WHO Won?!? An Irreverent Look at the Oscars, Volume 2: 1944-1952

If you’ve ever wondered why the Oscars seem to go to the wrong movies, WHO Won?!? is the book for you. Robert James looks at all the major categories, slashing and burning his way through the bad, praising the good, and offering the best for your consideration. A comic, biting analysis of hundreds of films, WHO Won?!? is a guide to the wonderful movies you missed – and a warning against the ones you should never have seen in the first place.As Norma Desmond says in Sunset Blvd., in here, it’s “…just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!”This time around, we take up the moonlit shadows and night terrors of Hollywood from 1944-1952, as the studio system begins collapsing and the censorship boards show their first fracturing. Hollywood dimmed the lights as film noir emerged, along with more serious, adult pictures. Sadly, the arrival of television also pushed Hollywood into producing more Big Dumb Movies, although the rise of spectacle could sometimes pay off. The Supreme Court would break up the studios. Congress would do even more damage by launching an investigation of Hollywood, driving the studios to stop making more than a handful of pictures for mature minds while they frantically searched for some new way to bring people back into the theaters. At the same time, Hollywood would begin its own persecution with the blacklist, driving many out of work, even as it drove itself into a corner with little room to do anything but play it safe.Don’t miss the early years of film history in Volume 1 of WHO Won?!? covering 1927-1943.