As part of a larger project that I am working on, I have developed an interest
in the way that crowds, particularly politically charged crowds, behave in
Hollywood movies of the 1920s through 1950s (I'm actually also interested
in televisions depiction of crowds for the end of this period as well).
 
It's easy to come up with films that feature important crowd scenes (Charlie
Chaplin mistakenly picking up the red flag and leading a Communist demon-
stration in _Modern Times_, the various John Doe Club meetings in Capra's
_Meet John Doe_, the film audience at the end of Sturges' _Sullivan's
Travel's_, etc.).  What I am wondering is whether any work has been done on
Hollywood crowd scenes, whether any of you screen-l'ers can think of any crowd
scenes from this period that are particularly interesting, and, last but not
least, whether you have any interesting thoughts on this (and _please_ let's
leave America's favorite antisemite and purveyor of pseudo-Jungian mythobabble,
Joseph Cambell, out of this :-> ).
 
-- Ben Alpers
   Dept. of History
   Princeton University