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What we now call "the good life" first appeared in California during the 1930s. In The Dream Endures, Kevin Starr shows how the good life prospered in California - in pursuits such as film, fiction, leisure, and architecture - and helped to define American culture and society then and for years to come.
The 1930s were the heyday of the Hollywood studios, and Starr brilliantly captures Hollywood films and the society that surrounded the studios.
Starr offers an astute discussion of the European refugees who arrived in Hollywood during the period: prominent European film actors and artists and the creative refugees who were drawn to Hollywood and Southern California in these years - Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Man Ray, Bertolt Brecht, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Mann, and Franz Werfel. Starr gives a fascinating account of how many of them attempted to recreate their European world in California and how others, like Samuel Goldwyn, provided stories and dreams for their adopted nation. Starr reserves his greatest attention and most memorable writing for San Francisco. For Starr, despite the city's beauty and commercial importance, San Francisco's most important achievement was the sense of well-being it conferred on its citizens.
It was a city that "magically belonged to everyone." Whether discussing photographers like Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, "hardboiled fiction" writers, or the new breed of female star - Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, and the improbable Mae West - The Dream Endures is a brilliant social and cultural history.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Civilization, Depressions, California, history, California, social life and customs, Depressions, 1929Places
CaliforniaTimes
1929, 20th centuryShowing 5 featured editions. View all 5 editions?
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1
The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s (Americans and the California Dream)
September 25, 2002, Oxford University Press, USA
in English
0195157974 9780195157970
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2
The Dream Endures: California Enters The 1940's
March 12, 2001, Books on Tape, Inc.
Audio cassette
0736667245 9780736667241
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WorldCat
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3
The Dream Endures: California Enters The 1940's
March 12, 2001, Books on Tape, Inc.
Audio cassette
0736667237 9780736667234
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Libraries near you:
WorldCat
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4
The dream endures: California enters the 1940s
1997, Oxford University Press
in English
0195100794 9780195100792
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WorldCat
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5
The Dream Endures: California Through the Great Depression (Starr, Kevin. Americans and the California Dream.)
June 30, 1996, Oxford University Press, USA
in English
0195058186 9780195058185
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Book Details
First Sentence
"IN a three-part series published in Westways in the fall of 1936, Los Angeles journalist Farnsworth Crowder assessed the California temperament as a matter of sunshine, physicality, and the pleasure principle."
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- Created April 29, 2008
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October 8, 2020 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
July 31, 2020 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
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August 5, 2010 | Edited by IdentifierBot | added LibraryThing ID |
April 29, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from amazon.com record |