A New Deal in Entertainment: Warner Brothers in the 1930's

Was Warner Brothers a typical Hollywood stdio? And if Hollywood was a system how did that system work? This book examines the Warners studio and the films it produced in the period from the Wall Street Crash in 1929 to America's entry into the war in 1941 - the age of the Depression, of Roosevelt's New Deal, of economic recovery and political isolationism in America. More than any other studio, Warners reflected these immense changes in American society. Gangster films like The Roaring Twenties and Angels with Dirty Faces portrayed not just the criminals but the social background to crime. Biographies like The Story of Louis Pasteur endorsed the merit of individual enterprise. Films like They Won't Forget and The Maltese Falcon echoed the darker mood as the decade ended. Nick Roddick looks at these and many other films of the period to show how Warners worked as a film studio wit ha distinctive sense of the public mood.