“Fan Magazine Trouble”: The AMPP, Studio Publicity Directors, and the Hollywood Press, 1945–1952

Files from the Studio Publicity Directors Committee of the Association of Motion Picture Producers (AMPP), housed in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library (MHL), reveal that studio publicity directors in the postwar era considered many articles in fan magazines to be “unfriendly and destructive” to the industry. This essay examines the perspectives of both studio publicity directors and members of the Hollywood press on what constituted “fan magazine trouble” in postwar Hollywood, the relation of that trouble to studio controls in place over these publications since 1934, and how fan-magazine editors and newspaper reporters and columnists conceptualized their coverage of Hollywood stars, studios, and productions within ongoing developments in reporting practices and their relation to the professionalization of journalism.