Paperback / softback
October 17, 2023
9780814347768
English
256
18 black-and-white illustrations
9.00 Inches (US)
6.00 Inches (US)
.84 Pounds (US)
$36.99 USD, £28.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference
Hardback
October 17, 2023
9780814347775
English
256
18 black-and-white illustrations
9.00 Inches (US)
6.00 Inches (US)
1.5 Pounds (US)
$94.99 USD, £72.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference

Movie-Made Los Angeles

Los Angeles was a cinematic city long before the rise of Hollywood. By the dawn of the twentieth century, photography, painting, and tourist promotion in Southern California provided early filmmakers with a template for building a myth-making business and envisioning ideal moviegoers. These art forms positioned California as a land of transformative experiences and catapulted the dusty backwater town of Los Angeles to the largest city on the west coast by 1915. Photography aided the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in opening the region to the rest of nation. Painters gave traditions that were fading in Europe a new lease on life in the California sun, with signature colors and techniques that would be adopted by L.A. real estate companies, agribusiness, and health retreats. Tourism infused the iconography and signature styles of art with cultural mythology of the state's colonial past, offering proto-cinematic experiences to those who ventured west. Author John Trafton explores how Hollywood, an industry based on world-building, was the product of these art forms in the land of sunshine. A more complete story of the American film industry's ascendency in Los Angeles emerges when one considers how the City of Angels cultivated its self-image through pre-cinema narrative art.

About the Author

A native of Southern California, John Trafton is an instructor in film and media history at Seattle University and the Seattle International Film Festival's Education program. His research in film history, visual culture, and American history has appeared in publications including Rethinking History, Film International, and Journal of War and Cultural Studies. He cohosts a film and culture podcast called This Movie Saved My Life, and he has been an invited speaker and panel organizer at several academic and industry conferences.

9780814347768 : movie-made-los-angeles-trafton
Paperback / softback
256 Pages
$36.99 USD
9780814347775 : movie-made-los-angeles-trafton
Hardback
256 Pages
$94.99 USD

Other Titles from Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Studies

An Academic Study of the Filmmaker Kevin Wilmott

Gerald R. Butters, Novotny Lawrence
Oct 2025 - Wayne State University Press
$84.99 USD - Hardback
$34.99 USD - Paperback / softback

Hollywood Shivers

Mark Jancovich
Feb 2025 - Wayne State University Press
$34.99 USD - Paperback / softback

Hollywood Shrivers

Mark Jancovich
Feb 2025 - Wayne State University Press
$94.99 USD - Hardback

Other Titles in PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism

Ernest Lehman

Jon Krampner
Nov 2024 - University Press of Kentucky
$34.95 USD - Hardback
$34.95 USD - Electronic book text
$34.95 USD - Electronic book text

Introduction to Documentary, Fourth Edition, Fourth Edition

Bill Nichols with Jaimie Baron
Aug 2024 - Indiana University Press
$25.00 USD - Paperback / softback
$60.00 USD - Hardback

The Ethnographic Optic

Laure Astourian
Jun 2024 - Indiana University Press
$38.00 USD - Paperback / softback
$80.00 USD - Hardback