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The Look of Catholics
Portrayals in Popular Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War
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When John Kennedy ran for president, some Americans thought a Catholic couldn’t—or shouldn’t—win the White House. Credit Bing Crosby, among others, that he did.
For much of American history, Catholics’ perceived allegiance to an international church centered in Rome excluded them from full membership in society, a prejudice as strong as those against blacks and Jews. Now Anthony Burke Smith shows how the intersection of the mass media and the visually rich culture of Catholicism changed that Protestant perception and, in the process, changed American culture.
Smith examines depictions of and by Catholics in American popular culture during the critical period between the Great Depression and the height of the Cold War. He surveys the popular films, television, and photojournalism of the era that reimagined Catholicism as an important, even attractive, element of American life to reveal the deeply political and social meanings of the Catholic presence in popular culture.
Hollywood played a big part in this midcentury Catholicization of the American imagination, and Smith showcases the talents of Catholics who made major contributions to cinema. Leo McCarey’s Oscar-winning film Going My Way, starring the soothing (and Catholic) Bing Crosby, turned the Catholic parish into a vehicle for American dreams, while Pat O’Brien and Spencer Tracy portrayed heroic priests who championed the underclass in some of the era's biggest hits. And even while a filmmaker like John Ford rarely focused on clerics and the Church, Smith reveals how his films gave a distinctly ethnic Catholic accent to his cinematic depictions of American community.
Smith also looks at the efforts of Henry Luce’s influential Life magazine to harness Catholicism to a postwar vision of middle-class prosperity and cultural consensus. And he considers the unexpected success of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s prime-time television show Life is Worth Living in the 1950s, which offered a Catholic message that spoke to the anxieties of Cold War audiences.
Revealing images of orthodox belief whose sharpest edges had been softened to suggest tolerance and goodwill, Smith shows how such representations overturned stereotypes of Catholics as un-American. Spanning a time when hot and cold wars challenged Americans’ traditional assumptions about national identity and purpose, his book conveys the visual style, moral confidence, and international character of Catholicism that gave it the cultural authority to represent America.
About the Author:
Anthony Burke Smith is assistant professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Religious Studies at the University of Dayton.
Press Reviews:
"Makes an important contribution to our understanding of the intersection of Catholic and American identity with popular culture."—American Catholic Studies
"This compelling and well-researched study . . . [is] an original, engagingly written model of interdisciplinary inquiry. The thoughtful consideration of religion, popular culture, and politics together is brilliant alchemy." —Journal of American History
"A fascinating and rich evaluation of how Catholics were depicted in movies, television programs, and magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s. . . . The power of The Look of Catholics comes from its author’s broad vision of the cultural and political trends that shaped both American Catholic life and how that life was portrayed in media. . . . A nuanced but expansive presentation of the religious, political, and economic trends that shaped how Catholics were presented in popular culture in the middle decades of the last century."—National Catholic Reporter
"Smith has uniquely surveyed popular films—both those overtly portraying Catholics and those on other subjects, but with directors who brought their Catholic sensibility to their work—television programs, and photojournalism, showing how Catholicism became a constitutive force in the political and social fabric of American culture. The balanced analysis of Catholicism at the middle of the twentieth century both demonstrates and critiques the influence of the modern media in moving a religious group from the margins in America into roles of international authority."—Library Journal
"Smith’s ambitious and exemplary work demonstrates decisively for all time that Catholics were not only integral players in the formation of modern American popular culture, but that the role of Catholicism itself in the national popular culture was a major issue in the production of that same culture. . . . A wonderfully exciting book that will be widely hailed as a landmark achievement, confirm the author’s stature as the leading scholar of Catholic popular culture, and be consulted by scholars and their students for decades to come."—James T. Fisher, author of Communion of Immigrants: A History of Catholics in America
See the publisher website: University Press of Kansas
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