Edna Ferber's Hollywood: American Fictions of Gender, Race, and History

J. E. Smyth

Published by University of Texas Press 2009

Edna Ferber's Hollywood

American Fictions of Gender, Race, and History

J. E. Smyth
With contributions by: Thomas Schatz

In the series Texas Film and Media Studies Series

https://doi.org/10.7560/719842

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

J. E. Smyth holds a Ph.D. in Film Studies and American Studies from Yale University. She teaches at the University of Warwick (UK) and is the author of Reconstructing American Historical Cinema: From Cimarron to Citizen Kane.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Foreword Thomas Schatz Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
CHAPTER ONE Edna Ferber’s America and the Fictions of History
CHAPTER TWO The Life of an Unknown Woman: So Big, 1923–1953 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
CHAPTER THREE Making Believe: Show Boat, Race, and Romance, 1925–1957 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
CHAPTER FOUR Marking the Boundaries of Classical Hollywood’s Rise and Fall: Cimarron, 1928–1961 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
CHAPTER FIVE Writing for Hollywood: Come and Get It and Saratoga Trunk, 1933–1947 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
CHAPTER SIX Jim Crow, Jett Rink, and James Dean: Reconstructing Giant, 1952–1957 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
CHAPTER SEVEN The New Nationalism: Ice Palace, 1954–1960 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Selected Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 351

eBook

Published: January 1, 2010
ISBN: 9780292793392