Books by Peter Lev

When the Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Pictures in 1935, the company posed little threat to industry juggernauts such as Paramount and MGM. In the years that followed however, guided by executives Darryl F. Zanuck and Spyros Skouras, it soon emerged as one of the most important studios. Though working from separate offices in New York and Los Angeles and often of two different minds, the two men navigated Twentieth Century-Fox through the trials of the World War II boom, the birth of television, the Hollywood Blacklist, and more to an era of exceptional success, which included what was then the highest grossing movie of all time, The Sound of Music. Twentieth Century-Fox is a comprehensive examination of the studio's transformation during the Zanuck-Skouras era. Instead of limiting his scope to the Hollywood production studio, Lev also delves into the corporate strategies, distribution models, government relations, and technological innovations that were the responsibilities of the New York headquarters. Moving chronologically, he examines the corporate history before analyzing individual films produced by Twentieth Century-Fox during that period. Drawn largely from original archival research, Twentieth Century-Fox offers not only enlightening analyses and new insights into the films and the history of the company, but also affords the reader a unique perspective from which to view the evolution of the entire film industry.

This literate and lively study explores the spread of American culture into international cinema as reflected by the collision and partial merger of two important styles of filmmaking: the Hollywood style of stars, genres, and action, and the European art

Peter Lev persuasively argues in this book that the films of the 1970s constitute a kind of conversation about what American society is and should be--open, diverse, and egalitarian, or stubbornly resistant to change.

Covering the tumultuous period of the 1950s, this work explores the divorce of movie studios from their theater chains; the panic of the blacklist era; the explosive emergence of science fiction as the dominant genre; and the rise of television and Hollywood's response with widescreen spectacles.