Hollywood's Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World (Film and Culture Series)

Winner, 2024 Culbert Family Book Prize, International Association for Media and HistoryWinner - 2022 Richard Wall Memorial Award, Theatre Library AssociationBeginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and operated by the major American film companies.These theaters aimed to provide a quintessentially “American” experience.Outfitted with American technology and accoutrements, they allowed local audiences to watch American films in an American-owned cinema in a distinctly American way. In a history that stretches from Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Johannesburg and Cairo, Ross Melnick considers these movie houses as cultural embassies.He examines how the exhibition of Hollywood films became a constant flow of political and consumerist messaging, selling American ideas, products, and power, especially during fractious eras.Melnick demonstrates that while Hollywood’s marketing of luxury and consump