FIFTIES, THE: TRANSFORMING THE SCREEN, 1950-1959

Completing the landmark, award-winning ten-volume series on the first century of American film, "History of the American Cinema", this volume covers the tumultuous period of the 1950s. Peter Lev explores the divorce of movie studios from their theater chains; the panic of the blacklist era; the explosive emergence of science fiction as the dominant genre ("The Thing", "The Day the Earth Stood Still", "Forbidden Planet", "War of the Worlds"); and the rise of television and Hollywood's response with widescreen spectacles ("The Robe", "The Ten Commandments", "Ben-Hur") and mature Westerns ("High Noon", "Shane", "The Searchers"). The richly detailed text elucidates a number of emerging trends as Hollywood, with its familiar stars and genres, became a more diversified industry that was able to reach out to the newly acknowledged "teenage" generation with rock and roll films, and movies as diverse as "Rebel without a Cause" and "Gidget".