Wilde in the Dream Factory

Hollywood is haunted by the ghost of playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde. This is the story of his haunting, told for the first time. Set within the rich evolving context of how the American entertainment industry became cinema, and how cinema become the movies, it reveals how Wilde helped to shape Hollywood in the early twentieth century. It begins with his 1882 American tour, and traces the ongoing popularity of his plays and novel in theearly twentieth century, after his ignominious death. Following the early filmmakers, writers and actors as they headed West in the Hollywood boom, it uncovers how and why they took Wilde's spirit withthem. There, in Hollywood, in the early days of silent cinema, Wilde's works were adapted. They were also beginning to define a new kind of style -- a 'Wilde-ish spirit', as Ernst Lubitsch called it -- filtering into the imaginations of Lubitsch himself, as well as Alla Nazimova, Ben Hecht, Samuel Hoffenstein and many others. These were the people who translated Wilde's queer playfulness into the creation of screwball comedies, gangster movies, B-movie horrors, and films noir. There, Wilde andhis style embodied a spirit of rebellion and naughtiness, providing a blue-print for the charismatic cinematic criminal and screwball talk onscreen.Discussing films includingBringing Up Baby, Underworld, and Laura, alongside definitive adaptations of Wilde's works, including, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere's Fan, and Salome, Wilde in the Dream Factory revises how we understand both Wilde's afterlife and cinema's beginnings.

A fairly audacious thesis with a staggeringly broad sweep...[A] stimulating and readable study Keith Hopper, Times Literary Supplement
Brilliant ! A wide-ranging excavation of Wilde's overlooked presence in early American cinema, from the first silent movies through to the gangster narratives, screwball comedies, and film noirs of the 1930s and 1940s, written with all the verve and sparkle of a Wildean aphorism. If Wilde's effects on early cinema were not always frankly acknowledged, Hext shows they were nonetheless profound. Leading figures of the period - Alla Nazimova, Ernst Lubitsch, Ben Hecht, Mae West, Greta Garbo, Edward G. Robinson, Alfred Hitchcock - appear here in a new and utterly fascinating light. This is a major contribution to film studies, as well as to understanding of American cultural history and Wildeâs legacy in popular culture. Nicholas Frankel, author of Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years and The Invention of Oscar Wilde
In this original, impressively researched, charmingly written study of Oscar Wilde's influence on American culture and movies, Kate Hext reveals many surprising branches of aestheticism and decadence. Ranging from Nazimova to Bogart and beyond, she demonstrates that despite Puritanism and the Production Code, classic Hollywood made Oscar sexy and fun, not just a statuette. James Naremore, author of The Magic World of Orson Welles, Acting in the Cinema, and More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts
Oscar goes to Hollywood in Kate Hext's outrageously witty projection of Wilde's posthumous 'career' in La-La Land. A brilliantly researched and beautifully written book which proves that the early cinema was far queerer than we might have assumed. Philip Hoare, Author of Wilde's Last Stand
Kate Hext takes us on a Wilde ride through the first few decades of the American film industry that's as insightful and illuminating as it is good plain fun. Nora Gilbert, Author of Better Left Unsaid: Victorian Novels, Hays Code Films, and the Benefits of Censorship
Hext is a subtle, observant, lively and persuasive writer. She knows her stuff and never takes it too solemnly. Her book is a winner. Richard Davenport-Hines, The Spectator
Hext is a subtle, observant, lively and persuasive writer. She knows her stuff and never takes it too solemnly. Her book is a winner. Richard Davenport-Hines, The Spectator
[Hext's] range of reference is impressive...[a] staggeringly broad sweep...[a] stimulating and readable study... Keith Hopper, TLS

She is author of Walter Pater: Individualism and Aesthetic Philosophy (2013), and co-editor of Decadence in the Age of Modernism (2019).

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