American Laughter : Immigrants, Ethnicity and 1930s Hollywood Film Comedy

This text aims to demonstrate the immigrant and ethnic vision that informed Hollywood comedies, and by extension American mass culture, of the 1920s and 1930s.

Beginning with a pre-history of American comedy that ranges from the Spanish explorers to Moss Hart, the author then discusses the refashioning of slapstick, team, and romantic comedy by an immigrant Hollywood for a predominantly urban, ethnic audience. With observations on more than 300 films - many of which have never been studied - the three main chapters uncover an unexamined immigrant and ethnic aesthetic in the films of Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, and William Powell and Myrna Loy.

In the process, Winokur employs a broad range of contemporary concepts in film history and culture studies, while intertwining subjects as diverse as Balkan politics, Art Deco, the Jewish landsmanshaft, psychoanalysis, vaudeville, Sicilian peasant life, orientalism, the stage Irishman and "body" criticism. Winokur includes over 50 black and white photos, stills and reprints of promotional pieces that illustrate and complement his analysis of Hollywood film in the 1920s and 1930s.