Richard Abel

Bio: Richard Abel is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Movie theater. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 2 publications receiving 5 citations.

The Middleman of the Movies: US Film Exchanges, 1915-1919

Abstract: This essay argues that the US film rental exchange—too often neglected in cinema histories—served as an essential link that ensured the efficient distribution of motion pictures, from production to...

‘Zip!-Zam!-Zowie!’: A New Take on Institutional American Cinema's History Before 1915

Abstract: ‘Zip!-Zam!-Zowie!-That's How They Stage a Movie Play.’ So goes the title of a story published in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, on March 22, 1914. The writer was Mae Tinee (a pseudonym for Francis Pec...

Americanizing the Movies and Movie-Mad Audiences, 1910–1914 (review)

Abstract: R ichard Abel’s study of American movies and moviegoers after the turn of the century is film historyat itsbest.Awelcomecontrast toscreen studies based on theoretical models with fashion cycles, his work will have a lasting shelf life. Writing about reception in terms of constructing nationality when cities teemed with immigrants, Abel illuminates subject matter as well as method based on print media in engaging chapters. An imaginative presentation of data includes not only illustrations, but poetry and documents that bring the era to life, and entr’actes about topics such as song slides and non-fiction films. A few maps and charts would have highlighted this wealth of material. Abel focuses on southern New England, northern Ohio, and the upper Midwest, particularly cities like St. Louis, Des Moines, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Pawtucket, and Lowell. Painstaking research based on local newspapers, the trade press, and the earliest fan magazine, Motion Picture Story Magazine, yields significant distribution and exhibition data: location and number of theaters, admission and seating capacities, play dates, variety programs with short films versus features, General Film’s rivalry with independent distributors, critics influencing production and reception, social composition of moviegoers, popular genres exploiting racial and gender relations, and ascending early stars. Walking to neighborhood theaters to see westerns disparaged by trade press critics, moviegoers voted with their feet. Consequently, producers and distributors began to market cowboy (and cowgirl) films on a regular basis to draw predictable crowds. As product improved, with attractions like G.M. Anderson (who was Jewish) as Broncho Billy, critics became more enthusiastic. Westerns were also exported because Europeans were enthralled with the vast landscape of the Wild West and the romantic figure of the Indian. Particularly instructive for immigrants, who were themselves other (but Americanized at neighborhood venues) were characterizations of the Indian as racialized and unassimilable. Another genre that attracted ethnic moviegoers, Civil War films romanticized the Old South and represented blacks as self-abnegating Uncle Tom characters. Showcasing large battle scenes, exciting spy stories, and melodramatic romances, such films validated national reunion (while Jim Crow practices disenfranchised blacks). So many characters, even cross-dressers, donned so many disguises as they criss-crossed enemy lines that immigrants learned to reinvent themselves by shopping for apparel. Abel neglects to comment, however, on the most egregious and problematic example of “passing” in these films, that is, white actors donning blackface. Constituting yet another popular genre were thrillers, including animal and jungle pictures. But critics interested in Progressive uplift were dismayed by the appeal of sensational French crime films. By contrast, Traffic in Souls (1912) represented the triumph of Protestant morals and law enforcement over filthy urban vice. Serials like The Perils of Pauline (1914) featured feisty heroines in cliffhanger episodes calculated to entice moviegoers on a regular basis. Writing historical narrative about local events raises questions about just how much space should be devoted to the broader context. Unlike most film historians, Abel draws upon the work of social and cultural historians. But his use of Benedict Anderson’s construct of “an imagined community” is problematic because “horizontal comradeship” among diverse first generation immigrants was difficult to build. Roy Rosenzweig found ethnic enclaves of Jews, Poles, and Lithuanians in Worcester, for example, to be “insular and separate”. American laborers have historically been unable to unite across ethnic, let alone racial, lines to promote class interests. Workers in a color-conscious society would forego economic gains to cling to what David Roediger terms “the wages of whiteness”. Anderson himself states that American society was internally riven by fierce racial conflict; nationality was based on exclusion as well as inclusion. Abel’s characterization of the western as a “usable past” with a foundational myth for “an imagined community” has unexplored implications. Americanizing immigrants not then considered white raises issues about the meaning of race relations in frontier narratives. As Carroll Smith-Rosenberg argues, such myths substitute nationalism and jingoism for harsh economic reality. White males escaping the industrial order felt entitled to perpetrate violence against Mexicans, native Americans, and blacks (and later Chinese). As for striking it rich, revisionists like Patricia Nelson Limerick debunk

The Sponsor’s Fight for Audience: How General Foods Promoted Listenership for the Byrd Expedition Broadcasts

Abstract: This study examines stunting, gimmickry, and the use of guest appearances to attract, keep, and rebuild an audience for the Byrd Expedition broadcasts, aired on CBS, between 1933 and 1935. The sponsor worked to maximize the benefit its product received through program association by attracting the largest audience possible. This research suggests a reconsideration of where rivalry existed in the sponsorship era of broadcasting. It finds that hype through stunts and gimmicks helped keep the expedition exciting during low exploring times. Notable guests were included in the program when convenient but not necessarily during times of low levels of adventure.

The Romance Promoter with A Deadline at 11: Rural Exhibitors, Urban Exchanges, and The Emerging Culture of Film Distribution in The United States, 1918–1925

Abstract: One of the many reasons distribution has retained its status as the least understood aspect of commercial film culture has been the absence of records, particularly from the late 1910s and early 19...

The Spanish Invasion

Abstract: Pablo Santos-Sanz literally leapt into the air and gave a shriek of joy in his room at the Andalusian Astrophysics Institute in Granada. But then doubt set in immediately. Could it be true? Was it really possible that an astronomy student had discovered such a bright unknown object in the outer regions of the solar system? Shouldn’t it have been found by someone else long ago? Was it really an ice dwarf or was it an asteroid that was much closer but which, for some reason, hardly seemed to move across the sky? Pablo thought maybe he shouldn’t shout too soon.