Decoding the Movies (Web PDF) von Richard Maltby

This book “decodes” 1930s Hollywood movies and explains why they looked and behaved as they did. Representing the summation of Richard Maltby’s four decades of scholarship in the field, it uses a series of case studies to demonstrate how an appreciation of these movies is enhanced by examining the circumstances of their production and consumption.

Part 1: Decodings
Introduction: “What the Hell, It’s Only History …”
2 “A Brief Romantic Interlude”: Dick and Jane Go To Threeand- a-Half Seconds of the Classical Hollywood Cinema
3 “As Close to Real Life as Hollywood Ever Gets”: Headline Pictures, Topical Movies, Editorial Cinema and Studio Realism in the 1930s

Part 2: Patriarchs
4 “Just Another Good Program Picture from Warners”: The Misadventures of Barbara Stanwyck and Friedrich Nietzsche at Warner Bros., 1933
5 Clark Gable, the Production Code and the Recreation of the Patriarch: It Happened One Night
6 Sex and Shirley Temple

Part 3: Criminals
7 Criminal Entertainers: Al Capone, Howard Hughes and the Production Code
8 “Gangland as It Really Is”: James Cagney, Horatio Alger and the Natural History of Delinquent Careers
9 “Any Resemblance to Actual Persons, Living or Dead …”: Martin Mooney, Edward G. Robinson and the Incorporation of Dutch Schultz

10 Afterword

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index