A tough job for Donald Duck: Hollywood, Czechoslovakia, and selling films behind the Iron Curtain, 1944-1951

Abstract

Combining analyses of primary documents housed at American, Russian and Czech archives, and employing industrial analysis, market analysis, and analytical tools developed in reception studies, this thesis examines Hollywood's post-war operations in Eastern Europe, the strategies that were employed to advance them, and the responses of the indigenous film industries of Eastern Europe to them. While scholars examining Hollywood's post-war international activities have focused on western European markets, arguing that they were of supreme importance to Hollywood, this thesis shows that Eastern Europe was also central to Hollywood's post-war economic agenda. The major Hollywood studios, I argue, were, as early as 1944, drawing up highly ambitious plans to become the dominant player on Eastern European markets, including the Soviet market, and were working to prevent the Soviet film industry from expanding into Western Europe. Sitting at the border of East and West, the small country of Czechoslovakia played a key role in what this thesis calls Hollywood's Soviet Sphere Project. By revealing the extent to which expansion into Eastern Europe was central to Hollywood's short-, medium- and long-term economic objectives, this thesis offers new insight into Hollywood's domestic and international conduct during the...