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).

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Going beyond a biography, this text uses the life of blacklisted Hollywood writer and director Abraham Lincoln Polonsky to help us understand the relationship between art and politics in American culture and to uncover the effects of US anticommunism and anti-Semitism.

A biography elucidating the Academy Award–nominee’s meteoric rise, his tragic end, and his legacy. At the dawn of the 1990s, a new crew of leading men—Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage, Keanu Reeves, and Brad Pitt—was rocketing toward stardom. River Phoenix, however, stood in front of the pack. But behind Phoenix’s talent and beautiful public face was a young man who had been raised in a cult by nonconformist parents, who was burdened with supporting his family from a young age, and who eventually succumbed to addiction, dying of an overdose in front of the Viper Room, West Hollywood’s storied club, at twenty-three. Last Night at the Viper Room is part biography, part cultural history of the 1990s, and part celebration of a Hollywood icon gone too soon. Full of interviews from his fellow actors, directors, friends, and family, this book shows the role River Phoenix played in creating the place of the actor in our modern culture and the impact his work still makes today.

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.

With an introduction by Greg Palast, author of bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Progressive Hollywood features Rampell?s interviews and interactions with Hollywood luminaries such as producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Robert Greenwald; actors Jack Nicholson, Rob Reiner, Mike Farrell, Ed Asner, Martin Sheen, David Clennon, Gore Vidal and Dennis Hopper; directors Michael Moore, Spike Lee, Oliver Stone and Lionel Chetwynd; blacklisted screenwriters Bernie Gordon (who initiated the 1999 protests against Elia Kazan?s lifetime achievement Oscar), Bobby Lees (who injected dialectical materialism into Abbott and Costello comedies) and Norma Barzman (author of 2003's The Red and the Blacklist).