[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.