1. According to one of the world's leading neurologists, all people “cultivate pastimes that manipulate their emotions,” and the power of even substandard movies “should neverbe underestimated.” Damasio, Antonio R., The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 35, 36Google Scholar.

2. For summaries and analysis of such approaches, see Hardt, Hanno, Interactions: Critical Studies in Communication, Media, and Journalisni (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998)Google Scholar. For analysis of the economics of the film industry, see Puttnam, David, The Undeclared War: The Struggle for Control of the World's Film Industry (London: HarperCollins, 1997)Google Scholar.

3. See, for example, Marsh, Clive and Ortiz, Gaye, eds., Explorations in Theology and Film: Movies and Meaning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997)Google Scholar; Babington, Bruce and Evans, Peter William, Bible Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Keyser, Les and Keyser, Barbara, Hollywood and the Catholic Church: The Image of Roman Catholicism in American Movies (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. For descriptive treatments of selected films, see Fraser, Peter, Images of the Passion: The Sacramental Mode in Film (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998)Google Scholar; Miles, Margaret R., Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in the Movies (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Martin, Joel W. and Ostwalt, Conrad E. Jr., eds., Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Kinnard, Roy and Davis, Tim, Divine Images: A History of Jesus on the Screen (New York: Citadel Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Malone, Peter, Movie Christs and Anti-christs (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1990)Google Scholar; May, John R. and Bird, Michael, eds., Religion in Film (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Butler, Ivan, Religion in the Cinema (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1969)Google Scholar.

4. See, for example, Hardt, Interactions, 50-51; Hoover, Stewart M. and Venturelli, Shalini S., “The Category of the Religious: The Blindspot for Contemporary Media Theory?” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13 (September 1996): 261 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Silk, Mark, Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

5. Moore, R. Laurence, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 11 Google Scholar; Marty, Martin E., The Improper Opinion: Mass Media and the Christian Faith (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), 65–85 Google Scholar.

6. See Keller, James A., “The Power of God and Miracles in Process Theism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63 (Spring 1995): 105-26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Darryl Zanuck, memorandum, September 20, 1952, The Gun and the Cross Sie, Twentieth-Century Fox collection, UCLA, quoted in Walsh, Frank, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 226 Google Scholar. An example of God's hand at work in a Zanuck film occurs in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) when a woman (Ava Gardner) is injured near a battlefield and prays to have her long-lost lover (Gregory Peck), a soldier who suddenly appears in the midst of the confusion.

8. On The Blood of Jesus and its popularity, see Cripps, Thomas, Black Film as Genre (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 86–99 Google Scholar.

9. See Pailin, David A., “History, Humanity, and the Activity of God,” Religious Studies 23 (December 1987): 435-56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Campbell, Richard H. and Pitts, Michael R., The Bible on Film: A Checklist, 1897-1980 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1981), 1–9, 73-90Google Scholar; Musser, Charles, “Passions and the Passion Play: Theater, Film, and Religion in America, 1880-1900,” in Movie Censorship and American Culture, ed. Couvares, Francis G. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 43–72 Google Scholar.

11. Zukor, Adolph, “Origin and Growth of the Industry,” in The Story of the Films, ed. Kennedy, Joseph P. (Chicago: Shaw, 1927), 59 Google Scholar; Epes Winthrop Sargent, “Handling the Kalem Release,” Moving Picture World, October 19, 1912.

12. Richard Schickel, D. W. Griffith: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 33, 271-72, 281-331Google Scholar; Simmon, Scott, The Films of D. W. Griffith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 150-57Google Scholar; Keyser and Keyser, Hollywood and the Catholic Church, 4-18. For analysis of the film, see Drew, William M., Griffith, D. W.'s Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1986)Google Scholar.

13. For the effects of censorship on Body and Soul, see Charlene Regester, “Black Films, White Censors: Oscar Micheaux Confronts Censorship in New York, Virginia, and Chicago,” in Movie Censorship and American Culture, ed. Couvares, 180-81.

14. Moley, Raymond, The Hays Office (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1945), 57–58, 137Google Scholar; Walsh, Sin and Censorship, 33-34; Carl Laemmle to Quinn Martin, January 13, 1923, in Will Hays Papers, ed. Douglas Gomery (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1986), microfilm, pt. 1, reel 8, frames 647-48.

15. Will H. Hays, “Supervision from Within,” in The Story of the Films, ed. Kennedy, 49.

16. “An Affront to Catholics,” press release, National Catholic Welfare Conference News Service, July 25, 1927, The Callahans and the Murphys file, Production Code Administration Collection (hereafter cited as PCA Collection), Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, Calif. MGM consulted with Irish Catholic organizations during the filming and made cuts recommended by the societies after release. William A. Orr to Will H. Hayes, August 23, 1927; E. J. Mannix to Col. Jason S. Joy, July 25, 1927, The Callahans and the Murphys file, PCA Collection.

17. Francis R. Walsh, “‘The Callahans and the Murphys’ (MGM, 1927): A Case Study of Irish-American and Catholic Church Censorship,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 10 (1990): 39.

18. Walsh, Sin and Censorship, 24-25, 47-49; Leff, Leonard J. and Simmons, Jerold L., The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code from the 1920s to the 1960s (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), 3–10 Google Scholar; Inglis, Ruth, Freedom ofthe Movies: A Report on Self-Regulation from the Commission on Freedom of the Press (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), 83–116 Google Scholar.

19. The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, Appendix I, in Martin, Olga J., Hollywood 's Movie Commandments: A Handbook for Motion Picture Writers and Reviewers (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1937), 271 Google Scholar (italics in original), 275.

20. Doherty, Thomas, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Black, Gregory D., “Hollywood Censored: The Production Code Administration and the Hollywood Film Industry, 1930-1940,” Film History 3 (1989): 167-89Google Scholar; Stefan Kanfer, “Frankenstein at Sixty,” Connoisseur, January 1991; Francis G. Couvares, “Hollywood, Main Street, and the Church: Trying to Censor the Movies before the Production Code,” in Movie Censorship and American Culture, ed. Couvares, 129-58; Vaughn, Stephen, “Morality and Entertainment: The Origins of the Motion Picture Production Code,” Journal of American History 77 (June 1990): 39–65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. Joseph I. Breen to Will H. Hayes, March 1, 1936, quoted in Moley, The Hays Office, 101.

22. Moore, Selling God, 224; DeMille, Cecil B., The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, ed. Hayne, Donald (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1959), 124 Google Scholar (first quotation), 125-26, 242, 251 (second quotation), 252.

23. See, for example, Will Hays to Arthur B. Krock, January 24, 1923, and Will Hays to Rev. William C. Covert, January 25, 1923, in Hays Papers, pt. 1, reel 8, frames 714, 731.

24. Lord, Daniel A., Played by Ear (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1956), 277-86, 298Google Scholar (quotation); DeMille, Autobiography, 279 (quotation), 282; Richard Maltby, “The King of Kings and the Czar of All the Rushes: The Propriety of the Christ Story,” Screen 31 (Summer 1990): 188-213; Babington and Evans, Bible Epics, 101; Trevelyan, John, What the Censor Saw (London: Michael Joseph, 1973), 31, 32, 40Google Scholar.

25. DeMille, Autobiography, 275; Barton, Bruce, The Man and the Book Nobody Knows (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1926), ix, xiiGoogle Scholar. The title of Barton's 1926 book reflects the publication of The Man Nobody Knows (1924) and The Book Nobody Knows (1926) in one volume. For discussions of the compatibility of business and religion in the 1920s, see Lunden, Rolf, Business and Religion in the American 1920s (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Miller, Robert Moats, American Protestantism and Social Issues, 1919-1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958), 17–47 Google Scholar.

26. DeMille, Autobiography, 276 (quotation), 279, 281-82; Maltby, “The King of Kings,” 204-13; The Public Relations of the Motion Picture Industry: A Report by the Department of Research and Education, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America (New York: Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, 1931).

27. Koppes, Clayton R. and Black, Gregory D., Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (New York: Free Press, 1987; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), vii-viii, 67, 98–104 Google Scholar.

28. On Ronald Reagan's religious views and his films during World War II, see Vaughn, Stephen, Ronald Reagan in Hollywood: Movies and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 8–16, 104-18Google Scholar.

29. Kyoko Hirano, “The Japanese Tragedy: Film Censorship and the American Occupation,” in Resisting Images: Essays on Cinema and History, ed. Robert Sklar and Charles Musser (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 200-224. For background, see Dower, John W., War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986)Google Scholar.

30. Stephen J. Dubner, “Steven the Good,” New York Times Magazine, February 14, 1999.

31. On the marketing of Star Wars merchandise, see Bruce Orwall and John Lippman, “Return of the Franchise,” and Joseph Pereira, “Values Won't Be Stellar with a Galaxy of New Toys,” Wall Street Journal, May 14, 1999.

32. Bill Moyers and George Lucas, “Of Myth and Men,” Time, April 26, 1999.

33. Loomer, Bernard, “Two Conceptions of Power,” Process Studies 6 (Spring 1976): 5–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Pickford, Mary, Why Not Try God? (New York: H. C. Kinsey, 1934), 1–7, 21Google Scholar (quotations). On Pickford's book and personal philosophies of positive thinking, see Whitfield, Eileen, Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), 288-89Google Scholar. For a book that attempts to document the religious lives of movie stars, see Canfield, Alice, God in Hollywood (New York: Wisdom House, 1961)Google Scholar.

35. Robert L. McConnell, “The Genesis and Ideology of Gabriel over the White House,” Cinema Journal (Spring 1976): 7-26; Walter Lippmann, “Politics over Hollywood,” New York Herald Tribune, April 4, 1933, late city edition.

36. Black, Gregory D., Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 137-45Google Scholar.

37. Memorandum, March 2, 1933, Gabriel over the White House file, PCA Collection; Joseph I. Breen to David O. Selznick, June 9, 1936, The Garden of Allah file, PCA Collection; Joseph I. Breen to William Gordon, March 29, 1946, It's a Wonderful Life file, PCA Collection; Joseph I. Breen to L. B. Mayer, June 29, 1942, Cabin in the Sky file, PCA Collection; David Lardner, “The Current Cinema,” New Yorker, May 29,1943.

38. Joseph I. Breen to Luigi Luraschi, August 12,1943; Certificate of Approval, February 8, 1944, Going My Way file, PCA Collection.

39. For frank accounts of PCA treatment of Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, The Nun's Story and other films, see Jack Vizzard, See No Evil: Life inside a Hollywood Censor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970).

40. DeMille, Autobiography, 398-99, 433 (quotation); Koury, Phil A., Yes, Mr. DeMille (New York: Putnam, 1959), 206, 214Google Scholar.

41. Stuart Elliott, “The Hype Is with Us,” New York Times, May 14, 1999, national edition.

42. DeMille, Autobiography, 399 (third quotation), 412-13, 429 (second quotation), 431-32 (first quotation). Movie industry censors were concerned, as usual, about the amount of sex in the film. Joseph I. Breen to Luigi Laraschi, August 26, 1954, The Ten Commandments file, PCA Collection. For a review arguing that the “DeMille God is imprisoned in the DeMille style” of movie spectacular, see Tom F. Driver, “Hollywood in the Wilderness,” Christian Century, November 28, 1956.

43. Joseph I. Breen to L. B. Mayer, February 9, 1950, The Next Voice You Hear file, PCA Collection.

44. Schary, Dore, Case History of a Movie (New York: Random House, 1950), 15 Google Scholar (quotation), 19-20, 32-34.

45. Dore Schary to Edith Farrell, January 31, 1950, Dore Schary Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.

46. First Preview, Scottsdale, Arizona, April 21, 1961; Geoffrey M. Shurlock to Robert M. Vogel, June 14, 1960; Robert M. W. Vogel to Geoffrey Shurlock, April 26, 1961; Certificate of Approval, June 14, 1961, King of Kings file, PCA Collection.

47. Ellwood, Robert S., The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Ellwood, Robert S., The Sixties Spiritual Awakening: American Religion Movingfrom Modern to Postmodern (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

48. Powers, Stephen, Rothman, David J., and Rothman, Stanley, Hollywood's America: Social and Political Themes in Motion Pictures (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), 120-37Google Scholar.

49. Official Code Objectives, Appendix I, in Farber, Stephen, The Movie Ratings Game (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1972), 17, 112Google Scholar (first quotation), 115 (second quotation); Black, Gregory D., The Catholic Crusade against the Movies, 1940-1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

50. For useful discussion of The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Bible, see Forshey, Gerald E., American Religious and Biblical Spectaculars (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1992), 94–104, 145-60Google Scholar.

51. Huston, John, An Open Book (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 329 Google Scholar. For analysis of the religious aspects of Huston's films, see Brill, Lesley, John Huston's Filmmaking (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 8–9, 66-67, 107-8, 118, 127, 135-36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52. See White, David Manning and Averson, Richard, The Celluloid Weapon: Social Comment in the American Film (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 97–259 Google Scholar.

53. Ian Watson, “Memoirs of a Kubrick Mind Slave,” New Yorker, March 22, 1999.

54. Phillips, Gene D., Major Film Directors of the American and British Cinema (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1990), 134-35Google Scholar.

55. Anthony Lane, “The Last Emperor,” New Yorker, March 22, 1999.

56. See Richard A. Engnell, “Otherness and the Rhetorical Exigencies of Theistic Religion,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 79 (February 1993): 94.

57. For a movie actor's theistic view that unanswered prayers are God's way of rejectingbad ideas, see Kirk Douglas, “The Perfect Part,” Reader's Digest, December 1997.

58. Travers, Peter and Reiff, Stephanie, The Story behind The Exorcist (New York: Crown, 1974)Google Scholar; Bill Broadway, “Exorcism Receives Renewed Attention,” Washington Post, October 21, 2000, final edition.

59. Colossians 3:2 (AV).

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62. Charles Lyons, “The Paradox of Protest: American Film, 1980-1992,” in Movie Censorship and American Culture, ed. Couvares, 300-309.

63. David Ansen, “Death Takes a Hike,” Newsweek, December 28, 1998-January 4, 1999; Bruce Handy, “Death Takes a Meeting,” Time, November 23, 1998; Janet Maslin, “When Death Comes to Call, Serve Peanut Butter,” New York Times, November 13, 1998, national edition.

64. Puttnam, The Undeclared War, 288.

65. Richard Corliss, “God and Man in Liverpool,” Time, April 10, 1995.

66. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter, ed. Murfin, Ross C. (Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 197 Google Scholar.

67. In approving the 1939 film, the Hays office noted that the clergy character was treated sympathetically and that religious ceremonies were handled satisfactorily Certificate of Approval, October 19, 1939, Hunchback of Notre Dame file, PCA Collection.

68. Bob Straus, “'Hunchback’ Carries Many Weighty Issues,” Los Angeles Daily News, June 15, 1996, metro edition; Bob Straus, “ Artistically Correct?” Boston Globe, June 16, 1996, city edition (quotation); James Bowman, “Disney's Mickey Mouse Religion,” Weekly Standard, July 1, 1996; Mark I. Pinsky, “Disney Gets Dramatic, ‘Hunchback’ Tackles the Christian Faith,” (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, July 5, 1996, city edition.

69. Mark de la Vina, “Unleashing Wrath on ‘Dogma’” Arizona Republic, November 11, 1999; Bernard Weinraub, “Disney and Miramax Collide over Church Issues in New Film,” New York Times, April 8, 1999, national edition.

70. Jeff Giles, “Down by the River,” Newsweek, December 14, 1998; Bernard Weinraub, “A Cartoon's Dancing Teapots? Funny Camels? Not for ‘Prince of Egypt’” New York Times, December 14, 1998, national edition.

71. Kim Masters, “The Prince and the Promoter,” Time, December 14, 1998.

72. Matthew Cooper, “Hollywood and Divine,” Newsweek, March 30, 1998.

73. On beliefs that television and other developments are indications of the Antichrist and the Second Coming, see Boyer, Paul, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

74. See Ronald Bishop, “Good Afternoon, Good Evening, and Good Night: The Truman Show as Media Criticism,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 24 (January 2000): 6-18.

75. The books were spawned by the success of Goleman, Daniel, Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books, 1995)Google Scholar.

76. Richard Corliss, “Popular Metaphysics,” Time, April 19, 1999.

77. Adam Cohen, “Bullets over Hollywood,” Time, June 28, 1999; Stuart Nicolson, “Vatican Acts on Papal Order to Pick Moral Movies for Festival,” Scotsman, November 18,1999.

78. Bernard Weinraub, “Loosening a Strict Film Rating for ‘South Park’” New York Times, June 29, 1999, national edition.

79. Rick Lyman, “A Sleeper Movie Awakened by a Hungry Audience,” New York Times, October 25, 1999, national edition.