Peter D. Norton
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262141000
- eISBN:
- 9780262280754
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262141000.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where ...
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Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as “jaywalkers.” This book argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, the book states, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. It describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. The book examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as “road hogs” or “speed demons” and cars as “juggernauts” or “death cars.” It considers the perspectives of all users—pedestrians, police (who had to become “traffic cops”), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. The book finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for “justice.” Cities and downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of “efficiency.” Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized their claim to the streets by invoking “freedom”—a rhetorical stance of particular power in the United States.Less
Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as “jaywalkers.” This book argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, the book states, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. It describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. The book examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as “road hogs” or “speed demons” and cars as “juggernauts” or “death cars.” It considers the perspectives of all users—pedestrians, police (who had to become “traffic cops”), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. The book finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for “justice.” Cities and downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of “efficiency.” Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized their claim to the streets by invoking “freedom”—a rhetorical stance of particular power in the United States.
David Luhrssen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813136769
- eISBN:
- 9780813141336
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813136769.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Mamoulian's second film, the gangster picture City Streets (1932), was based on a screenplay by Dashiell Hammett with Gary Cooper co-starring with Sylvia Sidney. From there, Mamoulian moved on to Dr. ...
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Mamoulian's second film, the gangster picture City Streets (1932), was based on a screenplay by Dashiell Hammett with Gary Cooper co-starring with Sylvia Sidney. From there, Mamoulian moved on to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), in which leading man Frederic March was transformed by groundbreaking special effects from the respectable Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, a monstrous sexual predator. Restlessly exploring genres, he next made Love Me Tonight (1932), an innovative musical pairing the songs of Richard Rodgers with stars Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette McDonald, and a sophisticated tragic-comedy with Marlene Dietrich, The Song of Songs (1933).Less
Mamoulian's second film, the gangster picture City Streets (1932), was based on a screenplay by Dashiell Hammett with Gary Cooper co-starring with Sylvia Sidney. From there, Mamoulian moved on to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), in which leading man Frederic March was transformed by groundbreaking special effects from the respectable Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, a monstrous sexual predator. Restlessly exploring genres, he next made Love Me Tonight (1932), an innovative musical pairing the songs of Richard Rodgers with stars Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette McDonald, and a sophisticated tragic-comedy with Marlene Dietrich, The Song of Songs (1933).
