David Eldridge

Dr David Eldridge specialises in American History and American Cinema. His research specifically explores American culture, and has published volumes on US cultural history of the 1930s and Hollywood’s construction of history.

His research has been exceptionally diverse, ranging from the New Deal’s Federal Theatre Project, the musicals of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney to the film adaptations of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

David is currently researching the impact that censorship has had on Hollywood’s representations of the past, how filmmakers have used historical settings to evade the censors.

Expertise

• American culture and film

• Hollywood

• 1930s and 1950s America

• Civil Rights Movement

Publications

• “We’re only kids now, but someday…”: Hollywood Musicals and the Great Depression ‘Youth Crisis’, in Iwan Morgan, ed., Hollywood and the Great Depression, Edinburgh University Press.

• ‘Some Like It Hot (1959) and the Virtues of Not Taking History Too Seriously,’ in Jennifer Smyth, ed., Hollywood and the American Historical Film (2012)

• American Culture in the 1930s (Edinburgh University Press, 2008)

• Hollywood’s History Films (I.B. Tauris, 2006)