I fell in love with Hollywood’s Golden Age when I first watched Psycho. From there, every new film and book from or about the era has been a journey into Hollywood’s history. I got into higher education and writing because I enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with others as much as I enjoy the learning process itself. What interests me most about Hollywood history is how the industry has interacted with American and global history. Hollywood has always had either a front-row seat or a seat at the table of history in the making. Not always on the right side of history, but always fascinating.
In The Warner Brothers, Chris Yogerst follows the four brothers—Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack— from their family's humble origins in Poland, through their young adulthood in the American Midwest, to the height of fame and fortune in Hollywood. With unwavering resolve, the brothers soldiered on against the backdrop of an America reeling from the aftereffects of domestic and global conflict. The Great Depression wouldn't sink the brothers, who churned out competitive films that engaged audiences and kept their operations afloat—and expanding. During World War II, they used their platform to push beyond the limits of the Production Code and create important films about real-world issues, openly criticizing radicalism and the evils of the Nazi regime. At every major cultural turning point in their lifetime, the Warners held a front-row seat.
This book was my first foray into social and political history of Hollywood.
Sklar covers early film industry battles with Thomas Edison, the impact of censorship in Hollywood, the monopoly-like integration of the studios, and the overarching mythology that Hollywood sold through their movies.
I read it as an undergraduate when I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. Looking back as an author and professor, I can see this book as planting seeds that continue to blossom through my own work in the classroom as well as in books and articles that I publish.
Hailed as the definitive work upon its original publication in 1975 and now extensively revised and updated by the author, this vastly absorbing and richly illustrated book examines film as an art form, technological innovation, big business, and shaper of American values. Ever since Edison's peep shows first captivated urban audiences, film has had a revolutionary impact on American society, transforming culture from the bottom up, radically revising attitudes toward pleasure and sexuality, and at the same time, cementing the myth of the American dream. No book has measured film's impact more clearly or comprehensively than Movie-Made America. This vastly…
I should first point out that Tom Doherty has been a mentor of mine for nearly a decade.
Before I met him, however, his book on Pre-Code Hollywood and censorship was pivotal for me understanding the machinations and implications of censorship. Hollywood and Hitler woke me up to the significant influence the film colony has had in both fighting fascism as well as others who turned a blind eye to it. It was Tom who sparked my interest in the relationship between Hollywood and antisemitism.
In fact, it was also Tom who first suggested I write a book on the 1941 Senate Investigation into Hollywood’s anti-Nazi films. Long story short, Hollywood and Hitler is a great book and Tom is a great scholar and even better mentor. Read all his work.
Between 1933 and 1939, representations of the Nazis and the full meaning of Nazism came slowly to Hollywood, growing more ominous and distinct only as the decade wore on. Recapturing what ordinary Americans saw on the screen during the emerging Nazi threat, Thomas Doherty reclaims forgotten films, such as Hitler's Reign of Terror (1934), a pioneering anti-Nazi docudrama by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.; I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany (1936), a sensational true tale of "a Hollywood girl in Naziland!"; and Professor Mamlock (1938), an anti-Nazi film made by German refugees living in the Soviet Union. Doherty also recounts how…
No list of important books on Hollywood is complete without a reference to Kevin Brownlow.
Kevin was there in the 1960s and 1970s, when many of the silent-era Hollywood stars were still alive. He met and interviewed them all. His book brings that era to life in a way that no other book or film has been able to accomplish. Kevin is also a major supporter of other authors.
He was kind enough to blurb two of my books. He also read drafts of my Warner Brothers book – twice! Each time with increasingly helpful, thoughtful, and supportive feedback. Kevin is the one historian that every film historian is in debt to. I don’t think Kevin knows how important he is, but he certainly deserves a spot on my list.
Gabler’s book is essential to understanding the sheer improbability that Hollywood was ever going to happen. It was the drive and fearless sense of empire that drove a small number of immigrant Jews to invent a global business of mythmaking.
An Empire of Their Own is a book that is responsible to leading down the path of Warner Brothers research. Gabler brings to life the monumental figures who were both grand showmen and tyrannical businessmen. If you ever wondered what it was like to create major brands like Universal, Warner Bros., MGM, Fox, Columbia (etc.), this is the book you need.
These studio bosses fought Thomas Edison, the government, their own stars and employees, the government, as well as each other.
A provocative, original, and richly entertaining group biography of the Jewish immigrants who were the moving forces behind the creation of America's motion picture industry.
The names Harry Cohn, William Fox, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, Jack and Harry Warner, and Adolph Zucker are giants in the history of contemporary Hollywood, outsiders who dared to invent their own vision of the American Dream. Even to this day, the American values defined largely by the movies of these émigrés endure in American cinema and culture. Who these men were, how they came to dominate Hollywood, and what they gained and lost…
Wasson and Basinger are two other authors where you simply want to read everything they’ve written.
The reason I picked Hollywood: The Oral History for this list is that you have several hundred pages of Hollywood players telling their own stories. What could be better?? We get the scoop from stars, grips, screenwriters, carpenters, producers, directors, publicists, and everything in between.
What was it like to work in Hollywood in 1949? This book has your answer. What was the transition from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood like, this book has the goods.
'Absorbing . . . rippling with fun and atmosphere.' Sight & Sound
'Hollywood's ultimate oral history.' New Yorker
The greatest conversation in the history of Hollywood.
From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a reader 'listen in' on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera - Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Jane Fonda, Harold Lloyd - the biggest…
I’m a professional historian and life-long lover of early American history. My fascination with the American Revolution began during the bicentennial in 1976, when my family traveled across the country for celebrations in Williamsburg and Philadelphia. That history, though, seemed disconnected to the place I grew up—Arkansas—so when I went to graduate school in history, I researched in French and Spanish archives to learn about their eighteenth-century interactions with Arkansas’s Native nations, the Osages and Quapaws. Now I teach early American history and Native American history at UNC-Chapel Hill and have written several books on how Native American, European, and African people interacted across North America.
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today
Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.
A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread…
Interested in
film,
the film industry,
and
movie stars?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
film,
the film industry,
and
movie stars.
