Hollywood

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/30/2023
  

  WGA Strike Latest Example of Cultural Workers Joining Together as Entertainment Technology Changes

  by Vaughn Joy

  The development of television and online content have historically forced multiple Hollywood unions to join forces to secure a share of the returns of new techology or risk being frozen out entirely. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  5/18/2023
  

  The Hollywood Blacklist, Screenwriters and Free Expression Under Attack

  by Larry Ceplair

  The current screenwriters' strike is occasion to look back at the targeting of writers by HUAC in the 1950s, the politics of moral panic, and the impact of political fear on the content of popular culture.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/15/2023
  

  Hollywood Strikers Carry the Legacy of Ned Ludd

  by Gavin Mueller

  Our techo-utopian society holds the Luddites in low regard, but their actual history helps explain what's at stake in the screenwriters' strike and any labor conflict where new technology threatens workers' livelihoods. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
  5/19/2023
  

  The Writers' Strike Opens Old Wounds

  by Kate Fortmueller

  The plot of each sequel of negotiations between the producers and writers has followed a formula of compromise for mutual self-preservation. Technological advances have convinced studio heads that they no longer need the labor of writers enough to keep compromising. 

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• SOURCE: Saturday Evening Post
  5/9/2023
  

  Onoto Watanna, the First Asian American Screenwriter

  by Ben Railton

  Under the pen name of Onoto Watanna, a woman named Winnifred Eaton of British and Chinese descent became a literary prodigy, penning romance novels, ethnic cookbooks, and screenplays—and a searing critique of the treatment of writers in Hollywood that rings true today. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/10/2023
  

  What Anna May Wong's History Tells us About Oscar's Asian and Asian American Moment

  by Katie Gee Salisbury

  The first Asian-American film star got her break when a film company cast ethnic actors in a 1922 film made to test out the new Technicolor technology. But Hollywood's racial politics and commercial imperatives kept other Asian actors from stardom. 

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• SOURCE: Hollywood Reporter
  9/9/2022
  

  Blacklisted Actress Marsha Hunt Dies at 104

  Hunt's participation in the Committee for the First Amendment, which questioned the activities of the House Unamerican Activities Committee in 1947, led to her blacklisting. 

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• SOURCE: Al Jazeera
  8/15/2022
  

  Native Activist Gets Apology from MPAAS For 1973 Oscars Protest

  Sacheen Littlefeather appeared in lieu of Marlon Brando to decline his Oscar for "The Godfather" as a protest against racist portrayals of American Indians. The Academy has just now apologized for the abuse she endured during the ceremony and afterward.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/9/2022
  

  "All the President's Men": From Misguided Buddy Flick to Iconic Political Thriller

  Hollywood's original plan for the film based on Woodward and Bernstein's book was light on substance and heavy on macho hijinks. How would Watergate be remembered if the script weren't changed? 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/30/2022
  

  Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward's Relationship at the Center of the New Hollywood

  Mark Rozzo's "Everybody Thought We Were Crazy" tells the story of artistic encounters that ran through the couple's home. 

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• SOURCE: Vox
  5/27/2022
  

  "Top Gun: Maverick" Latest Chapter in Love Affair Between Hollywood and Pentagon

  Despite its characterization as liberal and cosmopolitan, the film industry has eagerly embraced the military in the pursuit of box office. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  4/26/2022
  

  How Dennis Hopper Ran the Wildest Party House in Hollywood

  The house of the actor and his wife Brooke Hayward was a gathering place of fertile movements in film, arts and music that made the 1960s. 

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• SOURCE: Times of Israel
  1/18/2021
  

  Outcry over Sparse Representation of Jews in Movie History at New Academy Museum in Hollywood

  The contributions of Jewish pioneers of film seem oddly invisible in the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures; some prominent donors hope this changes.

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  11/7/2021
  

  The Academy Museum Ignores Hollywood Labor History

  by Andy Lewis

  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was originally established to help studios negotiate contracts with the studio unions. Today, the on-set tragedy in New Mexico reminds that film production is an industry and workers make it run. The Academy Museum misses that part of the story.

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• SOURCE: Forward
  10/14/2021
  

  Is the Academy's New Museum Neglecting the Jewish Pioneers of Hollywood?

  "After touring the museum’s seven stories, I discovered that Hollywood’s pioneers, who busted their tucheses building the industry it celebrates, ended up on the cutting room floor."

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• 10/17/2021
  

  Passing Time and the Challenge of Catching "Eyewitnesses to History"

  by Thomas Doherty

  Historians have only recently wised up to the need to capture eyewitness remembrances of events. As the "Greatest Generation" passes and the Baby Boomers age, a cultural historian urges: talk to people while you still can. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/13/2021
  

  "Negotiated Authenticity" and the Precarious Position of Black Creators in Television History

  "Since its invention, television has shaped this country’s self-image. To the extent that we share notions of “normal,” “acceptable,” “funny,” “wrong,” and even “American,” television has helped define them. For decades, Black writers were shut out of the rooms in which those notions were scripted."

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  9/1/2021
  

  Socialist Actor Ed Asner Fought for Labor

  by Jeff Schuhrke

  Ed Asner fought for the representation of small-time actors in the Screen Actors Guild and protested American support for right-wing autocrats in Central America. 

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• SOURCE: Deadline
  7/31/2021
  

  Elephant Statues Commemorating D.W. Griffith Removed from Hollywood and Highland Plaza

  The statues were an homage to Griffith's film "Intolerance," widely seen as a rebuke of the NAACP and other critics who denounced the racism of his prior pro-KKK film "Birth of a Nation." 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  6/20/2021
  

  "Burn This Letter Please": A Drag Queen's Letters to Hollywood Agent are a Key Source For LGBTQ History

  "Collectively, the letters painted a vivid portrait of an intimate existence among a tight group of friends in the late 1950s and early ’60s in New York."