Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics

In Hollywood Left and Right, Steven J. Ross tells a story that has escaped public attention: the emergence of Hollywood as a vital center of political life and the important role that movie stars have played in shaping the course of American politics. Ever since the film industry relocated to Hollywood early in the twentieth century, it has had an outsized influence on American politics. Through compelling larger-than-life figures in American cinema--Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Edward G. Robinson, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty, and Arnold Schwarzenegger--Hollywood Left and Right reveals how the film industry's engagement in politics has been longer, deeper, and more varied than most people would imagine. As shown in alternating chapters, the Left and the Right each gained ascendancy in Tinseltown at different times. From Chaplin, whose movies almost always displayed his leftist convictions, to Schwarzenegger's nearly seamless transition from action blockbusters to the California governor's mansion, Steven J. Ross traces the intersection of Hollywood and political activism from the early twentieth century to the present. Hollywood Left and Right challenges the commonly held belief that Hollywood has always been a bastion of liberalism. The real story, as Ross shows in this passionate and entertaining work, is far more complicated. First, Hollywood has a longer history of conservatism than liberalism. Second, and most surprising, while the Hollywood Left was usually more vocal and visible, the Right had a greater impact on American political life, capturing a senate seat (Murphy), a governorship (Schwarzenegger), and the ultimate achievement, the Presidency (Reagan).

Ross, Steven J.

History

Oxford University Press, USA

Human trafficking has captured worldwide attention as a crucial moral and political issue, but perhaps nowhere more than in the United States. Since they were signed into law in 2000, U.S. federal laws and policies on human trafficking have been understood as concrete expressions of the civic values of personal and political freedom. Yet these policies have also been characterized by a marked preoccupation with regulation, and especially sexual regulation. Yvonne C. Zimmerman offers a groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between freedom and sexual regulation in American anti-human trafficking law and policies. . She argues that the religious values of American Protestantism have indelibly shaped the federal government's approach to engaging human trafficking, and that the trajectory of the U.S.'s anti-trafficking efforts cannot be fully grasped without understanding the unique ways in which sex, morality, and freedom are connected in Protestant Christian configurations of morality. Zimmerman shows that particularly under the George W. Bush administration, the U.S.'s anti-trafficking project expressed a vision of freedom whose structure and logic is thoroughly Protestant. . Her analysis challenges the assumption that combating human trafficking necessarily entails sexual regulation, and reveals the extent to which the preoccupation with sexual regulation has functioned to discourage alternative understandings and practices of freedom, particularly for women. Other Dreams of Freedom demonstrates that if opposition to human trafficking takes the promotion of freedom as the point of departure, then freedom must not be identified strictly with religiously and culturally Protestant understandings, but ought also permit other understandings of how freedom is constituted, practiced, and maintained.

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Oxford University Press

In Hollywood Left and Right, Steven J. Ross tells an important story that has escaped public attention: the emergence of Hollywood as a vital center of political life and the important role that movie stars have played in shaping the course of American politics. Ever since the film industry relocated to Hollywood early in the twentieth century, it has had an outsized influence on American politics. Through compelling larger-than-life figures in American cinema-Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Edward G. Robinson, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty, and Arnold Schwarzenegger-Hollywood Left and Right reveals how Hollywood's engagement in politics has been longer, deeper, and more varied than most people would imagine. As shown in alternating chapters, the Left and the Right each gained ascendancy in Tinseltown at different times. From Chaplin, whose movies almost always displayed his leftist convictions, to Schwarzenegger's nearly seamless transition from action blockbusters to the California governor's mansion, Ross traces the intersection of Hollywood and political activism from the early twentieth century to the present. Hollywood Left and Right challenges the commonly held belief that Hollywood has always been a bastion of liberalism. The real story, as Ross shows in this passionate and entertaining work, is far more complicated. First, Hollywood has a longer history of conservatism than liberalism. Second, and most surprising, while the Hollywood Left was usually more vocal and visible, the Right had a greater impact on American political life, capturing a senate seat (Murphy), a governorship (Schwarzenegger), and the ultimate achievement, the Presidency (Reagan).

Workers On the Edge tells the dramatic and often tumultuous story of 100 years of American life.  The author takes us from Cincinnati’s artisan workshops to the modern machine age; from the optimistic promises of republicanism to the harsh realities of industrial capitalism.  In so doing, Ross explains how American workers came to understand their role in American society and suggests the reasons why Americans today think of their nation as a classless society.

Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (Columbia History of Urban Life)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Columbia Univ. Pr.

Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (Columbia History of Urban Life) [paperback] Ross, Steven J. [Mar 01, 1987]

Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (Columbia History of Urban Life)

Business & Money

Economics

The second edition of Movies and American Society is a comprehensive collection of essays and primary documents that explore the ways in which movies have changed―and been changed by―American society from 1905 to the present. <ul>
<li>Each chapter includes an introduction, discussion questions, an essay examining the issues of the period, primary documents, and a list of further reading and screenings</li> <li>Includes a new chapter on “American Film in the Age of Terror” and new essays for Chapter 9 (“Race, Violence, and Film”) and Chapter 13 (“Hollywood Goes Global”), as well as updated Reading and Screenings sections</li> <li>Discusses all the major periods in American film history from the first nickelodeons to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the globalization of Hollywood</li> <li>Demonstrates the unique influence of movies on all aspects of American culture, from ideology, politics, and gender to class, war, and race relations</li> <li>Engaging and accessible for students, with jargon-free essays and primary documents that show social practices and controversies as well as the fun and cultural influence of movies and movie-going</li> </ul>

Movies and American Society

Wiley/Blackwell

This path-breaking book reveals how Hollywood became "Hollywood" and what that meant for the politics of America and American film. Working-Class Hollywood tells the story of filmmaking in the first three decades of the twentieth century, a time when going to the movies could transform lives and when the cinema was a battleground for control of American consciousness. Steven Ross documents the rise of a working-class film movement that challenged the dominant political ideas of the day. Between 1907 and 1930, worker filmmakers repeatedly clashed with censors, movie industry leaders, and federal agencies over the kinds of images and subjects audiences would be allowed to see. The outcome of these battles was critical to our own times, for the victors got to shape the meaning of class in twentieth- century America.
 Surveying several hundred movies made by or about working men and women, Ross shows how filmmakers were far more concerned with class conflict during the silent era than at any subsequent time. Directors like Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and William de Mille made movies that defended working people and chastised their enemies. Worker filmmakers went a step further and produced movies from A Martyr to His Cause (1911) to The Gastonia Textile Strike (1929) that depicted a unified working class using strikes, unions, and socialism to transform a nation. J. Edgar Hoover considered these class-conscious productions so dangerous that he assigned secret agents to spy on worker filmmakers.
 Liberal and radical films declined in the 1920s as an emerging Hollywood studio system, pressured by censors and Wall Street investors, pushed American film in increasingly conservative directions. Appealing to people's dreams of luxury and upward mobility, studios produced lavish fantasy films that shifted popular attention away from the problems of the workplace and toward the pleasures of the new consumer society. While worker filmmakers were trying to heighten class consciousness, Hollywood producers were suggesting that class no longer mattered. Working-Class Hollywood shows how silent films helped shape the modern belief that we are a classless nation.

Working-Class Hollywood

Princeton University Press

Audit and Control of Systems Programming Activities

Science & Math

Plagman, Bernard K.

Mathematics

Inst of Internal Auditors

Workers On the Edge tells the dramatic and often tumultuous story of 100 years of American life. The author takes us from Cincinnati’s artisan workshops to the modern machine age; from the optimistic promises of republicanism to the harsh realities of industrial capitalism. In so doing, Ross explains how American workers came to understand their role in American society and suggests the reasons why Americans today think of their nation as a classless society.

Workers On The Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788 - 1890

Figueroa Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ross, Steven J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ross, Steven J.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ross, Steven J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics

Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics

Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics

Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (Columbia History of Urban Life)

Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (Columbia History of Urban Life)

Movies and American Society

Working-Class Hollywood

Working-Class Hollywood

Audit and Control of Systems Programming Activities

Workers On The Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788 - 1890