George Gallup in Hollywood

George Gallup in Hollywood is a fascinating look at the film industry's use of opinion polling in the 1930s and '40s. George Gallup's polling techniques first achieved fame when he accurately predicted that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be reelected president in 1936. Gallup had devised an extremely effective sampling method that took households from all income brackets into account, and Hollywood studio executives quickly pounced on the value of Gallup's research. Soon he was gauging reactions to stars and scripts for RKO Pictures, David O. Selznick, and Walt Disney and taking the public's temperature on Orson Welles and Desi Arnaz, couples such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and films like Gone with the Wind, Dumbo, and Fantasia.

Through interviews and extensive research, Susan Ohmer traces Gallup's groundbreaking intellectual and methodological developments, examining his comprehensive approach to market research from his early education in the advertising industry to his later work in Hollywood. The results of his opinion polls offer a fascinating glimpse at the class and gender differences of the time as well as popular sentiment toward social and political issues.

Susan Ohmer is the William T. and Helen Kuhn Carey Assistant Professor of Modern Communication in the Department of Film, Television, and Theater at the University of Notre Dame. She has published articles and essays in Film History, The Journal of Film and Video, and Global Currents: Media and Technology, among other publications.

Nolwenn Mingant:
An innovative and fascinating study about the construction of discourse, power and control in the field of mass culture.

Anne Morey:
Ohmer's book is a major achievement, and it will be a significant reference.

Sarah E. Igo:
An extremely valuable portrait of the shifting field in which Hollywood operated in the 1940s and an excellent study of t he ambivalent relationship between... moviemaking and marketing.

Frank Louis Rusciano:
A fascinating and exciting book.

A well-detailed account of this obscure chapter in cinema history... Recommended.