Hollywood 1938

Book excerpt: “While 1938 may have been a turkey of a year for Hollywood cinema, Catherine Jurca’s book is a genuine feast. Hollywood 1938 is both an intense, up-close study of the big budget films and box office tactics behind the film industry’s annus horribilis, and a savvy meditation on the whole swoop and scope of cinema in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Scrupulously researched and engagingly written, Jurca captures the industry infighting, publicity battles, and audience responses to Hollywood’s ‘greatest year’ with easy erudition and penetrating insight.”—Thomas Doherty, author of Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration. “Catherine Jurca has taken a nearly forgotten event in the history of Hollywood and demonstrated how much it can tell us about the state of the motion picture industry and its frailties, as well as its relationship with its audience, at a critical moment in its development. She deftly challenges claims about the centrality of Hollywood to American culture in the 1930s, questions its relationship with the public, and examines the ways in which the industry’s perceptions of that public shaped how it made and marketed movies. This is both excellent scholarship and marvelous storytelling.”—Richard Maltby, author of Hollywood Cinema.