Product Placement in Hollywood Films

This is the history of advertising in motion pictures from the slide ads of the 1890s to the common practice of product placement in the present. Initially, product placement was seen as a somewhat sleazy practice and also faced opposition from the film industry itself; it has grown dramatically in the past 25 years. From Maillard’s Chocolates advertising with a shot of Cardinal Richelieu enjoying a hot cup of cocoa in 1895, to product placements in 2002’s Minority Report, for which advertisers were rumored to have paid $25 million, this book explores the developing union of corporate America and Hollywood.
This work addresses such topics as television’s conditioning of filmgoers to accept commercials, companies’ donation of props, the debate about advertising such activities as smoking and drinking in films, and “product displacement,” or demands by companies to keep their products absent from unpopular or controversial films. Film stills and a bibliography complete the book.

Cultural historian Kerry Segrave is the author of dozens of books on such diverse topics as drive-in theaters, lie detectors, jukeboxes, smoking, shoplifting and ticket-scalping. He lives in British Columbia.

Kerry Segrave
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 250
Bibliographic Info: 37 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2004
pISBN: 978-0-7864-1904-3
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8163-7
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1

1. Motion Pictures as Business Boosters: The Silent Era to 1926      3

2 . The Talkies Arrive, Commercially Speaking: 1927–1932      19

3. War on Free Shows, Stars Sell Cars, Business Finds Its Voice: 1933–1944      51

4. Everything Follows the Film: 1945–1949     84

5. Television Ads Condition Filmgoers to Accept Commericals: The 1950s      100

6. Ad Trailers Make a Big Push: 1960–1981      116

7. Ad Trailers in the Modern Era: 1982–2003      148

8. Hollywood the Ad—Product Placement in the Modern Era: 1982–2003      164

9. Conclusion      209

Notes      213

Bibliography      223

Index      235

“informative”—Film & History.