[PDF] James M Cain And The American Authors Authority eBook

Author : Richard Fine
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 44,95 MB
Release : 2014-01-30
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0292755953

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The 1940s offered ever-increasing outlets for writers in book publishing, magazines, radio, film, and the nascent television industry, but the standard rights arrangements often prevented writers from collecting a fair share of the profits made from their work. To remedy this situation, novelist and screenwriter James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice,Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce) proposed that all professional writers, including novelists, playwrights, poets, and screenwriters, should organize into a single cartel that would secure a fairer return on their work from publishers and producers. This organization, conceived and rejected within one turbulent year (1946), was the American Authors' Authority (AAA). In this groundbreaking work, Richard Fine traces the history of the AAA within the cultural context of the 1940s. After discussing the profession of authorship as it had developed in England and the United States, Fine describes how the AAA, which was to be a central copyright repository, was designed to improve the bargaining position of writers in the literary marketplace, keep track of all rights and royalty arrangements, protect writers' interests in the courts, and lobby for more favorable copyright and tax legislation. Although simple enough in its design, the AAA proposal ignited a firestorm of controversy, and a major part of Fine's study explores its impact in literary and political circles. Among writers, the AAA exacerbated a split between East and West Coast writers, who disagreed over whether writing should be treated as a money-making business or as an artistic (and poorly paid) calling. Among politicians, a move to unite all writers into a single organization smacked of communism and sowed seeds of distrust that later flowered in the Hollywood blacklists of the McCarthy era. Drawing insights from the fields of American studies, literature, and Cold War history, Fine's book offers a comprehensive picture of the development of the modern American literary marketplace from the professional writer's perspective. It uncovers the effect of national politics on the affairs of writers, thus illuminating the cultural context in which literature is produced and the institutional forces that affect its production.

Author : Michael Denning
Publisher : Verso
Page : 596 pages
File Size : 18,75 MB
Release : 1998
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781859841709

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As garment workers, longshoremen, autoworkers, sharecroppers and clerks took to the streets, striking and organizing unions in the midst of the Depression, artists, writers and filmmakers joined the insurgent social movement by creating a cultural front. Disney cartoonists walked picket lines, and Billie Holiday sand 'Strange Fruit' at the left-wing cabaret, Café Society. Duke Ellington produced a radical musical, Jump for Joy, New York garment workers staged the legendary Broadway revue Pins and Needles, and Orson Welles and his Mercury players took their labor operas and anti-fascist Shakespeare to Hollywood and made Citizen Kane. A major reassessment of US cultural history, The Cultural Front is a vivid mural of this extraordinary upheaval which reshaped American culture in the twentieth century.

Author : James L. W. West, III
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 189 pages
File Size : 20,18 MB
Release : 2011-06-03
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0812204530

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This book examines literary authorship in the twentieth century and covers such topics as publishing, book distribution, the trade editor, the literary agent, the magazine market, subsidiary rights, and the blockbuster mentality.

Author : Jonathan Gray
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 580 pages
File Size : 10,17 MB
Release : 2013-02-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 111849525X

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A Companion to Media Authorship “Gray and Johnson have brought together a stellar group of authors whose works deftly explicate the complexities of negotiating ‘authorship’ across a range of cultural production sites. This definitive collection is an important and long-overdue contribution to contemporary media studies.” Serra Tinic, author of On Location: Canada’s Television Industry in a Global Market “Wide-ranging and global, historical and contemporary, brimming with insights enlarging our understanding of media production and reception, this book is an important contribution to the study of authorship.” Michael Z. Newman, author of Indie: An American Film Culture While the idea of authorship has transcended the literary to play a meaningful role in the cultures of film, television, games, comics, and other emerging digital forms, our understanding of it is still too often limited to assumptions about solitary geniuses and individual creative expression. A Companion to Media Authorship is a ground-breaking collection that reframes media authorship as a question of culture in which authorship is as much a construction tied to authority and power as it is a constructive and creative force of its own. Gathering together the insights of leading media scholars and practitioners, 28 original chapters map the field of authorship in a cutting-edge, multi-perspective, and truly authoritative manner. The contributors develop new and innovative ways of thinking about the practices, attributions, and meanings of authorship. They situate and examine authorship within collaborative models of industrial production, socially networked media platforms, globally diverse traditions of creativity, complex consumption practices, and a host of institutional and social contexts. Together, the essays provide the definitive study on the subject by demonstrating that authorship is a field in which media culture can be transformed, revitalized, and reimagined.

Author : United States. Congress
Publisher :
Page : 1048 pages
File Size : 11,19 MB
Release : 1947
Category : Law
ISBN :

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The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)

Author : Miranda J. Banks
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 33,28 MB
Release : 2015-01-14
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0813571405

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Screenwriters are storytellers and dream builders. They forge new worlds and beings, bringing them to life through storylines and idiosyncratic details. Yet up until now, no one has told the story of these creative and indispensable artists. The Writers is the only comprehensive qualitative analysis of the history of writers and writing in the film, television, and streaming media industries in America. Featuring in-depth interviews with over fifty writers—including Mel Brooks, Norman Lear, Carl Reiner, and Frank Pierson—The Writers delivers a compelling, behind-the-scenes look at the role and rights of writers in Hollywood and New York over the past century. Granted unprecedented access to the archives of the Writers Guild Foundation, Miranda J. Banks also mines over 100 never-before-published oral histories with legends such as Nora Ephron and Ring Lardner Jr., whose insight and humor provide a window onto the enduring priorities, policies, and practices of the Writers Guild. With an ear for the language of storytellers, Banks deftly analyzes watershed moments in the industry: the advent of sound, World War II, the blacklist, ascension of television, the American New Wave, the rise and fall of VHS and DVD, and the boom of streaming media. The Writers spans historical and contemporary moments, and draws upon American cultural history, film and television scholarship and the passionate politics of labor and management. Published on the sixtieth anniversary of the formation of the Writers Guild of America, this book tells the story of the triumphs and struggles of these vociferous and contentious hero-makers.

Author : Edgar M. Branch
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 152 pages
File Size : 29,80 MB
Release : 2015-09-30
Category : Reference
ISBN : 151280066X

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"I need an audience—-so watch out!" With these James T. Farrell announced his intention of becoming a writer. He was to realize this ambition in manifold ways through his prolificacy, versatility, and his achieved recognition as a formidable figure in American literature. The material contained in this book grew out of initial research for a critical study which disclosed the chaotic state of Farrell's literary affairs and the urgent need for a bibliography. The task was not to be an easy one, for many of Farrell's writings were printed in obscure publications both in the United States and abroad. Edgar M. Branch has ferreted out, producing his compilation with enthusiasm and accuracy. This book is a definitive guide to Farrell's writings published in newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and books, from the time of his high­school days through 1957. It includes both the fiction (novels, short stories, one poem, and one play) and the nonfiction (essays, articles, statements, manifestoes, newspaper columns, etc.), and in many cases descriptions of these writing are appended when deemed necessary. As a further aid to students and researchers, Branch has listed many reprints and dates of writing for the individual short stories and has provided two appendices giving foreign editions of books and tape recordings of unpublished speeches. This detailed bibliography, the first on Farrell ever printed, is supplemented by a preface by Farrell and a foreword by the author. Edgar Branch has directed his attention to the more inaccessible of Farrell's writings and to the clarification of the voluminous abundance of written material that Farrell has produced. Through this book it is possible to trace Farrell's fluctuating status as a writer, his shifting position among editors, critics, and readers. The data included other clues to the evolution and growth of his ideas and relationships with his contemporaries, providing insight into his changing political affiliations and the motivation and development of his fiction. A Bibliography of ]ames T. Farrell's Writings will be a valuable practical aid to scholars and students of literature and Americana, for it makes available a scholarly compilation of the extensive list of writings by one of America's most distinguished and controversial contemporary writers.

Author : Anne Conover Heller
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 609 pages
File Size : 29,94 MB
Release : 2010-10-19
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1400078938

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A New York Times Notable Book A Chicago Tribune Favorite Book of the Year A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year Ayn Rand’s books have attracted three generations of readers, shaped the Libertarian movement, influenced White House economic policies throughout the Reagan years and beyond, and inspired the Tea Party movement. Yet twenty-eight years after her death, readers know very little about her life. In this seminal biography, Anne C. Heller traces the controversial author’s life from her childhood in Bolshevik Russia to her years as a Hollywood screenwriter, the publication of her blockbuster novels, and the rise and fall of the cult that worshipped her in the 1950s and 1960s. Based on original research in Russia and scores of interviews with Rand’s acquaintances and former acolytes, Ayn Rand and the World She Made is a comprehensive and eye-opening portrait of one of the most significant and improbable figures of the twentieth century.