Hollywood's Overseas Campaign: The North Atlantic Movie Trade, 1920-1950

by Ian Jarvie

Overview

Hollywood's Overseas Cammpaign is a history of how the American film industry succeeded in dominating the film markets of Canada and Great Britain in the period 1920-1950. Written in three parts, the book shows how well organized and effective the American industry was overseas, addressing Hollywood operations in Canada and various unsuccessful official attempts to curb them, and in Great Britain where legislation was enacted to control them, achieving some but by no means complete success. The study deals with the complexity of the situation in the United States, where the film industry coped with internal divisions, hostile pressure groups, and ambivalent administrations and shows that the secret of success is in the mastery of organization and supply.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521041430
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/06/2007
Series:	Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	5.94(w) x 8.98(h) x 1.06(d)

Table of Contents

List of tables and figures; Preface; General introduction; Part I. A Small Market - Canada: 1. The White Report and the trial of Famous Players, 1932; 2. Before the White Report, 1920–1930; 3. After the White Report, 1932–1950; Part II. America's Biggest Foreign Market: The United Kingdom: 4. The road to a British quota system, 1920–1927; 5. Trade policy, politics and the 1938 act, 1928–1938; 6. War and currency crisis, 1939–1945; 7. Trial of strength: Hollywood's boycott of the British market, 1947–1948; 8. Postwar measures: the boycott and its aftermath, 1945–1950; Part III. The US Motion Picture Industry and its Overseas System: 9. The MPPDA and the beginnings of organization, 1920–1922; 10. Machinery without policy, 1923–1932; 11. The system in operation, 1933–1941; 12. Protecting the system in wartime, 1942–1945; 13. Adapting the system to peace, 1945–1950; Epilogue; References; Filmography; Index of names; Index of subjects.

Editorial Reviews

"Hollywood's Overseas Campaign is an impressive work of scholarship and unique in that it treats film as a commodity in an economic process rather than as an icon in the more traditional aesthetic and cultural approaches." Wilson Library Bulletin

"...an important book for those interested in understanding how the big business of movies gained and maintained overseas market share....From this study, we can gain a better understanding of how and why Canadian and British citizens not only wanted a date with Judy [Garland], but also wanted to emulate and buy what they saw her do or use on screen." Journal of Economic History

"[L]iterature on the subject has now been greatly enhanced by Ian Jarvie's book which, though it concentrates on Britain and Canada, offers a fascinating picture of how strategy was formed on the American side and how feeble and deluded the opposition to it tended to be." Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Times Literary Supplement

"Hollywood's Overseas Campaign makes available a large amount of previously unpublished archival material relating to these transactions and negotiations and, in doing so, makes a welcome contribution to this much-neglected area of motion picture history....[T]he book usefully illuminates details of recent British and Canadian cultural history and contributes toward the broader picture of Hollywood's institutional history." Ruth Vasey, Journal of American History

"Jarvie has written a book which fills a major gap in our knowledge...an important contribution to our understanding of the history of this medium." Richard Paterson, Journal of Communication

From the Publisher