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From the 1920s and 1930s, when American cinema depicted the South as a demi-paradise populated by wealthy landowners, glamorous belles, and happy slaves, through later, more realistic depictions of the region in films based on works by Erskine Caldwell, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and Robert Penn Warren, Hollywood's view of the South has been as ever-changing as the place itself. This comprehensive reference guide to Southern films offers credits, plot descriptions, and analyses of how the stereotypes and characterizations in each film contribute to our understanding of a most contentious American time and place.
Organized by subjects including Economic Conditions, Plantation Life, The Ku Klux Klan, and The New Politics,
Hollywood's Image of the South seeks to coin a new genre by describing its conventions and attitudes. Even so, the Southern film crosses all known generic boundaries, including the comedy, the women's film, the
noir, and many others. This invaluable guide to an under-recognized category of American cinema illustrates how much there is to learn about a time and place from watching the movies that aim to capture it.
List of contents
Preface
Introduction
Abbreviations
Plantation Life and Cotton Fields
Slaves and Slavery
Southern Aristocrats
Southern Belles
Economic Conditions
Political Conditions
Social Conditions
The Courtroom and Early Justice
Reconstruction and the Carpetbaggers
The Ku Klux Klan
Discrimination
Feuds and Feuding
Southern Decadence
Family Survival
Economics in the New South
The New Politics
New Social Conditions
Law and Order
Show Business
The Civil War
Bibliography
Title Index
About the author
LARRY LANGMAN is the author of
A Guide to Silent Westerns (Greenwood, 1992),
A Guide to American Crime Films of the Forties and Fifties (Greenwood, 1995), and
American Film Cycles: The Silent Era (Greenwood, 1998).
DAVID EBNER has taught mathematics and history on the university and secondary school levels and has published extensively in professional journals. His books include
The Encyclopedia of American Spy Films.
