by Lary May ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2000
Somewhat academic, but not without its merits.
La-La Land goes political.
May (Screening Out the Past, 1980) begins his account with Will Rogers in the 1930s and ends it somewhere between Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando in the 1960s. His quest to show how the movies, through their erection of idealized images of self and home, influenced American nationalism. Needless to say, this is a pretty broad canvas, and May finds no lack of material to consider—especially during the war years, when Hollywood became a kind of Ministry of Propaganda serving the Allied High Command. The House on 92d Street, Back to Bataan, This Is the Army, and The Fighting 69th are just a handful of the suspects he rounds up to support his case. In his examination of the McCarthy years, May relates the many ways in which the US government worked hand-in-glove with Hollywood to root out communist influence from the industry. Curiously enough, however, May stops short of labeling such efforts “propaganda.” More interesting are his comments on some of the more memorable films by respected directors, such as Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity), Mark Hellinger (High Sierra) and John Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre). May sees these efforts as attempts made by the more radical elements in Hollywood to counter the trend toward succumbing to the political pressures emanating from Washington. May, of course, is not the first cultural historian to point to Hollywood’s political impact on American society, but he does, however, give greater recognition than usual to minorities and the role they have played in the public consciousness (as expressed through popular films), both before and immediately after the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. He also points to a certain cross-cultural fertilization in American entertainment that perhaps is inevitable given the nature of our heritage.
Somewhat academic, but not without its merits.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-226-51162-6
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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