Stanfield (media arts, Southampton Institute, UK) studies the western movie as a cultural artifact embedded in the lived experience of American life of the 1930s; he shifts away from the overarching paradigm of the frontier myth to explore instead practical problems of production and consumption. He examines the changing fortunes in the making of '30s westerns--both "B" serials and classics--and explains why the genre intermittently found and lost favor with the major studios. With a sprinkling of bandw stills. Distributed in the US by David Brown Book Co. c. Book News Inc.
Many people have fond memories of Friday nights and Saturday afternoons spent in theatres watching cowboy stars of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s chase villains across the silver screen or help a heroine out of harm's way. Over 2,600 Westerns were produced between 1930 and 1955 and they became a defining part of American culture. This work focuses on the idea that Westerns were one of the vehicles by which viewers learned the values and norms of a wide range of social relationships and behavior, and thus examines the ways in which Western movies reflected American life and culture during this quarter century. Chapters discuss such topics as the ways that Westerns included current events in film plot and dialogue, reinforced the role of Christianity in American culture, reflected the emergence of a strong central government, and mirrored attitudes toward private enterprise. Also covered is how Westerns represented racial minorities, women, and Indians.
The American West is a complex region that has inspired generations of writers and artists. Often portrayed as a quintessential landscape that symbolizes promise and progress for a developing nation, the American West is also a diverse space that has experienced conflicting and competing hopes and expectations. While it is frequently imagined as a place enabling dreams of new beginnings for settler communities, it is likewise home to long-standing indigenous populations as well as many other ethnic and racial groups who have often produced different visions of the land. This History encompasses the intricacy of Western American literature by exploring myriad genres and cultural movements, from ecocriticism, settler colonial studies and transnational theory, to race, ethnic, gender and sexuality studies. Written by a host of leading historians and literary critics, this book offers readers insight into the West as a site that sustains canonical and emerging authors alike, and as a region that exceeds national boundaries in addressing long-standing global concerns and developments.
"In this innovative take on a neglected chapter of film history, Peter Stanfield challenges the commonly held view of the singing cowboy as an ephemeral figure of fun and argues instead that he was one of the most important cultural figures to emerge out of the Great Depression.The rural or newly urban working-class families who flocked to see the latest exploits of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, andother singing cowboys were an audience largely ignored by mainstreamHollywood film. Hard hit by the depression, faced with the threat--and often the reality--of dispossession and dislocation, pressured to adapt to new ways of living, these small-town filmgoers saw their ambitions, fantasies, and desires embodied in the singing cowboy and their social and political circumstances dramatized in ""B"" Westerns.Stanfield traces the singing cowboy's previously uncharted roots in the performance tradition of blackface minstrelsy and its literary antecedents in dime novels, magazine fiction, and the novels of B. M. Bower, showing how silent cinema conventions, the developing commercial music media, and the prevailing conditions of film production shaped the ""horse opera"" of the 1930s. Cowboy songs offered an alternative to the disruptive modern effects of jazz music, while the series Western--tapping into aesthetic principles shunned by the aspiring middle class--emphasized stunts, fist fights, slapstick comedy, disguises, and hidden identities over narrative logic and character psychology. Singing cowboys also linked recording, radio, publishing, live performance, and film media.Entertaining and thought-provoking, Horse Opera recovers not only the forgotten cowboys of the 1930s but also their forgotten audiences: the ordinary men and women whose lives were brightened by the sights and songs of the singing Western."
Exploring the early westerns of John Wayne--from his first starring role in the The Big Trail (1930) to his breakthrough as the Ringo Kid in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939)--the authors trace his transformation from Marion Mitchell Morrison, movie studio prop man, into John Wayne, a carefully crafted film persona of his own invention that made him world famous. Wayne's years of training went well beyond honing his acting skill, as he developed the ability to do his own stunts, perfected his technique as a gun handler and became an expert horseman.
This companion volume to Mystery Movie Series of 1940s Hollywood (McFarland, 2010) focuses on 22 series and 167 individual films, primarily released during the 1930s. It was a decade that featured some of the most famous cinema detectives of all time, among them Charlie Chan, Nick and Nora Charles, Philo Vance, Nancy Drew, and such lesser known but equally entertaining figures as Hildegarde Withers, Torchy Blane, Mr. Moto, Mr. Wong, and Brass Bancroft. Each mystery movie series is placed within its historical context, with emphasis on its source material and the changes or developments within the series over time. Also included are reviews of all the series' films, analyzing the quality and cohesiveness of the mystery plotlines. For titles based on literary sources, a comparison between the film and the written work is provided.
Hundreds of illustrations record the look and feel of the great Hollywood Westerns, from the wizened face of John Wayne to a wagon train crawling slowly along in the dust, while an informative text describes their production.
For many years, movie audiences have carried on a love affair with the American West, believing Westerns are escapist entertainment of the best kind, harkening back to the days of the frontier. This work compares the reality of the Old West to its portrayal in movies, taking an historical approach to its consideration of the cowboys, Indians, gunmen, lawmen and others who populated the Old West in real life and on the silver screen. Starting with the Westerns of the early 1900s, it follows the evolution in look, style, and content as the films matured from short vignettes of good-versus-bad into modern plots.
Westerns were a huge part of movies during the silent movie era and even more so beginning in the late 1930's through the 1960's. Westerns developed such great stars as John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Randolph Scott, and were instrumental in the careers of movie luminaries like James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Alan Ladd, Glenn Ford, and Clint Eastwood. Stars not normally associated with westerns - like Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck, Robert Taylor, and Joel McCrea -also made a number of quality westerns. However, after the 1960's, westerns dropped out of sight for several decades as movie westerns fell out of favor with the baby boomers. After all, we had more relevant concerns than what took place in the American west after the Civil War - Vietnam, social unrest, civil rights, equality, and women's rights were just some of those issues that movies seemed to focus on. Who needed westerns with good guys and bad guys clearly differentiated? But in recent years, westerns have made somewhat of a comeback. Films like Unforgiven (Oscar winner for Best Picture), Tombstone, Dances with Wolves (another Best Picture Oscar winner), Open Range, and Silverado have brought a renaissance to the western, truly the most American form of films. Even an old west comedy like Blazing Saddles has helped bring the western film back into the limelight. Therefore, this book will concentrate on my personal favorites in three categories of westerns: 1. Good Guys (and one gal) 2. Bad Guys and Sidekicks 3. My all-time favorite western films - again, my own personal favorites. This book is dedicated to all fans of classic western movies from the 1930's to the 1960's. Not the serials, not the "B" westerns with stars like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy's William Boyd, and Buck Jones, just to name a few; and not the great television shows like The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, or others. As good as those shows were, this book has a specific movie, not television, focus.
