Hollywood in the Neighborhood

Hollywood in the Neighborhoodpresents a vivid new picture of how movies entered the American heartland-the thousands of smaller cities, towns, and villages far from the East and West coast film centers. Using broad range of research sources, essays from scholars including Richard Abel, Robert Allen, Kathy Fuller-Seeley, Terry Lindvall, and Greg Waller, explore in detail the social and cultural changes brought by this new form of entertainment. The contributors explore the movies as well as their impact on people in towns from Gastonia, North Carolina to Placerville, California to rural Ontario and beyond. Emphasizing the role of local exhibitors, neighborhood audiences, regional cultures, and the growing national mass media, these essays chart how motion pictures so quickly and successfully settled into old opera houses and glittering new picture palaces on Main Streets across America to become our favorite entertainment.