Overview

In this lively, innovative historical analysis of movie audiences, Eric Smoodin focuses on reactions to the films of Frank Capra. Best known for his classic Hollywood features of the 1930s and 1940s--including It Happened One Night, It's a Wonderful Life, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington--Capra also directed extensively in other genres such as educational films, military films, and documentaries. Smoodin explores responses to Capra's films among a wide range of viewers not only in theatres but also in schools, libraries, corporations, the military, and prisons. By illuminating the extent to which motion pictures reached audiences beyond consumers of popular culture, Regarding Frank Capra signals new directions for research on film reception and promotion. 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 reaction shaped film production.He examines issues of foreign censorship and government intervention in the making of The Bitter Tea of General Chen; 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' reactions to 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 how military recruits and German prisoners of war responded to the director's documentary series Why We Fight.

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Reviews

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 Commercial 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 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

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, co-author of Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture ... an engrossing work and one that should contribute immensely to these prominent questions of audience reception and the academic film studies agenda. It is also a book worthy of the director's contribution to American cinema and should be invaluable reading for film scholars of all persuasions. --Jrnl of American Studies, August 2006

"""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, co-author of Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture "" ... an engrossing work and one that should contribute immensely to these prominent questions of audience reception and the academic film studies agenda. It is also a book worthy of the director's contribution to American cinema and should be invaluable reading for film scholars of all persuasions.""--Jrnl of American Studies, August 2006"

Author Information

Eric Smoodin is Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Davis. His books include Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons From the Sound Era, Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom, and Hollywood Quarterly: Film Culture in Postwar America, 1945–1957 (with Ann Martin).

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