A fascinating look at Hollywood’s most turbulent decade and the demise of the studio system—set against the boom of the post–World War II years, the Cold War, and the atomic age—and the movies that reflected the seismic shifts Hollywood in the 1950s was a period when the film industry both set conventions and broke norms and traditions—from Cinerama, CinemaScope, and VistaVision to the epic film and lavish musical. It was a decade that saw the rise of the anti-hero; the smoldering, the hidden, and the unspoken; teenagers gone wild in the streets; the sacred and the profane; the revolution of the Method; the socially conscious; the implosion of the studios; the end of the production code; and the invasion of the ultimate body snatcher: the “small screen” television. Here is Eisenhower’s America—seemingly complacent, conformity-ridden revealed in Vincente Minnelli’s Father of the Bride, Walt Disney’s Cinderella, and Brigadoon, among others. And here is its darkening, resonant landscape, beset by conflict, discontent, and anxiety (The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Asphalt Jungle, A Place in the Sun, Touch of Evil, It Came From Outer Space) . . . an America on the verge of cultural, political and sexual revolt, busting up and breaking out (East of Eden, From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Sweet Smell of Success, The Wild One, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Jailhouse Rock). An important, riveting look at our nation at its peak as a world power and at the political, cultural, sexual upheavals it endured, reflected and explored in the quintessential American art form.

Looks at the scandals, morals and sleaze of 1950's Hollywood.

The 1950s was one of the most turbulent periods in the history of motion pictures and television. During the decade, as Hollywood's most powerful studios and independent producers shifted into TV production, TV replaced film as America's principal postwar culture industry. This pioneering study offers the first thorough exploration of the movie industry's shaping role in the development of television and its narrative forms. Drawing on the archives of Warner Bros. and David O. Selznick Productions and on interviews with participants in both industries, Christopher Anderson demonstrates how the episodic telefilm series, a clear descendant of the feature film, became and has remained the dominant narrative form in prime-time TV. This research suggests that the postwar motion picture industry was less an empire on the verge of ruin—as common wisdom has it—than one struggling under unsettling conditions to redefine its frontiers. Beyond the obvious contribution to film and television studies, these findings add an important chapter to the study of American popular culture of the postwar period.

From the author of "Romantic Comedy ("brilliant, meticulous, a monumental work of scholarship" --Margo Jefferson, "New York Times), a fresh, illuminating look at the films of the 1950s. Harvey begins by mapping the progression from 1940s film noir to the living-room melodramas of the 1950s. He shows us the femme fatale of the 1940s (Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett) becoming blander and blonder (Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds) and younger and more traditionally sexy (Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly) in the 1950s. And he shows us how women were finally replaced as objects of desire by the new boy-men--Clift, Brando, Dean, and other rebels without causes. Harvey discusses the films of Hitchcock ("Vertigo), Ophuls ("The Reckless Moment), Siodmak ("Christmas Holiday), and Welles ("Touch of Evil, perhaps the single greatest influence on the "post-classical" movies). He writes about the quintessential 1950s directors: Nicholas Ray, who made movies in the old Hollywood tradition "(In a Lonely Place, "Johnny Guitar), and Douglas Sirk, who portrayed suburbia as an emotional deathtrap ("Imitation of Life, "Magnificent Obsession). And he discusses the "serious" directors, such as Stanley Kramer and Elia Kazan, whose films exhibited powerful new realism. Comprehensive, insightful, written with intelligence, humor, and affection, Movie Love in the Fifties is a masterful work of American film, and cultural, history.

A Volume in the Star Decades: American Culture/American Cinema series, edited by Adrienne L. McLean and Murray Pomerance --Book Jacket.

The fifties marks the moment when a heterosexual/homosexual dualism came to dominate U.S. culture's thinking about masculinity. The films of this era record how gender and sexuality did not easily come together in a normative manhood common to American men. Instead these films demonstrate the widely held perception of a crises of masculinity. Masked Men documents how movies of the fifties represented masculinity as a multiple masquerade. Hollywood's star system positioned the male actor as a professional performer and as a body intended to solicit the erotic interest of male and female viewers alike. Drawing on publicity, poster art, fan magazines, and the popular press as a means of following the links between fifties stars, their films, and the social tensions of the period, Cohan juxtaposes Hollywood's narratives of masculinity against the personae of leading men like Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, William Holden, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and Rock Hudson. Masked Men focuses on the gender and sexual masquerades that organized their performances of masculinity on and off screen.

Wheeler Dixon examines the lost films and directors of the 1950s. Contrasting traditional themes of love, marriage, and family, the author's 1950s film world unveils once-taboo issues and television shows such as 'Captain Midnight' are juxtaposed with the cheerful world of 'I Love Lucy'.

After World War II, as cultural and industry changes were reshaping Hollywood, movie studios shifted some production activities overseas, capitalizing on frozen foreign earnings, cheap labor, and appealing locations. Hollywood unions called the phenomenon “runaway” production to underscore the outsourcing of employment opportunities. Examining this period of transition from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Runaway Hollywood shows how film companies exported production around the world and the effect this conversion had on industry practices and visual style. In this fascinating account, Daniel Steinhart uses an array of historical materials to trace the industry’s creation of a more international production operation that merged filmmaking practices from Hollywood and abroad to produce movies with a greater global scope.

HOT INSIDER STORIES FROM HOLLYWOOD'S GOLDEN 1950s, TOLD IN TRUE PULP FICTION STYLE. "Elvis Presley and George Klein, one of Elvis's inner circle, pulled up in long black Cadillac limousine style. Elvis was at the wheel. I jumped in the backseat and we took off-three for the road." "The flag was dropped and James Dean, starting from 18th on the grid, shot through the pack balls out, like a man possessed. After a few laps he made it up to fourth place before a blown piston ended his day. Jimmy was turbulent with the situation." "The groove rocked in once more with a churning precision. Like sensual thunder, it shook the room with sexual vibrations. There on the bandstand, like a benevolent Buddha, dressed in Levis and an open neck shirt, was Marlon Brando. He was as cool as a night breeze over Alaska. With his hands in motion he caressed the congas, playing as if willing his adoring flock to follow him into the loving arms of immortality."

An original study of Hollywood film stars and 1950s television