Hollywood Melodrama and the New Deal: Public Daydreams

While many critics have analyzed the influence of the FDR administration on Hollywood films of the era, most of these studies have focused either on New Deal imagery or on studio interactions with the federal government. Neither type of study explores the relationship between film and the ideological principles underlying the New Deal.

This book argues that the most important connections between the New Deal and Hollywood melodrama lie neither in the New Deal iconography of these films, nor...