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The Community of Cinema How Cinema and Spectacle Transformed the American Downtown
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Book Code: C7355
ISBN: 0-275-97355-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-97355-1
168 pages, photos
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 4/30/2003
List Price: $71.95 (UK Sterling Price: £41.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • Lower-division undergraduates and general readers.
    —Choice
    December 2003
Description: The movie theater has in many ways served as a barometer of the evolution of urban America over the past century. The Community of Cinema explores how the growth and decline of the inner city has been intertwined with the history of the movie theater, how the cinema helped redefine the use of downtowns to include entertainment and socialization, a sense of social place in our society, and the use of spectacle as a part of our daily experience in shopping, eating, and business. This is the first book to examine directly the importance of the movie theater in the creation and growth of the modern American downtown, and its fostering of its own sense of place and community. The Community of Cinema also attempts to bridge the various fields included in the subject of cinema's impact on culture and form, among them film studies, architecture, urban planning, and sociology. In so doing, author James M. Forsher explores in each chapter the ways in which the community of cinema came about, the changes it sparked in the downtown and neighborhood shopping districts, and the sense of community it added to our society as a whole.
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • From Storefront to Palace
  • A Community of Cinema
  • It Started with a Nickel
  • Entertainment Districts and the New American Downtown
  • Queen Elizabeth & The Feature Film
  • Palaces on Main Street
  • Roxie
  • Theater as a Social Battleground
  • "Colored Theaters"
  • Propaganda Battles
  • The Church Takes up the Fight
  • Safe Haven
  • America Cinema during the Depression
  • World War Two Comes to Your Neighborhood Theater
  • From Downtown to Suburb
  • Los Angeles Theater District
  • The Battle to Integrate
  • The Return of Spectacle
  • Preserving the Age of Spectacle
  • Megaplexes and Spectacle in the 21st Century
  • Theater, Place, and Community
  • Bibliography
  • Index
LC Card Number: 2002028762
LCC Class: PN1995
Dewey Class: 302
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