The Sirens of Wartime Radio and How the American Print Media Presented Them

The Sirens of Wartime Radio and How the American Print Media Presented Them
Author: Scott A. Morton
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2020-10-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1793601461

The Sirens of Wartime Radio and How the American Print Media Presented Them: The Stories, the Intrigue, and the Evolving Coverage of Their Legacies analyzes press coverage from the American print media that helped construct popular images of Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, Seoul City Sue, and Hanoi Hannah. Coverage of these “radio sirens” essentially constructed and defined these women’s legacies for an American audience. Scott A. Morton examines newspaper and magazine coverage from the periods of each broadcaster, and in doing so, analyzes four primary research inquires. Morton discusses how American newspapers and magazines portrayed each woman to American readers, how the American mass media’s portrayal of them evolved overtime from the mid-1940s through the present, the ways in which the American mass media responded to these five female propagandists—either directly or indirectly—through print, radio, and visual media, and how the legacy of each woman has been kept alive in popular culture in the decades since their last broadcasts. Morton argues that for the most part, coverage of the sirens was borne out of fascination and aversion, fascination stemming from the novelty of women acting as high-profile agents of enemy propaganda organizations and aversion stemming from the potential power they had over U.S. servicemen and the fact that they were viewed as traitors to the U.S. Scholars of media studies, history, and international relations will find this book particularly useful.

The Newspaper Axis

The Newspaper Axis
Author: Kathryn S. Olmsted
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2022-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300256426

How six conservative media moguls hindered America and Britain from entering World War II "A damning indictment. . . . The parallels with today's right-wing media, on both sides of the Atlantic, are unavoidable."--Matthew Pressman, Washington Post "A first-rate work of history."--Ben Yagoda, Wall Street Journal As World War II approached, the six most powerful media moguls in America and Britain tried to pressure their countries to ignore the fascist threat. The media empires of Robert McCormick, Joseph and Eleanor Patterson, and William Randolph Hearst spanned the United States, reaching tens of millions of Americans in print and over the airwaves with their isolationist views. Meanwhile in England, Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail extolled Hitler's leadership and Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express insisted that Britain had no interest in defending Hitler's victims on the continent. Kathryn S. Olmsted shows how these media titans worked in concert--including sharing editorial pieces and coordinating their responses to events--to influence public opinion in a right-wing populist direction, how they echoed fascist and anti-Semitic propaganda, and how they weakened and delayed both Britain's and America's response to Nazi aggression.

Sonic Persuasion

Sonic Persuasion
Author: Greg Goodale
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2011-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0252036042

This title critically analyzes a range of sounds on vocal and musical recordings, on the radio, in film, and in cartoons to show how sounsd are used to persuade in subtle ways.

God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War

God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War
Author: Kathleen E.R. Smith
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813129051

"Neither group, however, could foresee to what extent the war effort would be defined by advertisers and merchandisers. One advertiser described morale as "a lot of little things," and those little things included beer, chewing gum, tobacco, breakfast cereal - virtually every product on the American market. Selling merchandise was always the first priority of Tin Pan Alley, and the OWI never swayed them from this course."--BOOK JACKET.

World War II and the Postwar Years in America [2 volumes]

World War II and the Postwar Years in America [2 volumes]
Author: William H. Young
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 942
Release: 2010-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 031335653X

More than 150 articles provide a revealing look at one of the most tempestuous decades in recent American history, describing the everyday activities of Americans as they dealt first with war, and then a difficult transition to peace and prosperity. The two-volume World War II and the Postwar Years in America: A Historical and Cultural Encyclopedia contains over 175 articles describing everyday life on the American home front during World War II and the immediate postwar years. Unlike publications about this period that focus mainly on the big picture of the war and subsequent economic conditions, this encyclopedia drills down to the popular culture of the 1940s, bringing the details of the lives of ordinary men, women, and children alive. The work covers a broad range of everyday activities throughout the 1940s, including movies, radio programming, music, the birth of commercial television, advertising, art, bestsellers, and other equally intriguing topics. The decade was divided almost evenly between war (1940-1945) and peace (1946-1950), and the articles point up the continuities and differences between these two periods. Filled with evocative photographs, this unique encyclopedia will serve as an excellent resource for those seeking an overview of life in the United States during a decade that helped shape the modern world.

Theaters of War

Theaters of War
Author: V. Casaregola
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2009-09-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230100872

Historian Vincent Casaregola examines the portrayal of WWII in popular culture and how that protrayal has changed over time. By examining WWII films, literature, theatre and art from the Cold War era, the Vietnam War, the Reagan years, and present day, he seeks to understnad the part played by current politics, events and conflicts.

Broadcast Hysteria

Broadcast Hysteria
Author: A. Brad Schwartz
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0809031639

On the evening of October 30, 1938, radio listeners across the United States heard a startling report of a meteor strike in the New Jersey countryside. With sirens blaring in the background, announcers in the field described mysterious creatures, terrifying war machines, and thick clouds of poison gas moving toward New York City. As the invading force approached Manhattan, some listeners sat transfixed, while others ran to alert neighbors or to call the police. Some even fled their homes. But the hair-raising broadcast was not a real news bulletin-it was Orson Welles's adaptation of the H. G. Wells classic The War of the Worlds. In Broadcast Hysteria, A. Brad Schwartz boldly retells the story of Welles's famed radio play and its impact. Did it really spawn a "wave of mass hysteria," as The New York Times reported? Schwartz is the first to examine the hundreds of letters sent to Orson Welles himself in the days after the broadcast, and his findings challenge the conventional wisdom. Few listeners believed an actual attack was under way. But even so, Schwartz shows that Welles's broadcast became a major scandal, prompting a different kind of mass panic as Americans debated the bewitching power of the radio and the country's vulnerability in a time of crisis. When the debate was over, American broadcasting had changed for good, but not for the better. As Schwartz tells this story, we observe how an atmosphere of natural disaster and impending war permitted broadcasters to create shared live national experiences for the first time. We follow Orson Welles's rise to fame and watch his manic energy and artistic genius at work in the play's hurried yet innovative production. And we trace the present-day popularity of "fake news" back to its source in Welles's show and its many imitators. Schwartz's original research, gifted storytelling, and thoughtful analysis make Broadcast Hysteria a groundbreaking new look at a crucial but little-understood episode in American history.

Sound Matters

Sound Matters
Author: Nora M. Alter
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2005-10
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781571814371

Working across established disciplines & methodological divides, these essays investigate the ways in which texts, artists, & performers in all kinds of media have utilized sound materials in order to enforce or complicate dominant notions of German cultural & national identity.