The king of radio comedy from the Great Depression through the early 1950s, Jack Benny was one of the most influential entertainers in twentieth-century America. A master of comic timing and an innovative producer, Benny, with his radio writers, developed a weekly situation comedy to meet radio's endless need for new material, at the same time integrating advertising into the show's humor. Through the character of the vain, cheap everyman, Benny created a "fall guy," whose frustrated struggles with his employees addressed mid-century America's concerns with race, gender, commercialism, and sexual identity. Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley contextualizes her analysis of Jack Benny and his entourage with thoughtful insights into the intersections of competing entertainment media and argues that transmedia stardom, branded entertainment, and virality are, in fact, the newest versions of key elements in the history of American popular culture.

"Hollywood in the Neighborhood" presents a vivid new picture of how movies entered the American heartland - the thousands of smaller cities, towns, and villages far from the East and West Coast film centers. Using a broad range of research sources, essays from scholars including Richard Abel, Robert Allen, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Terry Lindvall, and Greg Waller examine in detail the social and cultural changes this new form of entertainment brought to towns from Gastonia, North Carolina to Placerville, California, and from Norfolk, Virginia to rural Ontario and beyond. Emphasizing the roles of local exhibitors, neighborhood audiences, regional cultures, and the growing national mass media, their essays chart how motion pictures so quickly and successfully moved into old opera houses and glittering new picture palaces on Main Streets across America.

The king of radio comedy from the Great Depression through the early 1950s, Jack Benny was one of the most influential entertainers in twentieth-century America. A master of comic timing and an innovative producer, Benny, with his radio writers, developed a weekly situation comedy to meet radio's endless need for new material, at the same time integrating advertising into the show's humor. Through the character of the vain, cheap everyman, Benny created a "fall guy," whose frustrated struggles with his employees addressed mid-century America's concerns with race, gender, commercialism, and sexual identity. Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley contextualizes her analysis of Jack Benny and his entourage with thoughtful insights into the intersections of competing entertainment media and argues that transmedia stardom, branded entertainment, and virality are, in fact, the newest versions of key elements in the history of American popular culture.

An analysis of the first and most comprehensive study of the influence of movies on American youth, the Payne Fund Studies. First published in 1933, these studies are intrinsically important for their insights and conclusions regarding the effects of movies on behaviour. They are, moreover, also an important landmark of modern social science research, demonstrating the rapid evolution of this discipline in American academic institutions over the first three decades of the century. Based on more recently discovered primary sources, whose contents are published here for the first time, this volume also reproduces the long-missing first Payne Fund study in its entirety.

Children and the Movies analyzes the first and most comprehensive study of the influence of movies on American youth, the Payne Fund Studies. First published in 1933, these studies--reproduced here in their entirety--are intrinsically important for their insights and conclusions regarding the effects of movies on behavior. They are, moreover, an important landmark of modern social science research, demonstrating the rapid evolution of this discipline in American academic institutions over the first three decades of the century.