Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Taking Hollywood Seriously 1. Modernism, Intellectual Immigrants, and the Rebirth of Hollywood 2. Salons, Bookstores, and Anti-Nazism: The Remaking of the Hollywood Community 3. The Making of an Anti-Fascist Community 4. Hollywood Unraveled: Community and Style, 1939-1941 5. The "Only Respectable Clothes": Progressive Hollywood and Democratic Realism during World War II 6. Audiences, "People," and the Avant-Garde: The Collapse of the Hollywood Community 7. "Weary Standard-Bearers of Progress": Hollywood Progressive Cinema and the Crisis of the Hollywood Community Conclusion: One Last Hollywood Self-Portrait Notes Index

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An intellectual history of the Hollywood community and its wartime films

About the Author

Saverio Giovacchini is Assistant Professor of History, Bronx Community College of the City University of New York.

Reviews

"Giovacchini's identification of vernacular modernism in American films, the morphing of a 'middle ground' for German cinematic art, Hollywood romance, drama and comedy, is a major breakthrough. He also casts new light upon the evolution of liberalism in the film capital. Hollywood Modernism will certainly be regarded as a milestone in the new generation of film studies." --Paul Buhle, Brown University "Brilliantly conceived, assiduously researched and documented, carefully written and thoughtfully structured, Hollywood Modernism should become indispensable for those interested in this period of our social and cultural history. Giovacchini articulates a theory of democratic modernism that relates to the extended era of the New Deal, the Second World War, and the Cold War...relying heavily upon a truly impressive array of primary materials that deal with film production and film history." --Sam B. Girgus, Professor of English, Vanderbilt University, and author of Hollywood Renaissance