Introduction : how film became art -- Vachel Lindsay and the Universal Film Museum -- Overlapping publics : Hollywood and Columbia University, 1915 -- Mandarins and Marxists : Harvard and the rise of film experts -- Iris Barry, Hollywood imperialism, and the gender of the nation -- The Museum of Modern Art and the roots of the cultural Cold War -- The politics of patronage : how the NEA (accidentally) created American avant-garde film -- Conclusion : the transformation of the studio system
Summary
Explores how Hollywood and cultural institutions worked together, amid ethnic diversity, the rise of mass entertainment, world war, and the global spread of American culture, to insure their own survival and profitability and to provide a coherent, though shifting, American identity
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-251) and index
