Modern American Drama on Screen [Paperback]

Focusing on key texts, leading scholars explore how Hollywood has given an enduring life to the classics of Broadway theater.The volume explores how the classics of modern national theater, including plays by Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, David Mamet and Eugene O'Neill, have attained a second life on the screen. Each chapter is written by a leading scholar and focuses on one of Broadway's most admired and popular productions.The volume explores how the classics of modern national theater, including plays by Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, David Mamet and Eugene O'Neill, have attained a second life on the screen. Each chapter is written by a leading scholar and focuses on one of Broadway's most admired and popular productions.From its beginnings, the American film industry has profited from bringing popular and acclaimed dramatic works to the screen. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive account, focusing on key texts, of how Hollywood has given a second and enduring life to such classics of the American theater as Long Day's Journey into Night, A Streetcar Named Desire and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Each chapter is written by a leading scholar and focuses on Broadway's most admired and popular productions. The book is ideally suited for classroom use and offers an otherwise unavailable introduction to a subject which is of great interest to students and scholars alike.Introduction R. Barton Palmer and William Robert Bray; 1. Realism, censorship, and social promise of Dead End Amanda Klein; 2. Screening Our Town (1940): or the problem of 'looking at everything hard enough' David Eldridge; 3. Screening Death of a Salesman: Arthur Miller's cinema and its discontents R. Barton Palmer; 4. Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire William Robert Bray; 5. Come back, little Scopophile: William Inge, Daniel Mann, and cinematic voyeurism John S. Bak; 6. The Big Knife: Hollywood's 'fable about moral values and success' Christopher Ames; 7. Adapting Lorraine l¹