The ABCs of classic Hollywood

423 Pages·2008·4.22 MB·English

by  Ray

The ABCs of Classic Hollywood
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A B C s
The of Classic Hollywood
Robert B. Ray
1
2008
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ray, Robert B. (Robert Beverley), 1943–
The ABCs of classic Hollywood / by Robert B. Ray.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-19-532291-0; 978-0-19-532292-7 (pbk.)
1. Motion pictures—United States. I. Title.
PN1993.5.U6R377 2007
791.430973—dc22 2006038592
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
In memory of
William D. Evans, Jr.
and
John D. Martin III
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Acknowledgments
Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project notebook contains the
following entry:
These notes, which deal with the Paris arcades, were begun
under the open sky—a cloudless blue which arced over the
foliage—and yet are covered with centuries of dust from
millions of leaves; through them blew the fresh breeze of
diligence, the measured breath of the researcher, the squalls
of youthful zeal, and the idle gusts of curiosity. For, looking
down from arcades in the reading room of the Paris National
Library, the painted summer sky stretched over them its
dreamy, lightless ceiling.
While matching Benjamin’s lyricism would prove difficult, I can
say that The ABCs of Classic Hollywood began in the hot July and
August of 1993 when my older daughter, Margaret, played the
role of Tootie in a local theater’s production of Meet Me in St.
Louis, the favorite movie of my younger daughter, Eleanor. Seeing
the same show night after night over a six-week run, and compar-
ing it repeatedly to the film, confirmed Roland Barthes’s insistence
on the rewards of rereading (see S/Z). Doing so also suggested
how each of a movie’s details might be made to open up into
what Reuben Brower once called (citing Henry James) “the fields
of light,” that space where reading turns from interpretation into
the kind of work that Benjamin also described: “Say something
about the method of composition itself: how everything that
comes to mind has at all costs to be incorporated into the work
one is doing at the time.”
In my own case, “everything that comes to mind” has had a
lot to do with the teachers and colleagues who have continually
provided me with models for my own work: Dudley Andrew, Noël
Burch, Thomas Childers, Christian Keathley, James Naremore,
viii Acknowledgments
Gregory Ulmer, and Peter Wollen. My thanks go to them, and to
Margaret and Eleanor Ray for their original inspiration.
I am grateful to Adam Nikolaidis, who produced the book’s
frame enlargements, and to Craig Cieslikowski, who did emer-
gency work to help me correct the image-text inconsistencies
detected by Oxford’s exceptionally alert production editor, Stacey
Hamilton. I also especially want to thank Oxford’s Shannon
McLachlan, who provided me with more useful editorial sugges-
tions than any editor I have ever had.
Finally, in this case, moving from concept to execution
involved the effort of all the students who took an ABCs class from
me and contributed to what has become this book. As I say in the
introduction, I could not have written it without them.
Contents
xi Introduction
3
Grand Hotel
85
The Philadelphia Story
157
The Maltese Falcon
245
Meet Me in St. Louis
329
Notes
357
Index