Hollywood in the Neighborhood

"Hollywood in the Neighborhood "presents a vivid new picture of how movies entered the American heartland--the thousands of smaller cities, towns, and villages far from the East and West Coast film centers. Using a broad range of research sources, essays from scholars including Richard Abel, Robert Allen, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Terry Lindvall, and Greg Waller examine in detail the social and cultural changes this new form of entertainment brought to towns from Gastonia, North Carolina to Placerville, California, and from Norfolk, Virginia to rural Ontario and beyond. Emphasizing the roles of local exhibitors, neighborhood audiences, regional cultures, and the growing national mass media, their essays chart how motion pictures so quickly and successfully moved into old opera houses and glittering new picture palaces on Main Streets across America.

Presents a picture of how movies entered the American heartland. This book examines the social and cultural changes this form of entertainment brought to towns from Gastonia, North Carolina to Placerville, California, and from Norfolk, Virginia to rural Ontario and beyond.

PART I: INTRODUCTION-SETTING THE CONTEXTS 1. Introduction: Researching and Writing the History of Local Moviegoing Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley and George Potamianos 2. Decentering Historical Audience Studies: A Modest Proposal Robert C. Allen PART II: ORIGINS-CASE STUDIES 3. The Itinerant Movie Show and the Development of the Film Industry Calvin Pryluck 4. Early Film Exhibition in Wilmington, North Carolina Anne Morey 5. Building Movie Audiences in Placerville, California, 1908-1915 George Potamianos 6. Cinema Virtue, Cinema Vice: Race, Religion, and Film Exhibition in Norfolk, Virginia, 1908-1922 Terry Lindvall PART III: INTEGRATION AND VARIATIONS-CASE STUDIES 7. The Movies in a Not So Visible Place": Des Moines, Iowa, 1911-1914 Richard Abel 8. Digging the Finest Potatoes from Their Acre: Government Film Exhibition in Rural Ontario, 1917-1934 Charles Tepperman 9. At the Movies in the Biggest Little City in Wisconsin" Leslie Midkiff DeBauche PART IV: MATURITY AND CRISIS IN THE 1930S-CASE STUDIES 10. Imagining and Promoting the Small-Town Theater Gregory A. Waller 11. What the Picture Did for Me": Small-Town Exhibitors' Strategies for Surviving the Great Depression Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley 12. Something for Nothing": Bank Night and the Refashioning of the American Dream Paige Reynolds PART V: LOOKING BACKWARD, LOOKING FORWARD 13. Bad Sound and Sticky Floors: An Ethnographic Look at the Symbolic Value of Historic Small-Town Movie Theaters Kevin Corbett 14. Conclusion: When Theory Hits the Road Ronald G. Walters Contributors Selected Bibliography Index