[Horne, Gerald. .Class struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950 : moguls, mobsters, stars, Reds, & trade unionists / Gerald Horne. 1st ed. 029273137X (cl. : alk. paper) series Austin : University of Texas Press, 2001.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U65 H67 2001]

 

Horne, Gerald. Class struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950 : Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, & Trade Unionists. Austin: University of Texas, 2001.

 

This book focuses on the Hollywood "labor management conflict" that transpired between 1930-1950, or roughly from the Great Depression through the years following the end of World War Two. Horne commits to paper the struggle between the

'average' employees of the film industry against the period's movie moguls and recounts the transformative events that took place and caused change in the standards of movie-making in the United States. The culminations of the long-standing history of problems film industry employees had with their employers would culminate in a strike in 1945, a 1946 lockout, and the infamous 1947 blacklist. Themes that run throughout Horne's book include anticommunism, the communist party, anti-Semitism, movie moguls, labor, and the Italian mafia. 1930-1950 was a period of film history in America filled with strife and conflict within the closed doors of each studio house.

 

Horne approaches this conflict between labor and management from a purely historical perspective. However, the impact of this class struggle can be traced to the films that continued to be produced between 1930 and 1950, such as "The Philadelphia Story". With a better understanding of the real problems plaguing the American public, and the film industry in 1940 when "The Philadelphia Story" came out, it is easier to parse out some of the unspoken tensions that are at work in the film. Horne illustrates how the inner workings of the film industry were beginning to become unhinged, mainly due to classist standards and an extreme concentration of wealth in Hollywood, by 1940; in "The Philadelphia Story" a need to hold on to something traditional, familiar, some part of the status quo is strongly felt. The movie does not advocate for a reinvention of the American upper classes but affirms their right to live and partake in society as they already do, with glamour but also a distinct air of separateness. Perhaps in light of Horne's book this can be seen as an effort on part of George Cukor, the film's producer and a formidable persona in film at the time, to assert the permanence of his own role in the film industry.

[Chopra-Gant, Mike. . Hollywood genres and postwar America : masculinity, family and nation in popular movies and film noir / Mike Chopra-Gant. 1850438153 (hbk.) series London ; New York : I.B. Tauris ; New York : Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.  Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U65 C495 2006]

Gant, Mike Chopra. Hollywood Genres and Postwar America: Masculinity, Family, and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
 2006.

Focus is mainly on which films were popular from 1945-1949 and analyzes the themes expressed
within these movies. However, undercurrents of many of the themes in "The Philadelphia Story"
are covered within Gant's chapters:
    Ch. Two: Re-invigorating the nation: popular films and American national identity
        "The myth of classlessness"-- gives many examples from "The Best Years of
        our Lives" that veterans who came home received issues of class to be resolved
        which they quickly discovered were not; America was still perceived to be quite classist
        "Modernizing the American hero"
        "The Absent Father"
        "Stars and Performance"

[HIGHAM, CHARLES . HOLLYWOOD IN THE FORTIES series
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN/1993.5/U65/H5]

Higham, Charles, and Joel Greenberg. Hollywood in the Forties. New York: Tantivy, 1968.

As Higham and Greenberg phrase it, Hollywood films produced in the 1940s were a "world of
their own" (11). This book describes in detail the themes that grabbed hold of many
of the best-remembered plots of the 1940s screen. The introduction preceding these chapters
gives an explanation of how the film industry of the 1930s set the scene for this period. For
example, page 68 contains a passage that details how the leftist ideology and themes, resultant
from the Great Depression, were expressed in 1930s films; this left the 1940s to picked up
where the 1920s left off, celebrating decadence and the enjoyments of life.
A brief outline of the studio system and star system follows. This period
of American film would prove to be quite successful, boasting some of the funniest, wittiest,
and memorable films in the American cinematic canon. Something interesting to note in regard
to this book is the year it was published: 1968. At this time the Hollywood culture that
had produced films like "The Philadelphia Story" was beginning to get scoffed at or looked
down on in comparison to more artistic or avant-garde films.


"The Philadelphia Story" is mentioned by title here and the authors note that "today [the film]
feels empty" (162); the film which had been celebrated in its time for being
entertaining and snappy loses some of its original appeal in the onslaught of the
French New Wave and other more artistically oriented film movements. Chapters on "Problem and
Sociological Films", "War Propaganda", and "Comedy" are all of interest here in order to
understand how movies like "The Philadelphia Story", in some ways an archetypal 1940s film, was perceived
in the late 1960s-- only a decade after "High Society" was released.

[Schatz, Thomas, 1948- . Hollywood genres : formulas, filmmaking, and the studio system / Thomas Schatz. 0877222223 : series Philadelphia : Temple University Press, c1981.]

 

Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmaking, and the Studio System. Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1981.

 

Thomas Schatz seeks to understand, appreciate, and analyze Hollywood cinema through
an in-depth look at the genres that overwhelmed it for much of the twentieth-century.
An understanding of the many factors that drove films to be centered
on the topics that they were then lends to a more comprehensive picture of what
the film industry and American culture were during the studio period. Schatz
divides his book into two main parts: a theoretical look at genre film-making followed
by case studies of six dominant genres characteristic of the Hollywood studio system.

The genre that Schatz explores that is most relevant to "The Philadelphia Story" is
the one on The Screwball Comedy (Chapter 6, p. 150-185). Schatz outlines the general
convention of the screwball comedy, often characterized by portrayals of the American
elite and social and sexual tensions between the sexes- usually between a frustrated
man and woman from different backgrounds who fight their way through fast-paced and
witty dialogue only to realize that they are destined for each other. The themes in
screwball comedies usually deal with class issues and romantic or sexual ones.
Schatz notes the
huge popularity of these films during the Great Depression. He mentions "The
Philadelphia Story" specifically in order to discuss a variation of the archetypal
screwball comedy that became popular in the 1940s: the divorce-remarriage variation.
In these films the screwball couple have already been joined together in marriage
but then something goes awry and the movie is spent reconciling this differences.
"The Philadelphia Story" is a prime example for this sub-genre, with the relationship
between Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven occupying its plot and manifesting itself
in typical, and highly entertaining, screwball manner.