This is the first book on Cyril (Cy) Endfield (1914-1995) who was born in Scranton to immigrant parents. He was associated with various left wing and theatre movements in the 1930s, and after a brief association with Orson Welles’s unit at RKO his breakthrough came with two well regarded films released in 1950, The Underworld Story and The Sound of Fury/Try and Get Me. Named before HUAC in 1951, Endfield chose to leave America for London, arriving in December 1951. There he struggled to reestablish his film career and was observed suspiciously by the Home Office. His most well-known British films are Hell Drivers (1957), and Zulu (1964). The book prompted 2015-16 retrospectives of Endfield’s work at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the Anthology Cinema Archives in New York; and at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, Los Angeles. Neve twice interviewed the film director Cy (Cyril) Endfield (1914-1995) around the time of the tribute paid to his work at the 1992 Telluride Film Festival. (The book also deals with Endfield’s interests in card magic and technology).
Kazan (1909-2003) was a much-celebrated figure in American theatre and film who became a controversial figure because of his 1952 testimony before HUAC. (The controversy continued during the ‘Me Too’ era, after his death). Yet, as the co-founder of the Actors Studio, he maintained a commitment to ‘social’ films, and to work that explored individual desires and needs. After his ‘testimony’ he directed a striking series of films: On the Waterfront (1954), East of Eden (1955), Baby Doll (1956), A Face in the Crowd (1957), Wild River (1960), Splendour in the Grass (1962) and America America (1964). The book assesses the film work and explores the process of filmmaking in this era.
The book tracks the work of a generation of American filmmakers who were politicised in the thirties, and who began to have an impact in Hollywood from the 1940s. All made a strong impact in a changing American film industry, although they all had to deal (in varying ways) with the circumstances of a changing political culture and the anti-Communist blacklist in the late forties and early fifties. Neve also deals with related phenomena of that era, from Frank Capra’s social comedies to the development of film noir (and its political undertones). Among the filmmakers discussed are Robert Rossen, Elia Kazan, Nicholas Ray, Joseph Losey, Abraham Polonsky, Jules Dassin and Cy Endfield.
‘Un-American’ Hollywood reviews the intense critical debate on the blacklist era and the aesthetics and politics of the Hollywood Left. A series of case studies focus on contexts of production and reception, exploring the role of progressive politics within a capitalist media industry. The 362 page book also includes Thom Andersen’s classic article on ‘Red Hollywood’ and the same author’s ‘Afterward’, written especially for the book.
An early, original and eclectic collection of essays on aspects of American film and society, by specialists in cultural history, film and American studies. Contributors include Christopher Frayling (‘The Western and American Society’); Richard Maltby (‘Made for each other: the melodrama of Hollywood and the House Committee on Un-American Activities’), Eric Mottram (‘Blood on the Nash Ambassador: cars in American films’) and Mary Ellison (‘Blacks in American film’).
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Thank you, Brian.
