On location in nature's studio: toward a social history of Hollywood filmmaking in the American West

This dissertation examines how the Hollywood studio system used locations in the American West to represent the natural world. Following World War II, the US film industry increasingly shot films on-location rather than remain in the enclosed spaces of the film studio. Bringing together diverse perspectives from ecocriticism, environmental history, American Studies, and industry history, I describe how the selection, recording, and projection of images derived from actual, physical environments affected Hollywood’s depiction of, and cultural attitudes toward, nature. To accomplish these aims, my dissertation examines production-level details, which were obtained from extensive archival research, across a wide range of films. I synthesize these details into general principles to provide context for the individual case studies that my dissertation subsequently analyzes. My dissertation treats locations as the nexus between representations of the natural world and the social history of the land. I achieve this through historical research into how community members, governmental agencies, and tourism boards solicited the film industry for location work. Hollywood presented visions of nature as pristine spaces protected from human activity and economic development while obscuring its own role in developing these locations as tourist destinations and the material effects on these environments resulting from large-scale film production.