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Lost in the Fifties
Recovering Phantom Hollywood
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Book Presentation:
Lost in the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood reveals two 1950s: an era glorified in Hollywood movies and a darker reality reflected in the esoteric films of the decade. Renowned film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon turns to the margins―the television shows and films of a hidden Hollywood―to offer an authentic view of the 1950s that counters the Tinsel-town version. Dixon examines the lost films and directors of the decade. Contrasting traditional themes of love, marriage, and family, Dixon’s 1950s film world unveils once-taboo issues of rape, prostitution, and gangs. Television shows such as Captain Midnight and Ramar of the Jungle are juxtaposed with the cheerful world of I Love Lucy and Howdy Doody. Highlighting directors including Herbert L. Strock, Leslie Martinson, Arnold Laven, and Charles Haas, Dixon provides new insights on the television series Racket Squad, Topper, and The Rifleman and the teen films I Was a Teenage Werewolf and High School Confidential.
Geared for scholars and students of film and pop culture, Lost in the Fifties includes twenty-five photos―many previously unpublished―and draws on rare interviews with key directors, actors, and producers. The volume provides the first detailed profile of the most prolific producer in Hollywood history, Sam Katzman, and his pop culture classics Rock Around the Clock and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. Dixon profiles, for the first time, B-movie phenomenon Fred F. Sears, who directed more than fifty touchstone films of a generation, including the noir thriller Chicago Syndicate, the criminal career story Cell 2455 Death Row, and the 3-D color western The Nebraskan. Also profiled is Ida Lupino, the only woman to direct in Hollywood in the 1950s, who tackled issues of bigamy, teenage pregnancy, and sports corruption in The Bigamist, The Hitch-Hiker, Outrage, Never Fear, Not Wanted, and Hard, Fast and Beautiful, when no major studio would touch such controversial topics. Dixon also looks at the era’s social guidance films, which instructed adolescents in acceptable behavior, proper etiquette, and healthy hygiene.
About the Author:
Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Professor of Film Studies, Coordinator of the Film Studies Program, Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and, with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, editor of the new book series Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture for Rutgers University Press.His recent books include Black & White Cinema: A Short History (2015); Streaming: Movies, Media and Instant Access (2013); Death of the Moguls: The End of Classical Hollywood (2012); 21st Century Hollywood: Movies in the Era of Transformation (2011, co-authored with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster); A History of Horror (2010); and Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia (2009). Dixon's book A Short History of Film (2008, co-authored with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster) was reprinted six times through 2012. A second, revised edition was published in 2013; the book is a required text in universities throughout the world.
Press Reviews:
"Wheeler Winston Dixon’s …writing is distinguished by its rhetorical sweep and vigor, its wide-ranging synthetic power, and its unusual depth and reach. … Lost in the Fifties radically changes and expands our understanding of the decade: both by restoring many forgotten works and artifacts of the period to visibility, and by using those newly illuminated works to rethink the significance of the decade in both cinematic and broader cultural history."―Steven Shaviro, author of Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society
"A stunning addition to the literature about cinema and culture, Lost in the Fifties goes to the backyard fence of our official memory and imagination of the 1950s and peers over to see the neighbors we have left behind. Dixon resurrects the works of key filmmakers, producers, and directors who were essentially lost to contemporary reflection and have, sadly, remained lost to most of us since. Touching, dazzling, delectable."―Murray Pomerance, author of Johnny Depp Starts Here
See the publisher website: Southern Illinois University Press
> From the same author:
A Short History of Film (2018)
by Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
Subject: History of Cinema
Death of the Moguls (2012)
The End of Classical Hollywood
21st-Century Hollywood (2011)
Movies in the Era of Transformation
by Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
Subject: Economics
Visions of Paradise (2006)
Images of Eden in the Cinema
Experimental Cinema, The Film Reader (2002)
Dir. Gwendolyn Audrey Foster and Wheeler Winston Dixon
Subject: Genre > Experimental
The Exploding Eye (1997)
A Re-Visionary History of 1960s American Experimental Cinema
Subject: Genre > Experimental
> On a related topic:
Aline Macmahon (2022)
Hollywood, the Blacklist, and the Birth of Method Acting
Subject: Actor > Aline MacMahon
Hollywood Divided (2016)
The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist
The Inquisition in Hollywood (2003)
Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960
by Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund
Subject: History of Cinema
We'll Always Have the Movies (2006)
American Cinema During World War II
by Robert L. McLaughlin and Sally E. Parry
Subject: On Films > Per period
Fractured Fifties (2023)
The Cinematic Periodization and Evolution of a Decade
Subject: On Films > Per period
Projections of Passing (2021)
Postwar Anxieties and Hollywood Films, 1947-1960
Subject: On Films > Per period
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