The Golden Age of Cinema: Hollywood, 1929-1945

Professor Jewell's book on the "Golden Age" of Hollywood movie-making is a great introduction to the way the Hollywood studios worked in the first 20 years of sound, from 1926 to 1945 (with some nods to the post-war period). What makes the book invaluable is the breadth of his approach. He covers not only what was going on in Hollywood but also in the broader areas of the entertainment arts (radio, stage, books, even sports) competing with movies for consumers' attention and money. He covers not only the spectrum of entertainment arts but also what was going on culturally and even politically in the period. For example, he shows how the rise of censorship in Hollywood movies in 1932-4 related to the economic downturn of the Depression, which had hurt box office returns, seducing the studios into releasing more films featuring sex and violence. In spite of being a manageable 300 pages, the book gets into specifics to prove its points, citing box office grosses and profits for the movies mentioned. In discussing movies by genres and styles, Professor Jewell offers loads of titles of representative and excellent movies to watch and review. Anybody who never got the chance to attend one of Professor Jewell's classes at the USC School of Cinema, where he's one of the top two most popular lecturers, can now make up for it by reading this book and renting some of the movies he mentions. It's a great way to start to understand what made this period of Hollywood filmmaking so extraordinary.