Hollywood in Crisis

Colin Shindler was born in Lancashire and educated at Bury Grammar School and Caius College, Cambridge. He is a television producer and has worked on many dramas from A Little Princess to Lovejoy, and wrote the screenplay for Buster. He is the author of Hollywood goes to War (1980). Colin lives in London with his American wife, two children and the neurosis which comes from supporting Manchester City.

The Stock Market Crash of October 1929 threw American society into complete turmoil. As millions of Americans became unemployed and the standard of living plummeted, a turn onto the road to recovery required a concerted effort of government and private industry resources. "Hollywood in Crisis" is a detailed study of the American film industry in the 1930s. Specifically, Colin Schindler looks at Hollywood as an agent of Roosevelt's New Deal. From escapist musicals to gangster movies and Westerns, even to the radical films of the Warner studios, Schindler illustrates how the studios helped foster feelings of unity and patriotism. Drawing from studio archives and interviews with such prominent figures as Henry Fonda, Frank Capra, and even the leader of the Hollywood Communist Party John Howard Lawson, Schindler's study redefines the way in which this segment of Hollywood's Golden years will be viewed.

Chapter 1 Snapshot; Chapter 2 Trouble in Paradise; Chapter 3 The Blue Eagle; Chapter 4 The Swimming Pool Reds; Chapter 5 Fanfare for the Common Man; Chapter 6 The Hays Office; Chapter 7 The Left-Handed Endeavour; Chapter 8 Cry of the City; Chapter 9 Good Citizenship and Good Picture-Making; Chapter 10 Black Fury; Chapter 11 Foreign Affairs; Chapter 12 Snapshot;