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Led by the smash hit of Fox's Sunny Side Up, starring Janet Gaynor, original musicals fared well in the early sound era. Such originals as Marianne tended to be more cinematic than the stage adaptations, although routine could also be the order of the day in such uninspired pieces as Honey and Tanned Legs. The most distinctive entries came near the end of the era: Fox's Just Imagine, a science-fiction musical comedy set in the future of 1930, and MGM's Madam Satan, a combination sex farce, operetta, and disaster epic directed by Cecil B. DeMille.

The Introduction questions the legendary origin story for sensational journalism: in the late 1890s, competition between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer degraded serious journalism into “yellow journalism” – sometimes blamed for the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. The apocryphal story of Spanish authorities strip-searching female Cuban rebels captures sensationalism’s essence: the dissemination of false news to increase sales and further an agenda, through strident headlines, inventive reporting, and eye-catching illustration. As early as 1870, in fact, line illustrations gave commercial publications across the political spectrum tools to attract readers, or perhaps more accurately, “news consumers.” While use of headlines, scoops, and stunts date back to the 1830s, it was the proliferation of images in newspaper pages that came to define sensational journalism by century’s end.

By the spring of 1887, even though he had contempt for journalism as a profession, Ambrose Bierce had already been writing for two decades. He started his writing as an apprentice with Californian, New Era, and Overland Monthly in the late 1860s. He progressed to News Later, Figaro, Fun, and The Lantern, and later on Argonaut and Wasp as a fearsome Prattler. He became famous and unavoidable. His entire journey was exhausting, exciting, and exhilarating. William Randolph Hearst became the most influential newspaperman of modern times. The life of Hearst as a journalist was described in this chapter. It is also stated that Hearst and Bierce had a complex relationship. Bierce could see some traits in Hearst that were similar to his.

William Randolph Hearst came to rescue Ambrose Bierce in early 1896, when he was holed up in Oakland alone and depressed. He gave him a new target on which to focus his flagging energies: Collis P. Huntington. Bierce headed east for the first time, along with his son Leigh as a traveling companion. He arrived at Washington in the last week of January and immediately set up headquarters at the Page Hotel near the Capitol. Bierce had despised Huntington for several years. He kept up a remorseless barrage on the now-reeling Huntington and called him as an “inflated old pigskin” and a “veteran calumniator,” among all other names. Bierce had his hardest months of hard work. His life in San Francisco as a fearless writer is detailed in this chapter.

This chapter focuses on the serial The Exploits of Elaine (1914). The fictional Elaine Dodge, an enterprising young woman who dedicates herself to solving the mystery of her father's death at the hands of an anonymous villain, would help to shape and advance the Wharton brothers' film career. As Pathé-Hearst's The Perils of Pauline (1914) neared its conclusion, newspaper tycoon and movie producer William Randolph Hearst was determined to create a new serial that would afford his popular star Pearl White an exciting encore. That serial was The Exploits of Elaine, which was expected to be a landmark venture for Hearst. In turn, for the Whartons, the chance to be associated with Hearst's enterprise seemed an unparalleled opportunity, one that would allow them to move beyond short pictures and to make their own singular contribution to the increasingly popular serial genre.

This chapter details how, given The Exploits of Elaine's enormous appeal, plans for an extension, or “extender,” began even as the original serial was still in production. Indeed, the opening episode of The New Exploits of Elaine (1915) was released just one week after the first serial concluded. By picking up where Exploits left off, both William Randolph Hearst and the Whartons hoped to maintain the keen interest in the adventures of Elaine Dodge and Craig Kennedy—and in Pearl White and Arnold Daly, the popular stars who played them. The production of serial-sequels, by then, had become an increasingly common practice among studios hoping to capitalize on their original successes. The unresolved-plot ending of The New Exploits of Elaine provided a natural segue into the third and final installment of the Elaine serial. On the one hand, The Romance of Elaine harked back to familiar elements of the serial formula, among them recurring threats from a mysterious villain, death-defying escapes, car chases, explosions, and romantic rescues. On the other, it celebrated Elaine's tenacity and reinforced the image of her as a new and increasingly independent female type of protagonist within a sensational, action-packed, typically male-oriented and male-dominated story line.

This chapter recounts how, soon after completing The Mysteries of Myra, the Wharton brothers undertook a new production, Beatrice Fairfax (1916). This serial was financed once again by William Randolph Hearst and distributed by his International Film Service through the Pathé Exchange. Originally titled Letters to Beatrice, it capitalized on the recent trend of real-life female reporters, who “became familiar, consistent personalities, much like serial queens” and who sought out “novel and thrilling experiences that extended the experiential sphere of women” by vivifying places and activities that were typically “out of reach to women, restricted by virtue of either their danger or their indelicacy.” The Whartons' serial, which reflected the strong real-life collaboration with newspapers that had made the serial genre so popular, was based on Fairfax's widely read “Advice to the Lovelorn” column syndicated by Hearst. But, in fact, there was no actual Beatrice Fairfax; that was a pseudonym used by Hearst employee Marie Manning.

On May 17, 1974, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was incinerated in Compton, Los Angeles, California. Four hundred and ten officers of the law poured over 5,000 rounds of ammunition and 83 tear gas canisters into the East LA bungalow in which the would-be urban guerrillas were holed up. The band of Berkeley radicals, led by the escaped convict Donald DeFreeze, had grabbed international media attention on February 4 when they kidnapped Patricia Hearst, daughter of press magnate Randolph A. Hearst. The kidnapping dovetailed with Rita Brown's budding affinity for class warfare and she cheered the conversion of the granddaughter of “Citizen Kane” into “Tania,” a bank robber for the revolution renamed for Che Guevara's companion Tania Burke, who followed him to the death on his ill-fated Bolivian campaign. This chapter explains how the massacre of the SLA in Compton indirectly prompted Brown and Therese Coupez to take a vacation.

Following a disagreement with Metro about production costs, Capellani left the company for good in spite of the huge success of The Red Lantern. He decided to become an independent producer himself. Albert Capellani Productions started in 1919 with an innovative “filmusical-comedy” after P. G. Wodehouse, Oh Boy! Capellani produced eight features, but the company encountered severe financial difficulties following the destruction of the studio laboratory. By 1920, the company was dead, and Capellani had to sign a contract with Cosmopolitan Productions, headed by William Randolph Hearst.

Capellani made four films for Cosmopolitan, including The Young Diana (1922), with Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies. His last years in America were difficult, and Capellani was no doubt thinking of going back to France, making frequent travels back to his home country. His health was also an important factor; he was suffering from diabetes, then incurable. The intense activity of the past years was taking its toll. Capellani left the United States for France in 1922.

Shilts enrols at University of Oregon and quickly engages with the Eugene Gay People’s Alliance. Early attempts to start a gay liberation movement among Oregon students, including the university’s first-ever Gay Pride Week. He loses a later bid for Student Body President under a theme of “Come Out for Shilts.” Shilts embraces a “gay centric” approach to schoolwork and his life, living fully out despite some miscues, convinced heterosexuals are unaccepting of homosexuals because they lack understanding or knowledge of gays and lesbians. Oregon classmates recall Shilts’s transition from student politics to journalism. Shilts finds being “out” in conflict with his dreams of a career in mainstream journalism. Shilts writes about a summer job at a gay bathhouse.

The 1896 elections, coming after a long period of economic distress, produced a political realignment and mobilized various new media forms for politicking purposes. Many traditionally Democratic newspapers rejected William Jennings Bryan’s Populism and switched their loyalties to Republican candidate William McKinley, giving William Randolph Hearst an opening to become a champion of Democracy. The Republican candidate’s brother, Abner McKinley, invested in the American Mutoscope Company and the Republican National Committee sponsored its official theatrical debut as its biograph projector screened McKinley at Home. The rival Edison Manufacturing Company offered a train scene featuring Bryan. The Republicans embraced technological novelties such as the phonograph, the telephone and the bicycle--implying that innovation would help to solve the economic crisis.

This introductory chapter begins with details surrounding Thomas Ince's death at the height of his career on November 19, 1924, which sparked a flurry of misinformation that continues to the present. Movie aficionados today often know Ince best through Steven Peros's dramatization of his passing in the 1997 play The Cat's Meow and its 2001 film version. Unfortunately, while often assumed by audiences to be based on fact, The Cat's Meow recounts an imaginary version of Ince's career and death. The discussion then turns to Ince's role in the creation of Hollywood. Ince was a producer or director of some eight hundred films, and was involved closely with motion pictures over a fifteen-year period. He is widely mentioned in film histories, and usually accepted as a “pioneer” in the early years.

Paul Schrader’s connection with director Robert Bresson is often explored through his male characters, the ‘man in his room’ of Light Sleeper and American Gigolo, but Taxi Driver before them and First Reformed most recently. However, Schrader’s two primary experiments with female characters, Cat People (1982) and Patty Hearst (1988), also follow a similar Bressonian trajectory and end with each female character incarcerated, yet finding a kind of spiritual freedom that helps them realize their identities. This chapter explores Schrader’s women primarily through close examination of Cat People’s Irina (Nastassja Kinski) and Natasha Richardson’s eponymous heroine in Patty Hearst, but use his representation of women in the male-driven films for points of comparison and contrast. In addition, this chapter approaches Schrader’s women as reflections of his male characters, many of whom are driven by existential anxiety that motivates them to seek self-actualization in redemptive violence.

After his career move from the Saturday Evening Post to Cosmopolitan magazine, owned by William Randolph Hearst, Cobb continued to win awards for his brilliant storytelling. - A man who took great pride in his accomplishments, Cobb apparently cared little about critical approval; his only goal was to satisfy his reading public—the vast middle class that read poplar magazines and novels. Ellis reveals Cobb’s close relationship with his daughter Buff, who also pursued a writing career. Much of the chapter, however, focuses on Cobb’s writing in the mid to late 1920s as he continued to do what he did best—turning out popular and predictable articles and stories for Hearst publications. Cobb was one of the highest paid writers of his time.

This chapter considers the new understanding of the touristic attitude. Dealing with the touristic attitude, there are always prior matters of fact that must be attended to. It is questioned how Phoebe Apperson Hearst's personal tastes and habits had figured with her wealth in accidentally contributing to the new formation of thought. The signage is exemplary of a rhetorical strategy employed by tourists and their handlers everywhere to shield them from the symbolic potential of the attractions. Other marking strategies will contain some opening into the symbolic. Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Ponte Salario inscription states that the bridge spans the Aniene about two miles outside of Rome and was made by Narsete. He further elaborates in his label that “among ancient bridges, it is the only one that remains intact down to our times.” The touristic attitude toward Ponte Salario is addressed. Last, the chapter defines the characteristic of the touristic attitude.

This chapter introduces Phoebe Hearst, Jane Sather, and Cora Flood, the three women who were also the university's greatest benefactors about the same time as Alexander. It highlights several donations given by Hearst, Sather, Flood, and Elizabeth Boalt. Hearst's donations were mostly land and structures such as the Hearst Gymnasium, while Sather started the Sather Law Library Fund and donated money to build the Sather Gate and the Sather Tower. Flood donated two residences, the Menlo Park estate and her San Francisco residence. Boalt donated money to establish a law school and the construction of Boalt Hall. The chapter also studies Alexander's apparent dislike for publicity, and reveals that unlike these women, her name does not appear on any structure in the university.

Ziegfeld escapes to his Canadian getaway, showing that he is an outdoorsman at heart. While vacationing at his camp, Ziegfeld displays another side to his personality that is much warmer and more jovial than his cool, professional persona. The camp is also where Ziegfeld and his tomboy daughter bond. Once he is back in New York, Ziegfeld must face some unpleasant realties. He produces three flops: The Comic Supplement, Louie the 14th, and a new edition of the Follies. Ziegfeld feels even more antiquated when his competitor Charles Dillingham produces a smash hit with Marilyn Miller called Sunny. In an attempt to keep his career afloat, Ziegfeld retreats to Palm Beach more often. He makes a deal with William Randolph Hearst to build a theater bearing the Ziegfeld name. Included in the chapter is previously unpublished correspondence between Burke and Ziegfeld covering Ziegfeld’s neglect and his possible philandering with women at Palm Beach. Also included are some of Patricia’s letters to Ziegfeld, which are touching displays of a little girl’s adoration for her imperfect father. The chapter concludes with Ziegfeld planning to produce shows in Palm Beach because of his bitterness toward the harsh New York critics.

This chapter talks about George Luks securing work at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, wherein five and a half months later he would illustrate the paper’s most popular comic strip, Hogan’s Alley. The comic strip depicts one of its more loveable characters, Mickey Dugan, a barefoot street urchin who was always covered in a yellow nightshirt. Dugan was a creation of Richard Felton Outcault, and debuted in Pulitzer’s newspaper in February of 1895. The chapter narrates how Outcault was seduced by William Randolph Hearst, editor of the rival New York Journal, and how Pulitzer then hired Luks to continue drawing the Yellow Kid. Hogan’s Alley, however, was quite different from Luks’s other drawings for the news items appearing in the World. With Hogan’s Alley, the picture itself became “news.” The rest of the chapter talks mostly about the success and the influence that Hogan’s Alley created for Luks.