Rob Wagner's Script, the film literary magazine published between 1929 and 1949, was Hollywood's only left-leaning, rabble-rousing movie publication that provided its readers with a regular dose of progressive politics, open love letters to the Soviet Union and a forum for such leftists as Dalton Trumbo and Charlie Chaplin. Rob Wagner founded the magazine on socialist principles. Its remarkable success in a company town ruled by conservative studio moguls is testament to Wagner's humorous but sophisticated approach to Depression-era radical politics. Author Rob Leicester Wagner, the great-grandson of Wagner, traces the birth of Script 'to the Red Scare of 1918-1919. The US government spied on Wagner and used his friends to inform on him for his antiwar activities and alleged German sympathies. The government ultimately attempted, but failed, to indict him on sedition charges. In Hollywood Bohemia: The Roots of Progressive Politics in Rob Wagner's Script, the author uses declassified War Department and FBI files and Rob Wagner's own personal diaries to deliver a portrait of a man driven to extol the virtues of socialism in an industry that best illustrates the unstoppable engine of capitalism. Illus., Notes, Index.

In the early part of the twentieth century, migrants made their way from rural homes to cities in record numbers and many traveled west. Los Angeles became a destination. Women flocked to the growing town to join the film industry as workers and spectators, creating a “New Woman.” Their efforts transformed filmmaking from a marginal business to a cosmopolitan, glamorous, and bohemian one. By 1920, Los Angeles had become the only western city where women outnumbered men. In Go West, Young Women, Hilary A. Hallett explores these relatively unknown new western women and their role in the development of Los Angeles and the nascent film industry. From Mary Pickford’s rise to become perhaps the most powerful woman of her age, to the racist moral panics of the post–World War I years that culminated in Hollywood’s first sex scandal, Hallett describes how the path through early Hollywood presaged the struggles over modern gender roles that animated the century to come.

Artist John Decker was born in Germany in 1895, but found his fame in Hollywood during the 1930s and '40s. At the age of 13, he was abandoned by his parents in London, where he found work painting scenery for the theatre circuit. Taken under the wing of a talented forger, Decker developed a remarkable ability to recreate works by the old Masters--a skill that helped land him in jail, but also brought him thousands of dollars throughout his life. After stowing away to America in 1921, Decker became a caricaturist for a New York paper. In 1928 he left for Hollywood and became friends with many of its biggest names, including John Barrymore, Errol Flynn, and W. C. Fields. Though Decker struggled to find film work as an artist and set designer, his drawings appeared in numerous publications from coast to coast. He was commissioned to do paintings of, among others, the Marx Brothers, Greta Garbo, Mickey Rooney, and Charlie Chaplin (who bought twelve of his portraits). Eventually, Decker's paintings were exhibited in Rome, New York, and Los Angeles, and his creations graced museum walls alongside many of the great artists, including Van Gogh, Rembrandt, and Daumier. Stories on Decker, his art, and his exhibitions, appeared in all the major newspapers, as well as such magazines as Esquire, Time, and Newsweek. With all of his amazing talent--and scandalous exploits--it's surprising that the name of John Decker isn't more familiar today. In Bohemian Rogue: The Life of Hollywood Artist John Decker, author Stephen C. Jordan seeks to resurrect this forgotten figure of 20th century art. Jordan delves into the mystery of a man who overcame a difficult childhood and notorious apprenticeship to become a respected artist (and outrageous party-giver) in Hollywood. Bohemian Rogue chronicles the relatively brief--but eccentric--life of this neglected painter, caricaturist, and sculptor.

Bohemia has been variously defined as a mythical country, a state of mind, a tavern by the wayside on the road of life. The editors of this volume prefer a leaner definition: an attitude of dissent from the prevailing values of middle-class society, one dependent on the existence of caf life. But whatever definition is preferred, this rich and long overdue collective portrait of Bohemian life in a large variety of settings is certain to engage and even entrance readers of all types: from the student of culture to social researchers and literary figures n search of their ancestral roots. The work is international in scope and social scientific in conception. But because of the special nature of the Bohemian fascination, the volume is also graced by an unusually larger number of exquisite literary essays. Hence, one will find in this anthology writings by Malcolm Cowely, Norman Podhoretz, Norman Mailer, Theophile Gautier, Honore de Balzac, Mary Austin, Stefan Zweig, Nadine Gordimer, and Ernest Hemingway. Social scientists are well represented by Cesar Grana, Ephraim Mizruchi, W.I. Thomas, Florian Znaniecki, Harvey Zorbaugh, John R. Howard, and G. William Domhoff, among others.The volume is sectioned into major themes in the history of Bohemia: social and literary origins, testimony by the participants, analysis by critics of and crusaders for the bohemian life, the ideological characteristics of the bohemians, and the long term prospect as well as retrospect for bohemenianism as a system, culture and ideology. The editors have provided a framework for examining some fundamental themes in social structure and social deviance: What are the levels of toleration within a society? Do artists deserve and receive special treatment by the powers that be? And what are the connections between bohemian life-styles and political protest movements?This is an anthology and not a treatise, so the reader is free to pick and choose not only wha

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In the 1920s, Los Angeles enjoyed a buoyant homegrown Spanish-language culture comprised of local and itinerant stock companies that produced zarzuelas, stage plays, and variety acts. After the introduction of sound films, Spanish-language cinema thrived in the city's downtown theatres, screening throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s in venues such as the Teatro Eléctrico, the California, the Roosevelt, the Mason, the Azteca, the Million Dollar, and the Mayan Theater, among others. With the emergence and growth of Mexican and Argentine sound cinema in the early to mid-1930s, downtown Los Angeles quickly became the undisputed capital of Latin American cinema culture in the United States. Meanwhile, the advent of talkies resulted in the Hollywood studios hiring local and international talent from Latin America and Spain for the production of films in Spanish. Parallel with these productions, a series of Spanish-language films were financed by independent producers. As a result, Los Angeles can be viewed as the most important hub in the United States for the production, distribution, and exhibition of films made in Spanish for Latin American audiences. In April 2017, the International Federation of Film Archives organized a symposium, "Hollywood Goes Latin: Spanish-Language Cinema in Los Angeles," which brought together scholars and film archivists from all of Latin America, Spain, and the United States to discuss the many issues surrounding the creation of Hollywood's "Cine Hispano." The papers presented in this two-day symposium are collected and revised here. This is a joint publication of FIAF and UCLA Film & Television Archive.

As the Czech ambassador to the United States, H. E. Petr Gandalovic noted in his foreword to this book that Mla Rechcgl has written a monumental work representing a culmination of his life achievement as a historian of Czech America. The Encyclopedia of Bohemian and Czech American Biography is a unique and unparalleled publication. The enormity of this undertaking is reflected in the fact that it covers a universe, starting a few decades after the discovery of the New World, through the escapades and significant contributions of Bohemian Jesuits and Moravian brethren in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the mass migration of the Czechs after the revolutionary year of 1848, and up to the early years of the twentieth century and the influx of refugees from Nazism and communism. The encyclopedia has been planned as a representative, a comprehensive and authoritative reference tool, encompassing over 7,500 biographies. This prodigious and unparalleled encyclopedic vade mecum, reflecting enduring contributions of notable Americans with Czech roots, is not only an invaluable tool for all researchers and students of Czech American history but is also a carte blanche for the Czech Republic, which considers Czech Americans as their own and as a part of its magnificent cultural history.

While a few select foreign filmmakers have been widely recognized for their contributions to Hollywood, scores more have gone largely unrecognized. Arranged alphabetically, this volume provides detailed information on the filmmakers and their films.

From the turn of the twentieth century through the late 1950s, Havana was a locus for American movie stars, with glamorous visitors including Errol Flynn, John Wayne, and Marlon Brando. In fact, Hollywood was seemingly everywhere in pre-Castro Havana, with movie theaters three to a block in places, widely circulated silver screen fanzines, and terms like “cowboy” and “gangster” entering Cuban vernacular speech. Hollywood in Havana uses this historical backdrop as the catalyst for a startling question: Did exposure to half a century of Hollywood pave the way for the Cuban Revolution of 1959? Megan Feeney argues that the freedom fighting extolled in American World War II dramas and the rebellious values and behaviors seen in postwar film noir helped condition Cuban audiences to expect and even demand purer forms of Cuban democracy and national sovereignty. At the same time, influential Cuban intellectuals worked to translate Hollywood ethics into revolutionary rhetoric—which, ironically, led to pointed critiques and subversions of the US presence in Cuba. Hollywood in Havana not only expands our notions of how American cinema was internalized around the world—it also broadens our view of the ongoing history of US-Cuban interactions, both cultural and political.

Historian Hurewitz brings to life a vibrant and all-but-forgotten milieu of artists, leftists, and gay men and women whose story played out over the first half of the twentieth century and continues to shape the entire American landscape. In a hidden corner of Los Angeles, the personal first became the political, the nation's first enduring gay rights movement emerged, and the broad spectrum of what we now think of as identity politics was born. Portraying life over more than forty years in the hilly enclave of Edendale (now part of Silver Lake), Hurewitz considers the work of painters and printmakers, looks inside the Communist Party's intimate cultural scene, and examines the social world of gay men. He discovers why and how these communities, inspiring both one another and the city as a whole, transformed American notions of political identity with their ideas about self-expression, political engagement, and race relations.--From publisher description.