Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, And American Film Studies, 1930-1960

"This wonderful book demonstrates precisely the importance of cultural reception for film studies. Breaking down the traditional boundaries between production, text, and audience, Eric Smoodin's study challenges us to think about the complexity and locatedness of the meaning of the cinema. This book combines rich historical analysis with an accessible style of delivery and an excellent feel for the changing field of American cinema studies. This is film scholarship at its best: rigorous, lively, original."--Jackie Stacey, author of "Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship"

""Regarding Frank Capra" opens important new lines of inquiry concerning the historical study of movie audiences, significantly expanding how we might think about specific contexts for moviegoing and what counts as empirical evidence of reception."--Gregory A. Waller, author of "Main Street Amusements: Movies and Commerical Entertainment in a Southern City, 1896-1930"

"In a delightfully readable book full of personality and wit, Eric Smoodin rethinks audience and reception theory. He demonstrates that film culture extends from the settings of the movie theater and film industry to other less obvious but equally important sites."--Lisa Cartwright, coauthor of "Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture"

In this innovative historical examination of the American movie audience, Eric Smoodin focuses on reactions to the films of Frank Capra. Best known for his Hollywood features--including "It Happened One Night," "It's a Wonderful Life," and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"--Capra also directed educational films, military films, and documentaries. Based on his analysis of the reception of a broad range of Capra's films, Smoodin considers the preferences and attitudes toward Hollywood of the people who watched movies during the "Golden Age" of studio production, from 1930 to 1960.
Drawing on archival sources including fan letters, exhibitor reports, military and prison records, government and corporate documents, and trade journals, Smoodin explains how the venues where Capra's films were seen and the strategies used to promote the films affected audience response and how, in turn, audience response shaped film production. He analyzes issues of foreign censorship and government intervention in the making of "The Bitter Tea of General Yen"; the response of high school students to "It Happened One Night"; fan engagement with the overtly political discourse of "Meet John Doe" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"; San Quentin prisoners' reaction to a special screening of "It's a Wonderful Life"; and at&t's involvement in Capra's later documentary work for the Bell Science Series. He also looks at the reception of Capra's series "Why We Fight," used by the American military to train recruits and re-educate German prisoners of war. Illuminating the role of the famous director and his films in American culture, "Regarding Frank Capra "signals new directions for significant research on filmreception and promotion.