Hollywood Independents

Hollywood Independents

The Postwar Talent Takeover

Denise Mann

Table of Contents

PRESS
Boston Globe Review

$25.00 paper
ISBN: 978-0-8166-4541-1
ISBN-10: 0-8166-4541-8

$75.00 cloth
ISBN: 978-0-8166-4540-4
ISBN-10: 0-8166-4540-X

An unexpected history of the “new Hollywood”.

Hollywood Independents explores the crucial period from 1948 to 1962 when independent film producers first became key components of the modern corporate entertainment industry. Denise Mann examines the impact of the radically changed filmmaking climate—the decline of the studios, the rise of television, and the rise of potent talent agencies like MCA—on a group of prominent talent-turned-producers, including Burt Lancaster, Joseph Mankiewicz, Elia Kazan, and Billy Wilder.

In order to show how these newly independent filmmakers negotiated through an increasingly fraught, reactionary creative atmosphere, Mann analyzes the reflexive portraits of their altered working conditions in such films as A Face in the Crowd, Sweet Smell of Success, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? These artists, she shows, took on the corporate middle managers at television networks and talent agencies as a way of challenging the status quo without risking censorship or blacklisting.

This period saw the evolution of film production from the studio-governed system to one of entrepreneurs. Out of this new arrangement, which encouraged greater creative freedom, emerged a nascent form of independent art cinema that sowed the seeds of the Hollywood Renaissance that followed.

“Denise Mann’s Hollywood Independents takes a fresh look at this intermediate era, the valley between classic Hollywood and the New Wave’s peaks, and finds an industry simultaneously in turmoil and in the midst of impressive artistic ferment. Mann’s book captures the desperation, and the enthusiasm, of an industry reinventing itself.” —Boston Globe

“Mann offers one of the best available accounts of this transformative period in modern moviemaking.” —DGA Quarterly

“Hollywood Independents is valuable for its close examination of the economic, political and social changes in postwar Hollywood. Mann writes with insight.” —Milwaukee Shepherd Express

Denise Mann is associate professor of film, TV, and digital media at UCLA. She is coeditor of Private Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer.

344 pages | 13 b&w photos | 5 7/8 x 9 | 2008
Commerce and Mass Culture Series

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

1. Charting a Path of Independence in a Corporate Wilderness
2. Backstage Dramas: MCA and the Talent Takeover
3. The Gray Flannel Independent: New Hollywood’s New Organization Man
4. Self-Referentiality: Mediating TV’s Incursion into Hollywood and the Home
5. Two Emergent Cinemas: Art and Blockbuster
6. Elia Kazan: Caught between HUAC and the “New Hollywood”
7. A Face in the Crowd: Reframing Reflexivity
8. When Talent Becomes Management: The Making of Sweet Smell of Success
9. Sweet Smell of Success: Punishing Privileges of the Professional–Managerial Class

Conclusion
Notes
Index



Hollywood Independents *The Postwar Talent Takeover* Denise Mann Table of Contents PRESS Boston Globe Review		$25.00 paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-4541-1 ISBN-10: 0-8166-4541-8 $75.00 cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-4540-4 ISBN-10: 0-8166-4540-X
An unexpected history of the “new Hollywood”. Hollywood Independents explores the crucial period from 1948 to 1962 when independent film producers first became key components of the modern corporate entertainment industry. Denise Mann examines the impact of the radically changed filmmaking climate—the decline of the studios, the rise of television, and the rise of potent talent agencies like MCA—on a group of prominent talent-turned-producers, including Burt Lancaster, Joseph Mankiewicz, Elia Kazan, and Billy Wilder. In order to show how these newly independent filmmakers negotiated through an increasingly fraught, reactionary creative atmosphere, Mann analyzes the reflexive portraits of their altered working conditions in such films as A Face in the Crowd, Sweet Smell of Success, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? These artists, she shows, took on the corporate middle managers at television networks and talent agencies as a way of challenging the status quo without risking censorship or blacklisting. This period saw the evolution of film production from the studio-governed system to one of entrepreneurs. Out of this new arrangement, which encouraged greater creative freedom, emerged a nascent form of independent art cinema that sowed the seeds of the Hollywood Renaissance that followed. “Denise Mann’s Hollywood Independents takes a fresh look at this intermediate era, the valley between classic Hollywood and the New Wave’s peaks, and finds an industry simultaneously in turmoil and in the midst of impressive artistic ferment. Mann’s book captures the desperation, and the enthusiasm, of an industry reinventing itself.” —Boston Globe “Mann offers one of the best available accounts of this transformative period in modern moviemaking.” —DGA Quarterly “Hollywood Independents is valuable for its close examination of the economic, political and social changes in postwar Hollywood. Mann writes with insight.” —Milwaukee Shepherd Express Denise Mann is associate professor of film, TV, and digital media at UCLA. She is coeditor of Private Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer. 344 pages \| 13 b&w photos \| 5 7/8 x 9 \| 2008 Commerce and Mass Culture Series TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments 1. Charting a Path of Independence in a Corporate Wilderness 2. Backstage Dramas: MCA and the Talent Takeover 3. The Gray Flannel Independent: New Hollywood’s New Organization Man 4. Self-Referentiality: Mediating TV’s Incursion into Hollywood and the Home 5. Two Emergent Cinemas: Art and Blockbuster 6. Elia Kazan: Caught between HUAC and the “New Hollywood” 7. A Face in the Crowd: Reframing Reflexivity 8. When Talent Becomes Management: The Making of Sweet Smell of Success 9. Sweet Smell of Success: Punishing Privileges of the Professional–Managerial Class Conclusion Notes Index