The Invention of the Western Film
A Cultural History of the Genre's First Half Century

Table of Contents

Part I. 'My Friend, the Indian': Landscape and the Extermination of the Native American in the Silent Western:
1. Indians to the rescue
2. The eastern Western
3. Our friends, the Indians
4. The death of the Western, 1911
5. The far-Western
6. Wars on the plains
7. The politics of landscape
8. Pocahontas meets Custer: The Invaders
9. 'No Indians wanted'
10. The west of the Mohicans
11. Desert places
Part II. 'It's Time for Your History Lesson, Dear': John Wayne and the Problem of History in the Hollywood Western of the 1930s:
12. The Big Trail and the weight of history
13. What's the big idea?
14. Manifestations of destiny
15. Rambling into Surrealism: the B-Western
16. 'Don't cry, Pat, it's only a Western': A note on acting
17. Time, space, and the Western
Part III. 'That Sleep of Death': John Ford and the Darkness of the Classic Western in the 1940s:
18. My Darling Clementine and the fight with Film Noir
19. Out of the past
20. 'Shakespeare? In Tombstone?'
21. 'Get outa town and stay out'
22. 'A lot of nice people around here'
23. 'Who do we shoot?'
24. The revenge of Film Noir
25. The return of the Earps
26. Ford, Fonda, and the death of the classic Western.

Look Inside

• Front Matter (160 KB)
• Marketing Excerpt (202 KB)
• Copyright Information Page (83 KB)
• Table of Contents (81 KB)
• Index (227 KB)
• Marketing Sample (119 KB)