{"title":"\"A Legend in Her Own Time\": Lauren Bacall, Aging Stardom, and Cultural Memory in Applause","authors":"Sara Bakerman","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.34.1.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.34.1.01","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In 1970, more than twenty-five years after her film debut, Lauren Bacall made a dramatic comeback as Margo Channing in Applause (1970–73), the Broadway musical remake of All About Eve (1950). Defying critical skepticism and popular ageism and confronting the public's enduring memory of her screen image, she achieved new heights in her lucrative and award-winning turn onstage. This essay examines the show's production history from the vantage point of Bacall's own archives, placing personal writing in conversation with press coverage to trace how the star leveraged theatrical success to reinvent herself as a \"living legend\" of Old Hollywood.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134335632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Walter R. Booth and the Early Trick Film","authors":"B. Anthony","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.34.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.34.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:For many years there has been disagreement about the innovative trick films issued by Robert Paul during the late 1890s and early 1900s. Some historians have maintained that Paul was largely responsible for their creation, while others argue that they were the work of stage magician Walter Robert Booth. Although Paul's life and career has been fully documented by Dr. John Barnes and Professor Ian Christie, little has previously been known about Booth. New research strongly suggest that Booth was responsible for many of the films and that his influence can be detected in numerous aspects of their production.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116607442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Strictly on the Level, Like a Flight of Stairs\": Irving Thalberg and Anita Loos as Trickster-Heroes in the Case of Red-Headed Woman (1932)","authors":"Leslie Wilson","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.34.1.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.34.1.04","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Archival documents concerning the adaptation of Red-Headed Woman (1932) disclose the \"confusion\" producer Irving Thalberg and screenwriter Anita Loos created in the minds of the censoring men at the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). While others debated propriety versus sexual intrigue, trickster Loos—working closely with Thalberg—wove into the fabric of her story a profound subtext that advocated for social change regarding women through its critique of intersectional issues related to class, gender, and sexuality.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128514210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"As Pretty a Piece of Price Fixing as I Ever Saw\": Prerelease Engagements and the Circumvention of the Paramount Consent Decrees","authors":"Deron Overpeck","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.34.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.34.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Despite hopes for a more equitable cinematic marketplace after the 1948 Paramount decision, the studios quickly developed new methods of dominating exhibition. One technique, the prerelease engagement, created an unofficial first run at higher prices before a film's official release. The Department of Justice's disinterested response to exhibitor complaints demonstrated that it was no longer interested in policing the industry. Using the trade press and congressional testimony, this essay traces the history of the prerelease and exhibitors' unsuccessful attempts to block it—an early example of the decline of the Paramount decrees as a means to counter studio dominance.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114839477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Implicating the Social Order: The Story of a Discharged Prisoner","authors":"T. Cunliffe","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.33.3.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.33.3.04","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Made and released during protests, riots, and other social crises in Hong Kong, The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967) is a pivotal work that transitions between the conventions of the 1950s social-realist melodrama and the crime film that would flourish in the 1970s and 1980s and is a key cultural piece in Hong Kong’s changing structures of feeling during this volatile period. Lung Kong utilizes the crime film to challenge the dominant values of law and order and investigate how the system of colonial capitalist power in Hong Kong impacted social experience. This essay examines and contextualizes the industrial, historical, and sociopolitical context into which The Story of a Discharged Prisoner emerged to demonstrate how the film is a critical site for negotiating the reshaping of values in the emerging industrial city.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"142 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116568434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Motion-Picture Mappaemundi: On Location Cartography in California","authors":"Patrick Ellis","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.33.3.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.33.3.01","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This paper examines the phenomenon of film location maps in California. These unusual maps, popular in the 1930s and associated with Paramount Studios, presented those locations within California that could plausibly substitute for another world location onscreen (e.g., the Sierra Nevada mountain range could stand in for the Alps as a background in a film). In this article, I analyze a sequence of these maps, arguing that the global juxtapositions and cinematic superimpositions that they create were only possible within a specific historical context, namely (1) the formalization of the role of the location manager as that profession evolved within the studio system and location shooting in California; (2) a particular form of place-based tourist marketing for California that claimed a global variety of geographies within the state; (3) the importance of the idea of place to Paramount Studios in these years, and how this related to a contemporaneous boom in California place-naming; and (4) the simultaneous rise of pictorial maps, a kind of cartography that joined illustration and caricature.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125690617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Early Edition: The Daily Mail, British Newspapers, and the Moving Image, 1896–1922","authors":"T. Rice","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.33.3.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.33.3.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The first edition of the Daily Mail on May 4, 1896, included an advertisement for the “latest scientific marvel,” the Lumiere Cinematograph. While historians have acknowledged the concurrent rise of film and the popular press, this article explores the varied and often-innovative ways in which British newspapers produced film and visual media. From the use of Daily Mail screens to relay election results, to the production and promotion of the newspaper’s own film in 1910, these early interactions allow us to understand better the emergence, evolution, and endurance of Britain’s modern media system.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114709760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"George Kleine’s Film Distribution in 1909","authors":"Richard Abel","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.33.3.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.33.3.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:These rare documents reveal intriguing information about how many reels of film George Kleine’s MPPC company was releasing and to which rental exchanges during five weeks in May–June 1909, a turbulent period in the US movie industry. Kleine released on average no more than two reels of half a dozen Gaumont and Eclipse fiction and nonfiction films per week, and those reels went to exchanges largely in the Midwest and Northeast but hardly any in the Southeast and Southwest. A few trade press and newspaper references suggest that Kleine films were shown mostly in small theaters in small towns and often for only a single day’s screening. Their circulation confirms, along with the parallel reduction of imports from Pathé-Frères, that French films no longer could dominate the American movie market. They also indicate that although the company’s business seemed stable, Kleine realized it was in crisis and soon would explore ways of distributing different kinds of films.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"86 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132469499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Spatiality of Film Production and the Politics of Urban Planning: Rome’s Pioneering Film Studio Cines (1905–37)","authors":"C. Keating","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.33.3.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.33.3.02","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Rome’s pioneering film production facility Cines (1905–37), the first ever to be built and the first ever to produce sound films in Italy, underwent a number of spatial, energy, and technological changes and additions. Approaching the history of this studio from a material and spatial perspective, I locate its infrastructural growth in the context of Rome’s rapid urbanization and shed light on the complex interaction among real-estate investments, political governance, and innovations in the film industry. By considering the forces behind Cines’s unsustainable expansion, I argue that we can better understand the genesis, and longevity, of its successor Cinecittà.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"121 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116059141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Archival Rediscovery and the Production of History: Solving the Mystery of Something Good—Negro Kiss (1898)","authors":"A. Field","doi":"10.2979/filmhistory.33.2.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.33.2.01","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In 2017, the film archivist at the University of Southern California rediscovered a nitrate print from circa 1900 of an African American couple laughing and repeatedly embracing in a naturalistic and joyful manner—a striking departure from the racist caricatures prevalent in early cinema. In this essay, I trace the process of identifying the film as Something Good—Negro Kiss, made in Chicago in 1898 by William Selig with vaudeville performers Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown. Moving from technological artifacts to theatrical history, I argue that the film's rediscovery serves as a case study of the procedure of identifying films and of ascribing historical meaning to early film artifacts, especially around African American subjects.","PeriodicalId":426632,"journal":{"name":"Film History: An International Journal","volume":"59 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130729444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}