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Book Reviews | Regular Feature As Peter Hanson has so wonderfully documented, Dalton Trumbo was the Mark Twain of his generation, an ornery, pedantic , and brilliant man whose best movies are infused with wit, values, and honor. Look at Kirk Douglas in Lonely are the Brave, Hanson suggests. Here, the dimple-cheeked loner (called Jack Burns) sums up his Ishmaelite philosophy: ". . . the more fences there are, the more I hate them." In these few lines, Hanson asserts, Trumbo showed his true colors, by portraying a modern-day cowboy who must make sacrifices to defend his right to speak. Dalton Trumbo stood head and shoulders above his peers for his outspoken idealism and anyone who has read Johnny Got His Gun (currently, the Bantam paperback has issued its thirtyninth printing; how many titles have such a press run history?) fully understands why he gravitated toward the underdog, whether they were grand martyrs such as Spartacus or just the average Joe like the reporter in Roman Holiday. As an examination ofthis firebrand's film career, Peter Hanson's Dalton Trumbo, Hollywood Rebel clearly details every facet of his subject's career with warmth, praise, and intelligence. From any angle— research, filmography, or history—this is a refreshing book, a marvelous homage for a true Hollywood maverick. Robert Fyne Kean University RJFyne@aol.com David Sutton. A Chorus of Raspberries. British Film Comedy 1929-1939. University of Exeter Press, 2000. 304 pages; $75.00. Persistent Genre One of the most popular British film genres in the decade after the advent of sound was comedy. Though American productions continued to dominate the cinemas in the United Kingdom as they had done in the 1920's, the years following 1929 saw a considerable increase in the number of British film comedies produced. In part this was a result of two factors: the Cinematography Films Act of 1927 with its quota regulations and the introduction of sound. Out of a total of 1,741 British features released between 1930 and 1939 over 600 films were comedies. A film's— and a genre's—success or failure was, of course, decided at the box office. Though contemporary critics were, to put it mildly, restrained in giving approval or praise of this type of film, the general audience was not. Britons in the 1930s went to the cinema not once but several times a week, enjoying, among other genres, film comedies produced in their country, comedies of a kind which seemed to incorporate elements of a specifically British tradition, making it a profitable and persistent genre of the British cinema. Consequently, one would expect a wealth of studies having dealt with nearly every important aspect ofthe genreby now, from the traditions it was based upon via types of comedies and actors' comic performance to the elements that gave it its distinctively British character. Surprisingly enough, film historiography neglected the film comedy for decades. In a way, film historians followed in the footsteps ofcontemporary critics who, if they chose not to ignore film comedy altogether, disparaged the genre as vulgar, synthetic and superficial, in short, not worth serious consideration. Instead, contemporary critical discourse called for a film that was art or committed to marketing national virtues, to projecting England, as the secretary of the Empire Marketing Board, Sir Stephen Tallents, had put it in 1932. And comedy was not held fit to meet these high hopes. It is only recently that the film comedies have come into focus. And this book is the most thorough investigation into the matter, concentrating on an period of growth for the British film industry in which, as David Sutton convincingly argues, British film comedy reached its maturity. Against the background of the wider context of British film culture in the first decades of the twentieth century, Sutton discusses existing theories on British film comedy and offers a definition of his own. To him, film comedy must be seen as part of a popular aesthetic, as the product of a mixed pedigree of entertainment forms rooted firmly not in middle, but in working -class culture. Pre-cinematic entertainment forms as the music -hall, the variety and revue - whose milieu had absorbed the new medium film...

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