Hollywood

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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."

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  3/11/2021
  

  How to Think About Classic Hollywood’s “Problematic” Movies

  by Richard Brody

  Critic Richard Brody asks whether efforts to put problematic Hollywood movies into context is adequate; there is a systematic lack of attention to characters of color in classic Hollywood that is much tougher to fix. 

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• SOURCE: Bright Lights Film Journal
  2/23/2021
  

  A Star Is Shorn: Thanks to Woefully Underinformed Campus Activists, Acting Legend, Badger Alum, and Civil Rights Champion Fredric March Is Suddenly “Off Wisconsin”

  by George Gonis

  In 2018, the University of Wisconsin stripped actor Fredric March's name from a campus theater because of his brief affiliation in 1919 with a campus society called the Honorary Ku Klux Klan. The author argues that this misconstrues the nature of the society, which was not affiliated with the "Invisible Empire" KKK, and erases March's steadfast support for civil rights and opposition to Nazism.

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• SOURCE: Medium
  12/9/2020
  

  The Other ‘Mank’: Joe Mankiewicz and the Wildest Night in Hollywood History

  by Greg Mitchell

  The Netflix film "Mank" provides an opportunity to remember the civil liberties stand taken by Frank Mankiewicz's brother Joe, who opposed the imposition of loyalty oaths on the Directors' Guild at the height of the postwar red scare. 

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• SOURCE: USA Today
  12/5/2020
  

  Historians Fact-Check 'Mank': Who Really Wrote 'Citizen Kane?' And Does 'Rosebud' Have A Hidden Meaning?

  Film historians suggest the new Netflix drama overstates Frank Mankiewicz's influence over the final form of "Citizen Kane" and takes some other liberties with the facts. 

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• SOURCE: KERA
  9/14/2020
  

  Hollywood’s Colorblind Illusion (audio)

  American Studies professor Justin Gomer, author of "White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights" discusses the political impact of Hollywood's treatment of race.