Edna Ferber's Hollywood
Subtitle: American fictions of gender, race, and history
By: J. E. Smyth ; foreword by Thomas Schatz.
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Texas film and media studies series
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Austin
Language: eng
Number of pages: 351
ISBN-13: 9780292719842
Subjects: Ferber, Edna, -- 1887-1968 -- Film and video adaptations; Ferber, Edna, -- 1887-1968 -- Knowledge -- Motion picture industry; Women in the motion picture industry -- United States; Historical fiction, American -- Film and video adaptations; Motion pictures -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Racism in literature; Sex role in literature
Genres: Film and video adaptations
Description: Edna Ferber's Hollywood reveals one of the most influential artistic relationships of the twentieth century--the four-decade partnership between historical novelist Edna Ferber and the Hollywood studios. Ferber was one of America's most controversial popular historians, a writer whose uniquely feminist, multiracial view of the national past deliberately clashed with traditional narratives of white masculine power. Hollywood paid premium sums to adapt her novels, creating some of the most memorable films of the studio era--among them Show Boat, Cimarron, and Giant. Her historical fiction resonated with Hollywood's interest in prestigious historical filmmaking aimed principally, but not exclusively, at female audiences. In Edna Ferber's Hollywood, J. E. Smyth explores the research, writing, marketing, reception, and production histories of Hollywood's Ferber franchise. Smyth tracks Ferber's working relationships with Samuel Goldwyn, Leland Hayward, George Stevens, and James Dean; her landmark contract negotiations with Warner Bros.; and the controversies surrounding Giant's critique of Jim-Crow Texas. But Edna Ferber's Hollywood is also the study of the historical vision of an American outsider--a woman, a Jew, a novelist with few literary pretensions, an unashamed middlebrow who challenged the prescribed boundaries among gender, race, history, and fiction. In a masterful film and literary history, Smyth explores how Ferber's work helped shape Hollywood's attitude toward the American past.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Edna Ferber's America and the fictions of history; title: The life of an unknown woman: so big, 1923-1953; title: Making believe: Show Boat, race, and romance, 1925-1957; title: Cimarron: marking the boundaries of classical Hollywood's rise and fall, 1928-1961; title: Writing for Hollywood: Come and get it and Saratoga trunk, 1933-1947; title: Jim Crow, Jett Rink, and James Dean: reconstructing Giant, 1952-1957; title: The new nationalism in Ice palace, 1954-1960.