University of California Press Blog

Ed Sullivan's America

This week, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a feature of Gerald Nachman's Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan's America. The Chronicle's Regan McMahon interviewed Nachman in Oakland, where Nachman grew up, and weaves together the author's own story with that of Ed Sullivan's groundbreaking show. "Nachman astutely examines the show as a cultural watermark, something that united the country as nothing has before or since...", McMahon says.

As a television critic for the San Jose Mercury News, Nachman's first review was of the Ed Sullivan Show. "I packed the review with wisecracks," he recalls in the book. Nachman (above, at a book launch party hosted by friends) characterizes primordial TV as a grey and dismal entity, shrouded in the shadow of radio and Hollywood, and the Ed Sullivan show as a kind of revolution, a catalyst not only for TV's initial success, but for popular culture across America: "Sullivan's show was something beyond even what it first envisioned for itself: it became the great equalizer, relentlessly democratic, cutting across all age, class, cultural, and ethnic boundaries..." he says in the book. It was the place for aging stars and new talent, and and harnessed the social changes that were transforming the country, entertainment, and celebrity. And it brought people together—as Sullivan and McMahon both point out, the Ed Sullivan Show drew 47 million viewers on a weekly basis in 1955, compared to 35 million who watched the American Idol finale in 2008.

Read the San Francisco Chronicle article, A Toast to Bygone Era of 'Ed Sullivan Show'

Listen to an interview with Gerald Nachman on our podcast page

Interview with Jeffrey Vance, author of Douglas Fairbanks

On July 9, 2009, Thomas Gladysz of Examiner.com interviewed author Jeffrey Vance about his newest book, Douglas Fairbanks, which was published by UC Press in December 2008. Vance is a film historian, producer, and lecturer as well as the author of an acclaimed trilogy of books on the great triumvirate of silent-film comedy: Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema, Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian (with Suzanne Lloyd), and Buster Keaton Remembered (with Eleanor Keaton). To learn more about Jeffrey Vance and co-author, Tony Maietta, please visit their blog, Two Modern Guys in Classic Hollywood.

Below, is an excerpt from the interview entitled "Six Questions with...Film Historian Jeffrey Vance." To read the interview in its entirety, please visit the Examiner.com website.

---

Examiner.com: Your earlier work examined silent film comedians. Now, you’ve written about an actor largely known as an action adventure hero, a swashbuckler. How was it that you came to be interested in someone like Douglas Fairbanks?

Jeffrey Vance: I became interested in Fairbanks as a result of my interest in Chaplin. Fairbanks was Chaplin’s great friend and partner in the United Artists Corporation. He was a Hollywood superstar along with Chaplin and Mary Pickford. I wrote Mary Pickford a fan letter at the end of her life. She responded with an encouraging letter. It was hard to track down and see any of her feature films besides Sparrows. I had an easier time pursuing my interest in Fairbanks as his best films were more readily available. I immediately fell under his spell with The Iron Mask and later The Thief of Bagdad and The Black Pirate. He was, as a French critic wrote in the 1920s, “a tonic.” But more than that, Fairbanks’s great action adventures of the 1920s were beautifully mounted works of art.

Examiner.com: There seems to be something of a Fairbanks revival going on. Along with your new book, Flicker Alley has released a set of Fairbanks’ early movies - and lately, Fairbanks’ films like The Gaucho are being screened around the country. Why Fairbanks, and why now?

Jeffrey Vance: That’s no coincidence! The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences commissioned me to write Douglas Fairbanks. They wanted to honor Fairbanks - the first president of the Academy - with a book. Once the agreements were made with the Academy and the University of California Press, my writing partner - Tony Maietta - and I began immediately to plan the book’s launch. The Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer DVD box set, the Museum of Modern Art retrospective, the Academy exhibition, the Academy screenings both in Los Angeles and New York City, and the new MoMA print of Douglas Fairbanks as The Gaucho (at the risk of pedantry, that’s its complete title) were all part of this effort to celebrate Fairbanks in conjunction with the release of the book. The only thing that wasn’t timed with the book was the unveiling of the Douglas Fairbanks statue on the campus of USC. That was just one of those wonderful things that reveal itself when you are on the right path.

To read the interview in its entirety, please visit the Examiner.com website.

West Coast Premiere of Mark Twain's "IS HE DEAD?"

IS HE DEAD? West Coast Premiere is a hit!

After opening to rave reviews on Broadway, Mark Twain's IS HE DEAD? made its West Coast premiere at the International City Theatre in Long Beach, California. The Los Angeles Times calls the production "...a riot from beginning to end...a buoyant staging..." while the Examiner noted that "under the direction of Shashin Desai, even the intermission is fun."

Visit the International City Theatre website to view a video with excerpts from the play, hear audience reactions, read the reviews, or to buy tickets. The production closes May 24.

The play may also be coming to a theater near you! A full list of productions, both past and future, can be found at the Playscripts website.

UC Press published Mark Twain's IS HE DEAD?: A Comedy in Three Acts in October 2003.

2009 Guggenheim Fellowships Fund Creativity, Scholarship, Innovation

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded 180 Guggenheim Fellowships this year. Among the recipients are several UC Press authors, honored for their outstanding achievements in Poetry, Film, Classics, Folklore/Popular Culture, and Anthropology/Cultural Studies. The winners, selected from around 3,000 applicants, will receive grants to fund ongoing projects or take their work in new directions.

By funding innovation, creativity, and scholarship, Guggenheim Fellowships contribute to the world's cultural and educational wealth. Fellowships are awarded to exceptionally accomplished and promising individuals working in any area of the arts, sciences, or academics—from fiction and film to chemistry and statistics. Grant amounts are tailored to the Fellow, and as there are no spending restrictions, Fellows may use the grants to further their work any way they choose. Congratulations to all the 2009 Guggenheim Fellows!

The 2009 Guggenheim Fellows and UC Press Authors are:

Poetry

Lyn Hejinian, author of The Language of Inquiry (2000)

Classics

Denis Feeney, author of Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (2007)

Folklore and Popular Culture

Joshua Gamson, author of Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (1994)

 

Anthropology and Cultural Studies

Veena Das, author of Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (2006); and coeditor, with Arthur Kleinman, Margaret Lock, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, of Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery (2001); Violence and Subjectivity (2000); and Social Suffering (1997)

Kathryn Linn Geurts, author of Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community (2003)

Film

Lynn Hershman Leeson, subject of The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson: Secret Agents, Private I (2005), edited by Meredith Tromble

 

 

UC Press Podcast Featuring, Jeffrey Vance, Tony Maietta, Russell Leigh Sharman, and Cheryl Harris Sharman

We are pleased to announce that Episode 8 of the UC Press podcast series is now available. In November's episode, Chris Gondek of Heron and Crane Productions interviews a film historian/producer and an art director, on a very influential silent film star, and then a husband and wife tandem that examines night workers in the Big Apple.

First he interviews Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta, authors of Douglas Fairbanks. Second, it's Russell Leigh Sharman and Cheryl Harris Sharman, authors of Nightshift NYC. You may subscribe to the monthly podcast feed that contains the individual episodes using your RSS aggregator or directly via the iTunes store.  You can listen to individual author interviews from the episodes at www.ucpress.edu/podcast or on the individual book pages using the embedded player.

Listen to an interview with Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta, authors of Douglas Fairbanks.

Listen to an interview with Russell Leigh Sharman and Cheryl Harris Sharman, authors of Nightshift NYC.

Vocal Tracks and The Laughing Spectator

In his new blog, Vocal Tracks: Performance and Sound Media, UC Press author Jacob Smith published the following entry called, "The Laughing Spectator":

Hello, and welcome to this new blog: Vocal Tracks. Each post will include a sound recording and some of my comments on it. The first several entries will be recordings that are discussed in my book, VOCAL TRACKS: PERFORMANCE AND SOUND MEDIA (University of California Press 2008). After that, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on whatever wonders of the century of recorded sound have most recently captured my fancy. I’m starting out this month with the record that I use to begin my book: Steve Porter’s “The Laughing Spectator” from 1908. It’s a record that was released in only the second decade that sound recordings were mass-marketed for entertainment. Made at the dawn of an era of mass media, “The Laughing Spectator” demonstrates the remarkable versatility of the voice as an instrument of performance.

In the course of little more than two minutes, we have heard a spoken announcement, a comic dialogue, the laughter of an audience, and singing. Porter’s voice is more versatile than it might at first appear, since he is performing the parts of both Mac and Reilly. In this, Porter was part of a phonographic tradition in which performers would play multiple parts of a dramatic routine. Such an act often had to be specifically identified on record company promotional material to be fully appreciated, and the brief opening dialogue with the “Professor” (“Say, Mac, where’s your partner?”) is meant to cue the listener to appreciate the full dimensions of Porter’s vocal achievement. This is only one way in which performers took advantage of how the modern media separated them in time and space from their audiences. But of all the voices we hear, it is the performance of the laughing spectator himself that fascinates me. We hear an individual performer emerge from an anonymous, undifferentiated audience. As we recognize that goat-like laughter as a performance, the laughter of the crowd is made to seem “real,” even though the sounds of the audience are every bit as constructed a performance as the other sounds we hear. But the “The Laughing Spectator” can also illustrate how the sound media have gravitated toward the voice at the limits of language. Consider how the wordless vocalizing of the eponymous hero is able, through his unrestrained and unmistakable laughter, not only to distinguish himself from the rest of the audience, but eventually to join the performers onstage: the voice that functions as an index of the body in the throes of raw, unrestrained emotion upstages a comic performance built on wordplay. Modern media technologies have been adept at capturing expressions such as this, and in the process have redefined what counts as performance and allowed us to hear the voice in new ways.  

Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema

Dan Streible is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University and Associate Director of its Moving Image Archiving and Preservation master's program. He is also director of the Orphan Film Symposium. In his recent book, Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema, (UC Press, 2008), he examines how early prizefight films transformed the stigmatized sport into a popular American culture. Here's an entry from Streible's Orphan Film Symposium weblog, "Fight Pictures and Orphans at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival."   

"The truism 'silent films were never silent' is of course correct - except for the peculiar genre of fight pictures. Their exhibitions virtually never had musical accompaniment. Instead of music, fight pictures had screen-side announcers telling spectators what to watch for - the knockout 'solar-plexus punch' in Veriscope's Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897), the questionable performance of the old master Joe Gans ('was he taking a dive, ladies and gentlemen?') as filmed by Selig Polyscope in the McGovern-Gans Fight Pictures (1900), or the Australian constabulary stopping the Gaumont cameras as Jack Johnson's finished off Tommy Burns in 1908."

Note: Image from the Police Gazette, Dec. 9, 1899, captioned: "Spectators Applaud Sharkey. Visitors at the New York Theatre Carried Away with His Work as Shown by the Biograph." Tom Sharkey lost a brutal title fight to Jim Jeffries at Coney Island a month earlier.

UC Press Presents...the Spring 2008 Film Round-Up

In honor of the 2008 Academy Awards, we've rounded up a list of our latest film-related books for your reading enjoyment:

Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema, by Dan Streible (forthcoming in April)
Before there were Pay-Per-View prizefights, there was the first filmed sports competition—the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight of 1897. Fight Pictures discusses how this and other early filmed boxing matches fused and transformed the worlds of spectator sports and the media, setting the stage for modern sports culture.

The Decline of Sentiment: American Film in the 1920s (forthcoming in April), by Lea Jacobs
Many films in the early 20th century were saturated with syrupy moments of triumph, tragedy, and passion. In The Decline of Sentiment, Lea Jacobs argues that the public’s taste for sentiment began to ebb after World War 1; scenes that once caused goosebumps began to seem a bit corny and unrealistic. This shift against the dominant cinematic style encouraged the development of other genres like comedy, adventure and suspense.

Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922-1943, by Steven Ricci
In this book, Steven Ricci examines the often-ignored political and cultural legacy of Italian film during the fascist era. Rather than using film solely for totalitarian propaganda, the government more subtly influenced the masses by making films that created a sense of national cohesion. Ricci also looks at film’s expanding role in Italian popular culture, and the relationship between Italian and American filmmaking during this period.

Hollywood in the Neighborhood: Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing, edited by Kathryn Fuller-Seeley
This collection of essays from various scholars chronicles how going to the movies arrived at “a theater near you” and became an essential part of modern life. From traveling shows to small-town theaters, Hollywood in the Neighborhood illuminates the fascinating history of one of our favorite pastimes.

Other recent Film Studies books from UC Press:

Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor, by Scott MacDonald

Uncanny Bodies: The Coming of Sound Film and the Origins of the Horror Genre, by Robert Spadoni

How the West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford, by Kathryn Kalinak

Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories, by Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia R. Zimmermann

Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV, by Michael Curtin

Body Shots: Early Cinema’s Incarnations, by Jonathan Auerbach

Ethel Merman at 100 by Caryl Flinn

Caryl Flinn's recent book, Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman, is an account of the life of Ethel Merman, is a marvelously detailed account of how the stenographer from Queens, New York became the queen of the Broadway musical in its golden age.  January 16th, 2008, is the 100th anniversary of Ethel Merman's birth.  Flinn takes some time to reflect on Ethel Merman at 100.

January 16 2008: Happy birthday, Ethel Merman.  You are 100 years old today.  For five years now, I’ve taken note of the date while writing Brass Diva. 

Merman, of course, was the Broadway belter who introduced some of the 20th century’s classic songs to the public: “I’ve Got Rhythm” “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries” “Anything Goes,” “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better” “You’re Just in Love” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and her anthem–and Broadway’s–Irving Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

Merman died in February,1984, but 76 birthdays never slowed her down–she was still doing concert specials and TV guest spots. For a woman who got her start performing with Jimmy Durante, Rudy Vallee and even Betty Boop, it’s striking to see her interacting with 70s icons like Donna Summer and Kermit the Frog nearly 50 years later.

Merman entered Broadway history on October 14, 1930, singing “I Got Rhythm” in the Gershwin Brothers Girl Crazy.  A second-billed player (a young Ginger Rogers was the star), Ethel blew the house open when she held the “I’ in the chorus for somewhere between 16 to 32 measures.  Producer Alex Aarons thought a gun had gone off .

Ethel was an overnight sensation.  Here was a 22 year old stenographer in Queens by day who’d never had a singing lesson and now was the toast of Broadway.  Merman later told a biographer that she had it easier than Cinderella---and there was no Prince Charming to help her.  She went on do do twelve other shows such as Anything Goes, DuBarry Was a Lady, Annie Get Your Gun, Call Me Madam, and Gypsy.

In the 60s and 70s, she turned to TV cameos in shows like Batman, That Girl, and The Love Boat.  In 1979 she released “The Ethel Merman Disco Album,” an instant camp classic.  And her hysterical turn as the traumatized war vet in the disaster spoof Airplane!—the poor Lt. Hurwitz believes he’s Ethel Merman—wins over even die-hard Merman detractors.

And there is no shortage of those. “She was coarse and uneducated,” said one co-star of the Brass Diva; “She didn’t sing, she honked!” recalled an elderly man from New Jersey.  Similarly, the voice—that famous, big voice, can send some screaming out of the room (particularly with the aforementioned Disco Album).  Others were wowed by the voice they called a force of nature, comparing it to the Hoover Dam or the atom bomb.  The Merm’s personality was just as tough.  Famous for her lack of stage fright (What’s to be scared of? I know my lines),) and her robust, X-rated jokes, Ethel was a shrewd business woman–and someone you didn’t want to cross.  Her cut offs were as permanent as they were icy.

No one ever called Miss Merman nice, but a surprising number of intimates attested to her shy, child-like, even vulnerable side.  Maybe those contradictions describe a lot of strong celebrity women, but all those disconnects among “Ethel Mermans” have intrigued me these last five years. 

For the centenary, I am thinking of putting on a Merman recording–probably not the Disco LP—and toasting the Brass Diva with a champagne on the rocks, her drink of choice.

Journal Subscriptions as a Gift for the Holidays? Yes!

Now through December 31, 2006 new individual and gift subscriptions to Contexts, Film Quarterly, or Gastronomica are available at a 25% discount off the regular rate. These are three of our journals that appeal to a wide audience of readers.

Contexts: Understanding People in their Social Worlds
Sample Article: Marriage: the Good, the Bad, and the Greedy

Film Quarterly
Sample Article: Sex, lies and marketing: Miramax and the Development of the Quality Indie Blockbuster

Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture
Sample Article: Wedding Cake: A Slice of History

Click here for details and conditions.