400081939
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
In an updated study, a conservative spokesperson and author of Tales from the Left Coast offers an insightful look at how the line between news and entertainment has become blurred, as well as how the situation has allowed the liberal media to present their political views within entertainment product. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Tales from the Left Coast

Tales from the Left Coast PDF Author: James Hirsen
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 0307421732
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
When Barbra Streisand sends Dick Gephardt a personal fax, it makes headline news. When international relations expert Sean Penn leads his own "tour of peace" in Baghdad, every news desk across the country reports it. It's no secret that Hollywood has a leftward tilt when it comes to politics. But what the celebrity-fawning media fail to show is how Hollywood's liberal bias affects actors, movies, and even public policy. In Tales from the Left Coast, author and political commentator James Hirsen digs deep into the liberal underbelly of Hollywood to reveal how biased politics have corrupted the entire entertainment industry. Through extensive research and scores of interviews, Hirsen uncovers some of the most ridiculous, infuriating, and damning political stunts pulled by celebrities of yesterday and today, and he traces the tangled web of influence the Hollywood elite have over politicians in Washington, D.C.

Primetime Propaganda

Primetime Propaganda PDF Author: Ben Shapiro
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062092103
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
“Vitally important, devastatingly thorough, and shockingly revealing…. After reading Primetime Propaganda, you’ll never watch TV the same way again.” —Mark Levin Movie critic Michael Medved calls Ben Shapiro, “One of our most refreshing and insightful voices on the popular culture, as well as a conscience for his much-maligned generation.” With Primetime Propaganda, the syndicated columnist and bestselling author of Brainwashed, Porn Generation, and Project President tells the shocking true story of how the most powerful medium of mass communication in human history became a vehicle for spreading the radical agenda of the left side of the political spectrum. Similar to what Bernard Goldberg’s Bias and A Slobbering Love Affair did for the liberal news machine, Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda is an essential exposé of corrupting media bias, pulling back the curtain on widespread and unrepentant abuses of the Hollywood entertainment industry.

Hollywood Party

Hollywood Party PDF Author: Lloyd Billingsley
Publisher: Prima Lifestyles
ISBN: 9780761521662
Category : Blacklisting of entertainers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This engrossing tale of intrigue, passion, betrayal, and violence uncovers the true face of communism in Southern California, and names writers and actresses who were seduced by the party's philosophy.

Elvis Films FAQ

Elvis Films FAQ PDF Author: Paul Simpson
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 1480366897
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
(FAQ). If Elvis Presley had not wanted to be a movie star, he would never have single-handedly revolutionized popular culture. Yet this aspect of his phenomenal career has been much maligned and misunderstood partly because the King himself once referred to his 33 movies as a rut he had got stuck in just off Hollywood Boulevard. Elvis Films FAQ explores his best and worst moments as an actor, analyzes the bizarre autobiographical detail that runs through so many of his films, and reflects on what it must be like to be idolized by millions around the world yet have to make a living singing about dogs, chambers of commerce, and fatally naive shrimps. Elvis's Hollywood years are full of mystery, and Elvis Films FAQ covers them all! Which of his own movies did he actually like? What films did he wish he could have made? Why didn't he have an acting coach? When will Quentin Tarantino stop alluding to him in his movies? And was Clambake really the catalyst for his marriage to Priscilla? Elvis Films FAQ explains everything you want to know about the whys and wherefores of the singer-actor's bizarre celluloid odyssey; or, as Elvis said, "I saw the movie and I was the hero of the movie."

Radical Hollywood

Radical Hollywood PDF Author: Paul Buhle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781565848191
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
A controversial and fascinating rewriting of the history of cinema's golden age. Radical Hollywood is the first comprehensive history of the Hollywood Left. From the dawn of sound movies to the early 1950s, Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner trace the political and personal lives of the screenwriters, actors, directors, and producers on the Left and the often decisive impact of their work upon American film's Golden Age. Full of rich anecdotes, biographical detail, and explorations of movies well-known, unjustly forgotten, and delightfully bizarre, the book is "an intelligent, well argued and absorbing examination of how politics and art can make startling and often strange bedfellows" (Publishers Weekly). Featuring an insert of rare film stillsRadical Hollywood relates the story-behind-the-story of films in such genres as crime, women's films, family cinema, war, animation, and, particularly, film noir.

A Very Dangerous Citizen

A Very Dangerous Citizen PDF Author: Paul Buhle
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520936928
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
When he was summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951, Abraham Lincoln Polonsky (1911-1999) was labeled "a very dangerous citizen" by Harold Velde, a congressman from Illinois. Lawyer, educator, novelist, labor organizer, radio and television scriptwriter, film director and screenwriter, wartime intelligence operative, and full-time radical romantic, Polonsky was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to be an informer. The New York Times called his blacklisting the single greatest loss to American film during the McCarthy era, and his expressed admirers include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, Warren Beatty, and Harry Belafonte. In this first critical and cultural biography of Abraham Polonsky, Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner present both an accomplished consideration of a remarkable survivor of America's cultural cold war and a superb study of the Hollywood left. The Bronx-born son of immigrant parents, Polonsky—in the few years after the end of World War II and just before the blacklist—had one of the most distinguished careers in Hollywood. He wrote two films that established John Garfield's postwar persona, Body and Soul (1947), still the standard for boxing films and the model for such movies as Raging Bull and Pulp Fiction; and Force of Evil (1948), the great noir drama that he also directed. Once blacklisted, Polonsky quit working under his own name, yet he proved to be one of television's most talented writers. Later in life he became the most acerbic critic of the Hollywood blacklist's legacy while writing and directing films such as Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1970). A Very Dangerous Citizen goes beyond biography to help us understand the relationship between art and politics in American culture and to uncover the effects of U.S. anticommunism and anti-Semitism. Rich in anecdote and in analysis, it provides an informative and entertaining portrait of one of the most intriguing personalities of twentieth-century American culture.

Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

Contemporary Hollywood Cinema PDF Author: STEVE NEALE
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135108765
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
A comprehensive overview of the film industry in Hollywood today, Contemporary Hollywood Cinema brings together leading international cinema scholars to explore the technology, institutions, film makers and movies of contemporary American film making.