Hollywood and the End of the Cold War

Hollywood and the End of the Cold War
Author: Bryn Upton
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2014-08-26
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1442237945

From the late 1940s until the early 1990s, the Cold War was perhaps the most critical and defining aspect of American culture, influencing television, music, and movies, among other forms of popular entertainment. Films in particular were at the center of the battle for the hearts and minds of the American public. Throughout this period, the Cold War influenced what movies got produced, how such movies were made, and how audiences understood the films they watched. In the post–Cold War era, some genres of film suffered from the shift in our national narratives, while others were quickly reimagined for an audience with different political and social fears. In Hollywood and the End of the Cold War: Signs of Cinematic Change, Bryn Upton compares films from the late Cold War era with movies of similar themes from the post–Cold War era. In this volume, Upton pays particular attention to shifts in narrative that reflect changes in American culture, attitudes, and ideas. In exploring how the absence of the Cold War has changed the way we understand and interpret film, this volume seeks to answer several key questions such as: Has the end of the Cold War altered how we tell our stories? Has it changed how we perceive ourselves? In what ways has our popular culture been affected by the absence of this once dominant presence? With its focus on themes that are central to the concerns of many historians—including civil religion, social fracture, and the culture wars—Hollywood and the End of the Cold War will serve as a useful tool for those seeking to integrate film into the classroom, as well as for film scholars exploring representations of sociopolitical change on screen.

The Spy and the Traitor

The Spy and the Traitor
Author: Ben Macintyre
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2018-09-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101904208

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War. “The best true spy story I have ever read.”—JOHN LE CARRÉ Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist • Shortlisted for the Bailie Giffords Prize in Nonfiction If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets. Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.

The Cold War Thrillers

The Cold War Thrillers
Author: William J. Craig
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2018-11-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504057066

Two explosive novels set in the perilous days when the world stood on the brink of chaos—from the New York Times–bestselling author of Enemy at the Gates. For almost fifty years after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union played a dangerous game in the shadows. And from those shadows would emerge unsung heroes who would fight for freedom . . . The Strasbourg Legacy: Investigating the possible Soviet theft of US munitions, CIA agent Matt Corcoran hears rumors that German communists and Aryan terrorists are conspiring to assassinate political leaders. But far more ominous is the underground cadre of surviving Nazi officers bent on starting the Fourth Reich . . . The Tashkent Crisis: As tensions rise between the superpowers, the Soviets deliver an ultimatum: surrender unconditionally or a devastating secret weapon will kill millions of Americans. Now a Special Forces team led by Col. Joe Safcek must infiltrate a secret Soviet base and destroy the mystery weapon. But the closer they get, the more Safcek realizes it may already be too late . . . With these “furious-paced” novels of “timeclock suspense” William Craig takes readers back to a time when the Cold War could have started burning with a single spark (Kirkus Reviews).

Hollywood's Cold War

Hollywood's Cold War
Author: Tony Shaw
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2007
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781558496125

Examines the role of American filmmakers in the ideological struggle against communism

An Army of Phantoms

An Army of Phantoms
Author: J. Hoberman
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2013-01-29
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1595587276

The film critic’s sweeping analysis of American cinema in the Cold War era is both “utterly compulsive reading [and] majestic” in its “breadth and rigor” (Film Comment). An Army of Phantoms is a major work of film history and cultural criticism by leading film critic J. Hoberman. Tracing the dynamic interplay between politics and popular culture, Hoberman offers “the most detailed year-by-year look at Hollywood during the first decade of the Cold War ever published, one that takes film analysis beyond the screen and sets it in its larger political context” (Los Angeles Review of Books). By “tell[ing] the story not just of what’s on the screen but of what played out behind it,” Hoberman demonstrates how the nation’s deep-seated fears and wishes were projected onto the big screen. In this far-reaching work of historical synthesis, Cecil B. DeMille rubs shoulders with Douglas MacArthur, atomic tests are shown on live TV, God talks on the radio, and Joe McCarthy is bracketed with Marilyn Monroe (The American Scholar). From cavalry Westerns to apocalyptic sci-fi flicks, and biblical spectaculars; from movies to media events, congressional hearings and political campaigns, An Army of Phantoms “remind[s] you what criticism is supposed to be: revelatory, reflective and as rapturous as the artwork itself” (Time Out New York). “An epic . . . alternately fevered and measured account of what might be called the primal scene of American cinema.” —Cineaste “There’s something majestic about the reach of Hoberman’s ambitions, the breadth and rigor of his research, and especially the curatorial vision brought to historical data.” —Film Comment

Hollywood Double Agent

Hollywood Double Agent
Author: Jonathan Gill
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1683358155

This true story of Golden Age Hollywood and Cold War espionage is a “captivating, fast-paced narrative [that] reads like a thriller” (Library Journal). Boris Morros was a major figure in the 1930s and ’40s. The head of music at Paramount, nominated for Academy Awards, he then went on to produce his own films with Laurel and Hardy, Fred Astaire, Henry Fonda, and others. But as J. Edgar Hoover would discover, these successes were a cover for one of the most incredible espionage tales in the history of the Cold War—Boris Morros also worked for Russian intelligence. Morros’s assignments took him to the White House, the Vatican, and deep behind the Iron Curtain. The high-level intel he provided the KGB included military secrets and compromising information on prominent Americans: his friends. But in 1947, Morros flipped. At the height of the McCarthy era, he played a leading role in a deadly tale. Jonathan Gill’s Hollywood Double Agent is an extraordinary story about Russian spies at the heart of American culture and politics, and one man caught in the middle of the Cold War. “Well-written and perceptive . . . Morros was an empty vessel who could be turned left or right depending on how it satisfied his personal interest.” —New York Journal of Books “Reads like an espionage thriller . . . with malevolent, powerful—and sometimes bumbling—characters.” —Kirkus Reviews “A fascinating and swift-reading biography.” —The Wall Street Journal

Cinematic Cold War

Cinematic Cold War
Author: Tony Shaw
Publisher:
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN:

The first book-length survey of cinema's vital role in the Cold War cultural combat between the U.S. and the USSR. Focuses on 10 films--five American and five Soviet, both iconic and lesser-known works--showing that cinema provided a crucial outlet for the global "debate" between democratic and communist ideologies.

New York 1956

New York 1956
Author: John Charles Gifford
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2019-05-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1532074603

CIA officer Grady Dawson secretly enlists the aid of a wealthy New Yorker and asks him to start a foundation to support artists. Six years later, the nightmare begins. Three internationally renowned artists have been murdered in the heart of Manhattan in as many weeks. The police are baffled because there are no motives, and the killer leaves no clues. Homicide detective Barney Wolfe takes over the case and together with Dawson, they search for the killer. Driven and relentless, they soon discover the killer’s identity. But will they be able to find and stop him in a city of eight million people before he kills again? After they learn who’s next on the killer’s list, Dawson and Wolfe use him as bait to bring the killer out into the open. A sound strategy or a fatal tactical blunder? But as the case unravels, and the two men unearth the motives behind the murders, they are suddenly confronted by an international Cold War crisis with catastrophic consequences. New York 1956 will keep you on the edge of the precipice where the dividing line between justice and revenge is blurred and the threshold leading to redemption is only a faint hope.

The Screen Is Red

The Screen Is Red
Author: Bernard F. Dick
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2016-03-14
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1496805402

The Screen Is Red portrays Hollywood's ambivalence toward the former Soviet Union before, during, and after the Cold War. In the 1930s, communism combated its alter ego, fascism, yet both threatened to undermine the capitalist system, the movie industry's foundational core value. Hollywood portrayed fascism as the greater threat and communism as an aberration embraced by young idealists unaware of its dark side. In Ninotchka, all a female commissar needs is a trip to Paris to convert her to capitalism and the luxuries it can offer. The scenario changed when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, making Russia a short-lived ally. The Soviets were quickly glorified in such films as Song of Russia, The North Star, Mission to Moscow, Days of Glory, and Counter-Attack. But once the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, the scenario changed again. America was now swarming with Soviet agents attempting to steal some crucial piece of microfilm. On screen, the atomic detonations in the Southwest produced mutations in ants, locusts, and spiders, and revived long-dead monsters from their watery tombs. The movies did not blame the atom bomb specifically but showed what horrors might result in addition to the iconic mushroom cloud. Through the lens of Hollywood, a nuclear war might leave a handful of survivors (Five), none (On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove), or cities in ruins (Fail-Safe). Today the threat is no longer the Soviet Union, but international terrorism. Author Bernard F. Dick argues, however, that the Soviet Union has not lost its appeal, as evident from the popular and critically acclaimed television series The Americans. More than eighty years later, the screen is still red.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Author: John le Carre
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2002
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0743457900

George Smiley is assigned to uncover the identity of the double agent operating in the highest levels of British Intelligence.