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Los Angeles before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture, 1905 to 1915
Review

Los Angeles before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture, 1905 to 1915

Samantha Barbas
The Journal of American history (Bloomington, Ind.), Vol.97(1), pp.212-213
06/01/2010
DOI: 10.2307/jahist/97.1.212

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Abstract

Breaking from film historians' traditional reliance on trade papers as source material and their focus on New York in their studies of early film, Olsson draws on mainstream Los Angeles newspapers to examine the development of film culture in Los Angeles and the role of the popular press in defining the social experience of film. Chapters explore entrepreneurs' efforts to create new exhibition venues, reformers' campaigns to regulate the theater environment (including the installation of "policewomen" in nickelodeons to supervise unseemly contact between patrons), and journalists' attempts to come to terms with the new cultural phenomenon by describing, with detail and fascination, the public spaces devoted to moviegoing and the heterogeneous crowds who populated them.
Culture Journalism Newspapers Nonfiction Books

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