The Fifties: Transforming the Screen, 1950-1959

Completing the landmark, award-winning, ten-volume series on the first century of American film, The Fifties covers a particularly tumultuous period. Peter Lev explores the divorce of movie studios from their theater chains; the panic of the blacklist era; the explosive emergence of science fiction as the dominant genre (The Thing, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds); the rise of television and Hollywood's response to the new medium, as seen in widescreen spectacles (The Robe, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur) and mature Westerns (High Noon, Shane, The Searchers). The richly detailed text elucidates a number of emerging trends as Hollywood, with its familiar stars and genres, reached out as an industry to the newly acknowledged and#147;teenageand#8221; generation with rock and roll films, and movies as diverse as Rebel Without a Cause and Gidget.

Peter Lev is Professor of Electronic Media and Film at Towson University and author of American Films of the 70s: Conflicting Visions.