Books by Alvin H. Marill

In 2005, Scarecrow published Movies Made for Television, 1964-2004, a five-volume reference set commemorating 40 years of every made for TV film since See How They Run debuted in 1964. These books provided a comprehensive listing of every television film and mini-series, detailing each films original network, airdate, and length of broadcast. In this latest volume, Marill adds another five years of television films, providing information for an additional 400 works produced between 2005 and 2009.Along with a brief summary, entries also include extensive production credits (director, writer, producer, composer, director of photography, and editor) and a complete cast and character listing. With a chronology of the films, an appendix of movies adapted from other sources, and separate indexes for actors and directors, Movies Made for Television, 2005-2009 is a welcome addition to a resource highly regarded by scholars and historians of television and popular culture.

Television has always augmented its dramatic and variety programming with sports. After covering wrestling and boxing matches for several years, ABC added the hugely popular Roller Derby between 1949 and 1951, and later, college and pro football. Today, there is a multitude of pay and cable networks devoted exclusively to baseball, football, golf, hockey, tennis, ice-skating, and auto racing. Rather than focusing on live sports broadcasts, however, this book chronicles the history of sports-themed comedies and dramas, to see how our national fictions have affected our authentic sports experiences, and vice versa.Sports dominate the television landscape today, and still the demand for more is so great that pay and cable networks continue to find funding and success, even when devoted exclusively to a single sport. But this is really nothing new: television has always augmented its dramatic and variety programming with sports. Live sports have had a tremendous impact on what we see on television, and on how we see it. Rather than focusing on live sports broadcasts, however, this book takes a critical look at sports-themed comedies and dramas, to see how our authentic sports affect our national fictions as well. From the character studies that supplement Olympic coverage, to nightly highlight reels, to reality programming on ESPN, sports both echo and help shape the myths that pervade our culture. Sports on Television covers the changing relationship between live sports broadcasts and television dramas, as well as the important technological developments and cultural shifts that have changed the way we view the reality of sports.In 1949, after covering wrestling and boxing matches for several years, ABC added the hugely popular Roller Derby, and later moved on to college and pro football, where humble beginnings have since developed into a national obsession. In the early sixties Jimmy Stewart played a disgraced baseball player in Flashing Spikes-which was also one of the rare ventures into television for veteran director John Ford. On HBO the Yankees have been the subject of both 61* - about Roger Maris's quest to top Babe Ruth's home run record - and The Bronx Is Burning, about the 1977 Yankees team. And there have been sports-themed TV sitcoms as well, such as Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin's critically lauded but commercially unsuccessful project, which preceded his work on The West Wing. Meanwhile American Gladiators-a strange blend of canned programming and authentic athletic endeavor that in effect puts television audiences in an arena with what amounts to professional athletes-is quickly becoming one of the most popular shows on primetime. Here, Marill gives due time to all of these unique projects.

Westerns have featured prominently in films almost since motion pictures were first produced at the end of the nineteenth century and when televisions invaded American homes in the late 1940s and early 50s, Western programs filled the small screen landscape. Throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s, these shows dominated television with such long-running successes as Bonanza, Wagon Train, and Maverick. And though the genre has fallen on hard times over the years, it has never died, as Hollywood continues to produce films, mini-series, and shows that keep the west alive.In Television Westerns: Six Decades of Sagebrush Sheriffs, Scalawags, and Sidewinders, Alvin H. Marill looks at the genre as it was represented from the beginning of televisionfrom the twenty-year run of Gunsmoke to the brutal revisionist take of Deadwood. This volume encompasses all manifestations of the Western, including such series as Rawhide, The Virginian, and The Wild, Wild West, as well as movies-of the-week, mini-series, failed pilots, animated programs, documentaries, and even Western-themed episodes of non-Western series that provided their own spin on the genre.

In the 1960s, US networks began to commission feature-length dramas expressly for television, and the genres that became known as "Movies Made for Television" and the "mini-series" emerged. This volume covers the important landmarks in the genre, from the earliest TV movies, through "Roots", to "Rome".