San Antonio College Library

From Peep Show to Palace recounts the enchanting early years of film, beginning with the primitive motion of the "magic lantern" in the fifteenth century and continuing, most significantly, with the explosion of research from 1893 to 1913, when the modern motion picture was born. Respected film critic David Robinson offers this vivid account of the haphazard process, "like the assembly of the pieces of a puzzle," which was the birth of American film....

There's no business that's bigger or more exciting than show business, and for almost a century Variety has been the single most authoritative and influential publication devoted to the entertainment industry, including the worlds of movies, television, theater, and live performance. With colorful lingo that has enriched the American language, a talent for spotting trends and events long before anyone else does, and statistics to back up its hunches,...

In Hollywood's High Noon, Thomas Cripps brings together both the insights of recent scholarship in the field of film studies and the results of his own extensive research to trace the history of Hollywood, from its turn-of-the-century beginnings through the invention and development of the studio system to its heyday in the 1950s, just before television eclipsed the movies as America's dominant entertainment medium. Cripps explores the movie-going...

Index and bibliography included. Revision of thesis (Ph. D.) - University of Pennsylvania, 1979.

From Mouse to Mermaid, an interdisciplinary collection of original essays, is the first comprehensive, critical treatment of Disney cinema. Addressing children's classics as well as the Disney affiliates' more recent attempts to capture adult audiences, the contributors respond to the Disney film legacy from feminist, marxist, poststructuralist, and cultural studies perspectives. The volume contemplates Disney's duality as an American icon and as...

"Film historian Thomas Schatz focuses on four representative companies--Warner Brothers, MGM, Universal, and Selznick International--tracing their distinctive house styles and studio operations from the 1920's through the 1950's."--Jacket. "The Genius of the System is the first complete portrait of moviemaking in Hollywood's classic studio era. Incisive, entertaining, and based on actual industry documents--memos, production reports, story conference...

Portrays the lives of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and information about the 16 films they made together. Presents information from interviews with coworkers and family members and from a fax interview with Kurosawa. "Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune made sixteen feature films together, including Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, and High and Low--all undisputed masterworks of world cinema. Kurosawa's films have inspired blockbuster...

How politics, propaganda, and profits sparked the drama, imagery, and fantasy of 1940s film--and marched America off to fight World War II. The authors examine how one of America's largest and most lucrative industries was enlisted as an enthusiastic recruiter for Uncle Sam to create scores of "entertainment" pictures in which blatant morale-building propaganda messages received top billing. Revealed is the powerful role of FDR's Office of War Information,...

"From noted film critic Neal Gabler comes a provocative, original, and richly entertaining group biography of the Jewish immigrants who founded and came to dominate the American film industry. These men--Adolph_Zukor, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, the Warner brothers, Harry Cohn--created an image of America out of their own idealism, a vision that proved so powerful that it ultimately came to shape the myths, values, traditions, and archetypes of...