History Web Links:
History of American Cinema
Dr. Chris Schutz, Tennessee Wesleyan College

 
 
 
Silent Film Era
site devoted to famous director D.W. Griffith
Thomas Edison early motion pictures
website on the first sound movies ("talkies")
Early Film Star, Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart"
    --Mary Pickford Institute site, featuring, biography, filmography, film clips, and
        more
    --PBS American Experience website on Pickford (including several film clips, 
        early cinema timeline, biography and more)
Biography of influential early comedy film director Mack Sennett, known as "The King of Comedy" who created the Keystone Kops
Biography on silent film comedy star Harold Lloyd (PBS American Masters website)

 
 
The Talkie:  1930-1945
Profile of prominent and influential director John Ford (known for classics of Americana such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath, and Mister Roberts)
Online Exhibition of David Selznick & his directed film, Gone with the Wind

 
 
American Cinema, 1945-1960
Brief biographies of the Hollywood Ten, Hollywood figures sent to prison by the U.S. Congress for refusing to cooperate in anti-Communist investigations (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
A review of films pertaining to the Second Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s
A 50-year retrospective by the Screen Actors Guild of the Hollywood Blacklist
A fan site on the career of 1950s starlet Doris Day, seen by many to be a still "wholesome" alternative to the beginning of the shakeup in traditional morality (such as Rock & Roll, the Beat Movement, and more sexually challenging figures like Marilyn Monroe)
Time magazine retrospective on the impact of Marilyn Monroe, who represented a challenge to the traditional sexual mores, emerging in the 1950s and extending into the 1970s

 
 
 
1960s Cinema
Mike Nichols, director of the landmark 1967 film, "The Graduate"
    -- Profile of Nichols  (PBS American Masters website)
    -- Biography of Nichols (on private "Senses of Cinema" website)

 
 
 
 
Cinema in the 1970s
Acclaimed director Martin Scorsese, who first exploded onto the film scene in the 1970s:
    -- profile on Scorsese (PBS American Masters site)
    -- brief Scorsese biography (New York Times website)