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In Reforming Hollywood, Romanowski, a leading historian of popular culture, explores the long and varied efforts of Protestants to influence the film industry. He shows how a broad spectrum of religious forces have played a role in Hollywood, from Presbyterians and Episcopalians to fundamentalists and evangelicals. Drawing on personal interviews and previously untouched sources, he describes how mainline church leaders lobbied filmmakers to promote the nation’s moral health and, perhaps surprisingly, how they have by and large opposed government censorship, preferring instead self-regulation by both the industry and individual conscience. “It is this human choice,” noted one Protestant leader, “that is the basis of our religion.” Tensions with Catholics, too, have loomed large--many Protestant clergy feared the influence of the Legion of Decency more than Hollywood’s corrupting power. Romanowski shows that the rise of the evangelical movement in the 1970s radically altered the picture, in contradictory ways. Even as born-again clergy denounced “Hollywood elites,” major studios noted the emergence of a lucrative evangelical market. 20th Century-Fox formed FoxFaith to go after the “Passion dollar,” and Disney took on evangelical Philip Anschutz as a partner to bring The Chronicles of Narnia to the big screen.

William Romanowski is an award-winning commentator on the intersection of religion and popular culture. Reforming Hollywood is his most revealing, provocative, and groundbreaking work on this vital area of American society.

Endorsements

“Reforming Hollywood brilliantly comingles film history with church history, dispelling enduring fictions that the religious community only wanted to censor films. Weaving in fresh material from Protestant archives, this work contributes greatly to a fuller understanding of the constructive contributions of religious leaders to the Hollywood film industry. This remarkably fresh, significant, and fascinating text truly reforms misunderstandings of Hollywood and religion.”
--Terrence Lindvall, C.S. Lewis Chair of Communication and Christian Thought, Virginia Wesleyan College

“Film history is filled with studies of how Jews and Catholics influenced the course of the movie industry. William D. Romanowski’s pathbreaking study Reforming Hollywood reveals how a wide range of Protestant organizations waged their own battles for control of what audiences would or would not see on the screen—a battle that influenced the religious and moral content of American film from the silent era to the present.”
--Steven J. Ross, author of Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics

“As the first book to examine the relationship between Protestant church organizations and the motion picture industry, Reforming Hollywood corrects film history’s tendency to exaggerate the influence of the Catholic Legion of Decency and its successors. In this authoritative account, Romanowski reveals how Hollywood’s relationship with the Protestant establishment was crucial to debates around film regulation, and charts the erosion of its influence in the post-war years. This is a well-told story, with new perspectives and information in every chapter.”
--Richard Maltby, author of Hollywood Cinema