An Army of Phantoms : American Movies and the Making of the Cold War

An Army of Phantoms is a major new work of history and film criticism from the highly regarded critic J. Hoberman. Here he applies the same dynamic synergy of American politics and American popular culture to the Cold War's first decade that he brought to the 1960s in the critically acclaimed The Dream Life . The years between 1946 and 1956 brought U.S. dominance over Europe and a new war in Asia, as well as the birth of the civil rights movement and the stirrings of a new youth culture. The period saw the movie industry purged of its political left while the rise of ideological action hero Jo.;Acknowledgments; Introduction: From Gods Mouth to Your Ear; Prologue: Mission for Hollywood--Stalingrad to V-J Day; I. Aliens Among Us: Hollywood, 1946-47; MGM's Manhattan Project: The Beginning or the End?; When HUAC Came to Hollywood . . .; Showtime ("Hooray for Robert Taylor!"); Decision at the Waldorf: The Big Mop-up; II. Fighting for the Ministry of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, 1948-50; The Iron Curtain Parts and the Campaign Begins; Fort Apache, Our Home; Hollywood Alert: From Red Menace to Storm Warning; "The Saucers Are Real!" (And Guilty of Treason. 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 Acknowledgments Introduction: From Gods Mouth to Your Ear Prologue: Mission for Hollywood--Stalingrad to V-J Day I. Aliens Among Us: Hollywood, 1946-47 MGM's Manhattan Project: The Beginning or the End? When HUAC Came to Hollywood . . . Showtime ("Hooray for Robert Taylor!") Decision at the Waldorf: The Big Mop-up II. Fighting for the Ministry of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, 1948-50 The Iron Curtain Parts and the Campaign Begins Fort Apache, Our Home Hollywood Alert: From Red Menace to Storm Warning "The Saucers Are Real!" (And Guilty of Treason. Sunset /Panic / In a Lonely PlaceCountdown III. Redskin Menace from Outer Space: America at War, 1950-52 Across Rio Grande ... into Manchuria? This Is Korea? The Communist Was a Thing for the FBI! Three Cases: Joseph L., Carl F., and Elia Kazan Campaign '52: Take Us to Our Leader, Big Jim High Noon in the Universe IV. The Paxamericanarama: Eisenhower Power, 1953-55 "No One on This Earth Can Help You": Above and Beyond and Fantasies of Invasion The Hammer, the Witch Trials, and Pickup on South Street After Quo Vadis: Onward Christian Soldier, Watch Out for The Wild One. Sh- Boom Them! (DeMillennium Approaching ...)V. Searchin': America on the Road, 1955-56 Coonskin Kids, or the Martians Have Landed On the Brink of the Wild Frontier: Kiss Me Deadly, Rebel Without a Cause Better Red Than Dead: Body- Snatched Prisoners of Comanche Mind Control "That'll Be the Day!" The Spirit of '56 Epilogue: The Face of the Crowd Sources Index.