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Hollywood's Embassies
How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World
by Ross Melnick
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Book Presentation:
Winner - 2022 Richard Wall Memorial Award, Theatre Library Association
Beginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and operated by the major American film companies. These theaters aimed to provide a quintessentially “American” experience. Outfitted with American technology and accoutrements, they allowed local audiences to watch American films in an American-owned cinema in a distinctly American way.
In a history that stretches from Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Johannesburg and Cairo, Ross Melnick considers these movie houses as cultural embassies. He examines how the exhibition of Hollywood films became a constant flow of political and consumerist messaging, selling American ideas, products, and power, especially during fractious eras. Melnick demonstrates that while Hollywood’s marketing of luxury and consumption often struck a chord with local audiences, it was also frequently tone-deaf to new social, cultural, racial, and political movements. He argues that the story of Hollywood’s global cinemas is not a simple narrative of cultural and industrial indoctrination and colonization. Instead, it is one of negotiation, booms and busts, successes and failures, adoptions and rejections, and a precursor to later conflicts over the spread of American consumer culture. A truly global account, Hollywood’s Embassies shows how the entanglement of worldwide movie theaters with American empire offers a new way of understanding film history and the history of U.S. soft power.
About the Author:
Ross Melnick is professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of American Showman: Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry, 1908–1935 (Columbia, 2012) and coeditor of Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive (2018).
Press Reviews:
This is nothing short of a sterling book, an assiduously researched compendium of notable facts and compelling anecdotes culled from public archives, personal memorabilia collections, and old-time newspaper morgues all over the map. Kevin Canfield, Cineaste
The political and cultural repercussions of this exhibition strategy for both Hollywood and the national film industries "invaded" by these foreign-owned movie theaters are explored in great detail by Ross Melnick in his new book, Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power around the World. Bruno Guaraná, Film Quarterly
If there’s anyone who still holds the view that entertainment, art and politics are separate realms, Ross Melnick’s exhaustively researched book should set them straight. Tom Ryan, The Sydney Morning Herald
This volume is highly recommended for those interested in film studies, theater architecture, global affairs and American Studies and it may easily become a standard title on the reception of American films abroad. Dr. A. Ebert, Popcultureshelf.com
Hollywood's Embassies offers a unique history of movie theaters "as cultural embassies." The scale of research and insight here is staggering. The Film Stage
Melnick's book is a masterful achievement. Klaus Dodds, Business History Review
A work of vast scope and synoptic power, Ross Melnick’s Hollywood’s Embassies is required reading for anyone seeking to understand how American cinema came to dominate most of the planet’s screen space. With pinpoint global positioning, Melnick tracks how Hollywood planted its flag from Cairo to Rio and beyond, transmitting American values, colonizing consciousnesses, and raking in cash. It is a fascinating story, splendidly told. Thomas Doherty, author of Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century
A brilliantly conceived and trailblazing work, this is a must-read history of Hollywood studios’ perennial and always complicated efforts to create a globalized presence via theaters that promoted American values around the world. Melnick’s impeccable research and lively writing style raises the curtain on this largely neglected aspect of theater history, providing vivid, fascinating accounts of specific endeavors as well as an incisive framework for understanding them. Hollywood’s Embassies confirms Melnick’s stature as the leading historian of American film exhibition of his generation. Matthew H. Bernstein, author of Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent
Captivating and ambitious, Hollywood’s Embassies covers a fascinating breadth of global territory as it explores the way Hollywood displayed America to the world. Kathy Fuller-Seeley, author of Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy
Melnick reveals a world-spanning exhibition strategy that major U.S. film companies continuously updated and coherently pursued for most of the twentieth century. All scholars of Hollywood will have perceived some aspect of this strategy, but none of us can possibly have appreciated its scope before now. A tour de force. Mark Garrett Cooper, author of Universal Women: Filmmaking and Institutional Change in Early Hollywood
A fascinating book. The Spectator
An essential volume that provides significant access for readers to the histories that lurk behind the marquees and that uncovers the critical challenges that lie ahead as both empires navigate the waters of pandemics and trade wars. New Review of Film and Television Studies
A valuable entry in media studies as much as a thoughtful historization of business practices with a determined commitment to exploring multilingual archives, extracting and deciphering them for both experts and Hollywood enthusiasts alike. International Journal of Communication
The book is easily adaptable for teaching in a variety of classes both due to its geographically determined chapter structure and elegant and accessible prose. Hollywood’s Embassies is full of treasures and is a monumental addition to the field. Journal of Cinema and Media Studies
[An] absolute must-read. Peter Labuza, The Strategist
Skillfully woven together to offer a foundational industrial history of Hollywood’s majors and the many locales in which they operated shop window cinemas and nationwide or regional circuits. Media Industries
Hollywood’s Embassies is not only a fantastic insight into the study of global cinematic exhibition and its
relationship to American imperialism, but is required reading for those interested in the classical Hollywood studio system and reception studies. Film Matters
Though we may not know what will happen to theaters and exhibition in the future, Melnick’s work outlines the power that Hollywood studios had and still have, even as they navigate stormy seas. Film Journal
Its unsurpassable global scope [makes] this book a major piece of international history and as such a marvelous addition to our understanding of Hollywood’s global impact. Technology and Culture
See the publisher website: Columbia University Press
> From the same author:
Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm (2020)
Cinema, Television, and the Archive
by Mark Garrett Cooper, Sara Beth Levavy, Ross Melnick and Mark Williams
Subject: Genre > Documentary
American Showman (2012)
Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry, 1908–1935
by Ross Melnick
Subject: Others persons > S.L. Rothafel
> On a related topic:
For the Love of Pleasure (1998)
Women, Movies, and Culture in Turn-the-Century Chicago
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The Optical Vacuum (2018)
Spectatorship and Modernized American Theater Architecture
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Subject: Economics
Hollywood's Artists (2020)
The Directors Guild of America and the Construction of Authorship
Subject: Economics
The Women Who Built Hollywood (2023)
12 Trailblazers in Front of and Behind the Camera
Subject: History of Cinema
Reinventing Hollywood (2017)
How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling
Subject: History of Cinema
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