Souls for Sale

Rupert Hughes and the Novel Hollywood Religion

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by Terry Lindvall

Type: Stories
Subject: Sociology
Keywords: religion
Publishing date: 2021
Publisher: Cascade Books
Collection: Reel Spirituality Monograph Series
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 118 pages
5 x 8 inches (12.5 x 20.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-7252-9306-9

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Book Presentation:
The beginning of the twentieth century evolved out of an era of Freethinking atheists and agnostics who challenged the Protestant hegemony of the day. Key among these mavericks was author and filmmaker Rupert Hughes, uncle to Howard Hughes. In 1922, Hughes published Souls for Sale, his wickedly playful satire of the Bible belt and Hollywood, offering a mischievous snapshot of the film industry as it struggled against a conservative Zeitgeist. The novel follows the prodigal adventures of a clergyman’s daughter as she stumbles into the movie industry and finds it to be a new and liberating moral universe. Hughes’s adaptation of his sly work challenged the religious hierarchy of his day, but ultimately fell by the wayside, even with the support of Hollywood icons like Eric von Stroheim and Charlie Chaplin. Souls for Sale offers a glimpse into the emerging Jazz age of moviemaking against the backdrop of a country moving from its traditional roots into the kinetic ways of Hollywood.

About the Author:
Professor of film, Terry Lindvall, occupies the C. S. Lewis Chair of Communication and Christian Thought at Virginia Wesleyan University and has authored a dozen books, including The Silents of God (2001), Sanctuary Cinema (2007), Divine Film Comedies (2015), and God Mocks (2016). He is presently producing a feature documentary film on his God on the Big Screen: A History of Prayer from the Silent Cinema to Today (2019).

Press Reviews:
"Lindvall's Souls for Sale is written with style and wit. At the same time that it explores the relation between religion and the movies in the early twentieth century, it shows how, for novelist and director Rupert Hughes, the art of the movie was itself sacred. The book is a pleasure to read and illuminates a too-little-known period of American filmmaking."
--Theresa Sanders, associate professor, Theology and Religious Studies, Georgetown University

"Terry Lindvall's fascinating Souls for Sale shines a spotlight on the changing Hollywood scene in 1922--the year writer Robert Hughes's satirical treatment of traditional Christianity became a motion picture. Who better than Robert Hughes, already notorious for his outspoken atheistic opinions, to mock Middle America by suggesting that Hollywood, the new film capital, had replaced the church as its most sacred place. . . . This book provides a fascinating background to the beginnings of censorship by the Production Code Administration. . . . I warmly welcome Lindvall's new book, which explains how the culture wars began in Hollywood in the roaring twenties; it is an easy read."
--Andrew Quicke, Professor of Film, Graduate School of Communication and the Arts, Regent University

See the publisher website: Cascade Books

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